Art Ventures Gallery to Open Exhibit in Menlo Park

From Atero Marketing Group: The Bay Area Figurative Art movement was born as a response to Modernism and Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. James Weeks and Paul Wonner were the lesser-known colleagues of its chief purveyors Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, yet a survey of the movement would be incomplete with them.

The Bay Area Figurative Art movement — which grew out of a desire to make “good paintings”—began with painting the human form. That was a radical act when Abstract Expressionism, born in 1940s New York, and Europe’s modernist movement dominated the art world.

This new style was quickly understood, because the images were recognizable. The bold methods of handling paint, which are a mark of Abstract Expressionism, applied to shapes derived from either real or imagined scenes.

From March 25 to May 11, Art Ventures Gallery (www.artventuresgallery.com) will highlight California’s only homegrown art movement with “Return to Nature: Bay Area Figurative Artists from 1948 to 1980 (re)discovered.” Art Ventures Gallery will be displaying the human form, still lives, and landscapes by James Weeks and Paul.

James Weeks was a first-generation Bay Area Figurative painter. Together with David Park and Richard Diebenkorn, he was part of the 1957 Bay Area Figurative Art exhibition at the Oakland Museum and at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1989. Unlike his colleagues, Weeks was not completely opposed to abstract expressionism—and that is borne out in his paintings.

His father was successful bandleader Anson Weeks, his mother classical pianist Ruth Daly, and earlier he produced large scenes of musicians. His part-time work in a slaughterhouse inspired his famous”Sheep Heads” (1959) and “Still Life with Hanging Beef” (1957).

James Weeks studied at the California School of Fine Arts from 1940 to 1942 with William Gaw and began to teach part-time in 1984. Expression textures were popular among abstract painters at the school but he remained committed to figurative paintings. Weeks became inspired by Henri Matisse whose work he saw at Michael and Sarah Stein's house in Palo Alto. Sarah Stein was the sister-in law of Gertrude Stein, an American novelist, poet, and playwright. The Oakland-born Stein moved to Paris 1903 where she hosted a salon where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art would meet, including Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and Matisse.

Weeks admired Eduard Munch and Max Beckmann and the figurative elements of Mark Rothko's early paintings. Weeks turned to big still-life arrangements in which bold, roughly painted colors were tied together with black outlines. Areas of very close scales were juxtaposed with dramatic, intense areas. With his figures and the use of interlocking splashes of color, Weeks created three-dimensional spaces.

He had an exhibition at the Legion of Honor in 1953. In 1962, he started painting landscapes in which he was trying to reconcile Henri Matisse with Paul Cezanne by balancing color with form. Later he switched from oil to acrylic paint to achieve a golden, glowing light.

Weeks moved to Los Angeles in 1967 to join Diebenkorn on the faculty at UCLA. In 1970, he moved to Massachusetts for the position of associate professor at Boston University. His paintings alternated between figurative and landscapes.

Together with Nathan Oliviera and Theophilus Brown, Paul Wonner was the second generation figurative painter since they were not at the California School of Fine Arts heroic years of James Weeks, Elmer Bishoff, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Park.

In 1955, Brown and Wonner rented a studio space in the same building on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley where Diebenkorn worked. Weekly drawing sessions in Berkley brought Weeks, Wonner, Park, and Diebenkorn together and inspired their art.

Wonner participated in the drawing sessions more frequently than Weeks. Diebenkorn and Park had a major impact on his works. However, while Diebenkorn and Park temporarily moved away from figurative subjects, Wonner and Weeks moved in the opposite direction. Wonner´s style was looser, and more painterly. In 1959, his line was close to abstract but did not show the tight control of Weeks´s over his canvas surface. Wonner´s figures were cropped horizontally. Sometimes hands and legs were cut off by the canvas edge.

In 1959, Wonner began a series of male bathers. The bather does not seem to come out of the water but strikes a pose. The other, also a male nude, lounges on a green chair. Wonner employed soft greens, cream, and blues. Unlike Park´s “Standing Male Nude,” Wonner´s figures do not meet our gaze. They look down or to the side. Figures are vaguely defined and show sometimes aroused genitals.

Because Wonner feared that his works would be too journalistic, too much like illustration, he wanted to stay in the genre of landscapes, figures, and still lives. He created brilliant watercolors with mysterious themes, such as “Fossil Giant—Head in the Clouds.”

Later, he became interested in 17th-century Dutch still life paintings in which he arranged objects that he painted almost life size. The objects are selected randomly and don´t overlap. "Each is to be seen as much alone as in context with others. “To Flora” is one of his masterpieces. His method was to set a background and a floor plane and then paint the objects separately, one by one, not arranged ahead of time. He chose the object that comes next and is surprised by the outcome. He tried to bring together by subjective linear designs, each object or shadow leading to another throughout the painting. Drawing and perspective are altered to support the linear composition.

For more information about The Bay Area Figurative Arts and Art Ventures Gallery, email us at info@artventuresgallery.com.

Image via Atero Marketing Group