NSE #1060 | Heidi Zuckerman, Courtenay Finn, George Adams, and Hearne Pardee

hi and welcome to the Brooklyn rails 1060th new social environment I'm Eleanor programs associate here at the rail and I have the pleasure and privilege today of being your MC for a conversation featuring Heidi zerman Courtney Finn George Adams and Hearn party and now it's my joy to introduce our guests and host for today Heidi Zuckerman is the globally recognized Visionary leader in Contemporary Art and the first woman in the US to build two art museums she is CEO and director of Orange County Museum of Art formerly she was CEO and director of the Aspen Museum of Art of the Aspen museum for 14 years suckerman has created over 200 exhibitions as well as founded and hosts a podcast called about art Courtney Finn is the chief curator at the Orange County Museum of Art and one half of Frank small publishing imprint for artist projects recent exhibitions include Alice Neil feels like home and Tony Lewis casual te prior to her appointment at the Orange County Museum of Art she held curatorial positions at mocha Cleveland Aspen Art Museum and art in General George Adams began his Gallery career in 1978 he's been the owner of the George Adams Gallery in New York since 1995 and has represented Joan Brown since 1980 Adams attended the SCA School of painting and sculpture the college of fine arts Carnegie melon University and earned his ba in art history from Sarah Lawrence College and our host today artist and writer Hearn party is based in New York in California his paintings and collages explore everyday Landscapes his most recent show entitled just looking was at bowy Gallery in 2023 here in New York party is a Prof professor ameritus at UC Davis and we're so lucky to have him as a contributor here at the rail um thank you all so much for joining us for this conversation today and Hearn I'll pass it over to you thank you so much uh thanks to Khloe and Eleanor for organizing all this and um also of course to my uh panelists uh looking forward to this discussion uh I also want to acknowledge the work of uh Janet bishop and Nancy Lim at the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art who put together the original Joan Brown retrospective back in 2022 I believe um I'm going to hope today that we just uh share our appreciation of Joan Brown's work we'll be looking at a lot of work going by and um I think uh we want to give some sense of the trajectory of her her life career which was very complicated in some sense but also um has a through line based in based in San Francisco and uh in her love of painting and in her Devotion to herself in the broadest sense of that um and uh I'm going to give a brief overview of of that for people who may not be that familiar with their life but uh I'll start with if you can start the installation photos Elanor we can uh get right into the uh um images and uh the exhibition is a stunning uh presentation of her work at the Orange County Museum in a beautiful space and uh this just gives some sense of The Works which we can look at more individually later on um the exhibition breaks into four General uh sections that first one was the early career where she had a very precocious uh start um as a student at the uh California College of Art and she um gained National prominence very quickly um uh subsequently she shifted uh dramatically and assumed a more disciplined approach which you see here in her moved this by this time it was her third marriage to uh Gordon cook an artist who took her to the Sacramento Delta where she absorbed the influence of HRI rouso and uh took on more symbolic and allegorical work uh this draws on some of the earlier connections she made uh I should have mentioned with the early work that she was married for a while to Manuel ner the sculptor um whom she met as a student and uh was friends with Jay Deo and Bruce Connor and uh the whole group of the uh sort of classic era of the Bay Area uh artists and Poets who uh at that time sort of shared a connection with New York I think that merged abstract expressionism and uh the figurative art that was done at the Bay Area this is the third phase of her work where she goes back to uh San Francisco and indulges her uh her great interest in uh swimming and dancing uh she has a very Lively uh social life there uh also uh gets involved with a swimming coach who uh she wants to get better uh at swimming and gets involved with Charlie Sava uh Olympic level swimming coach who uh who really uh shapes her up and very disciplined and she Imports that into her sense of the body and the more Dynamic uh qualities in her painting also there is a sense emerging of uh you know life and death uh where she has a near near death experience in the bay swimming uh and the Alcatraz uh swimming event uh but out of that emerges a a sense of more allegorical and symbolic uh tendency that her work has uh followed through along and as we get to the final section we find her uh with a under the influence of a fourth husband um who uh introduces her to Buddhism and to uh the word the influence of the guru Sai Baba who uh they travel to India a number of times she travels all over the world and her work here begins to reflect her interest in world religions and the uh overall uh the self as I said in the largest sense um so um with that um I'd like to you know let the other people talk a little bit and um I'd like to ask everybody to comment just given how much work Joan did her life ended uh tragically very early uh in 1991 when she was killed uh installing an obelisk that she had created for saaba in India and a parapet fell and killed her and an assistant so um nonetheless she produced an incredible uh number of paintings uh of which we see a selection here and uh I just like each of the partip to say a little about how the exhibition shapes an image of Joan you know what image do you see coming out of here which is actually a a selection from the selection that was much larger in San Francisco and uh you know the overall context of Joan's work and and relating her hopefully to the Contemporary context as well uh so I don't know aidi did you want to start sure thank you and glad to see so many names and faces of people that I know on the call this morning and really honored to have the opportunity to participate so I also want to reemphasize the incredible curatorial work that was done at ASF Moma and the celebration of Joan Brown who I think is a really iconic and idiosyncratic and unique artist and Janet Bishop was here at the opening and and gave just one of the best exhibition walkthroughs I've heard in a long time she really emphasized the character that Joan was and was able to tell incredible stories about her life and her practice and and weaving the two together so one of the things that I would uh maybe emphasize after the introduction and and and I I always think it's interesting to to talk about the influence that you know husbands had on um on the women or the artists and and I would just kind of like invert that a little bit and um one of my favorite things about the show and one of the things that I think comes up in the show is um the transitory nature of um her relationship with these different men and and I love we we own a painting here at the Orange County Museum of Art where there's a a woman standing arm in arm in front of um a a work filled with Egyptian hieroglyphics and she's detailed mostly but then the the male figure is just outlined and and there are quite a few paintings in the exhibition where the male figure is just kind of outlined and and I love this idea that you know that Joan Brown was the she was the heroine she was the um champion of her own story and um and the main character and you know that she was so generous in showing her interest and her enthusiasms and um her passions um throughout her paintings and I feel like that's what really comes through in this exhibition and the selection of works that that we have it's really it's all about Joan and um and I love that you can find her in all of the works with her you know blue eyes and her blue eyes Shadow so she's a she's a hero and I think that's the story that that we tell here coordinate did you have any thoughts yeah um sort of echoing what Heidi said I think um you know the show was edited down and the way that the um Orange County museums of Arts galleries flow um the show goes in a chronological order and as you said it's in these four parts but I think what Heidi articulates and what I think you can feel in the exhibition is how much she's producing her own Narrative of her own life she's both the star but also the subject um and she's so Earnest in in celebrating the things that bring her Joy whether it's ballroom dancing or swimming or her relationship with her son or her uh pets and her relationship to animals and I think you sort of see her in this direct unmediated like peer-to-peer address with the audience like you're on the same page like walking almost arm in-arm through the show with Joan um and I think it's so exciting to think about how um the every day can become this sort of extraordinary Journey that someone else can take you on just somebody's everyday activities in life and she really goes to show you a lot about what the wildness of occupying a body and and living a life right George how about your ideas did you uh you knew her personally so do you have any uh well the story that I always tell people who don't know Joan is I start with the word Fearless um for someone in the late 50s to get married and divorced coming from a Catholic Family only child very conservative upbringing goes to Art School gets married gets divorced um gets involved with Manuel ner who's the older man a Korean vet is pregnant with NL uh they get married she leaves him she leaves her Gallery you know Joan throughout her life did whatever um she wanted in effect um regardless of the so-called consequences she was not afraid so she changed her style she took up swimming you know she nearly drowned she finishes the race um and a story that maybe many people don't know is it continued through her career so in about 1987 the phone rang at the gallery and it was Joan the sing song Sing Song voice which I can still hear hi George you know um hi John how are you um just want to let you know I'm leaving my Galleries and you can imagine my heart drops right you so 1987 she's decided that she's going to make a career change focus more on public art and she's going to leave her Galleries and I'm like what and she oh not you and Allan I like you guys but she left three galleries just boom like that and and changed her whole trajectory yet again I mean she was amazing so I think the exhibition shows that and and that's just fascinating and for a role model she's she's she's the one for a lot of artists today yeah that's that's great um I'm trying to figure out how we should best manage this when I see paintings go by I always think oh I could say something about that and I'm sure everybody has the particular uh associations and ideas I thrown in some extra images here from this is J Deo of course thr row her famous painting which kind of exemplifies that Spirit of excess in San Francisco and uh the materiality which Janes painting certainly shared she had paintings that that fell off the canvas because they were too heavy and um the the pen that comes up is a crucial one for uh Joan because it uh marked a transition it's when she decided she was the maximalism was going to go back to being minimal and she was talking to Gordon cook who who turned her on to um Morandi among other people and so taking this material quality which was so present in her earlier work she refines that and begins to use uh different kinds of paint um we could uh talk about uh any of these does anyone want to uh so one of the things that that that I think is interesting and is a through line through the exhibition is um exactly what what George was saying in terms of the the courage of not just the the person in the life but also the artistic practice and to step away from you know works like this which are very much in keeping with you know Elmer Bishoff and any of the artists that you know are making work um at at this time and in this location you know this work in particular is interesting because you see these broad monochromatic planes of color and that's one of the things that I think comes to characterize what I think of as her signature style so it's it's about herself and and the the protagonist being emphasized in the paintings and some of the most interesting things are the flatness of her application of paint the the real um I think intentional reductivist uh color but also application and so it is the it is about the figure in space and and that becomes both an aesthetic choice but also a sort of spiritual and metaphysical Choice which is a a precursor of of the later work where the subject matter also is is about that exploration right yeah this is the new the new version of Joan as she gets married and this is her with her husband going to the uh Opera I think in San Francisco and of course she includes a separate panel for her dog who's uh Bob I think is that still Rufus I can't keep track uh but he's sort of there like the donor in a Renaissance uh tryptic you know he's presiding uh from the side in his own panel uh any sorry Hearn this is this is a wedding portrait yeah this is I love the yeah that you can see the the English sycamore trees there's so many parts of the relationships that she had to the Bay Area and to the the landscape of San Francisco and the larger Bay that really connect in the paintings and I think to your point like I love that the clouds are heart-shaped like she was so Earnest in her um kind of love of love and like finding um her way and her relationships with both people and pets so it's it's also lovely that ruus gets his own pain P he is equally as important as this relationship between these two people yeah this a another very important pain we could hold up on these if people want to say more uh just tell Elanor to to keep it there I mean this a great deal of uh a great deal of um iconography in it I guess she's moving you know from the early paintings You' see more of the abstract expression is material uh emphasis but then it becomes much more the symbolism and the uh choice of imagery becomes much more significant um I was curious here George maybe you can shed some light on this but I love the relationship that you see play out throughout her whole U of the cat and the rat as the sort of back and forth standing for her and her life what she's going through but also um this relationship between the two animals and I in particular in this one that the rat is on the leash and I was curious if she talked more about that just knowing you knew her personally you know it's funny she she did not talk about any of the early work with me and I actually didn't know of say the woman with fish the family portrait that's at the counter I didn't know those paintings until I went out to the warehouse to pick the memorial show and I discovered these big house paint Masonite U panels um and it was to me it was such a loss because to me that's where Jones starts as an artist like that's that's who Joan is before that she's she's still a student she's a student of Bishoff or park or Mori but it's at this point she becomes D but I mean there were so many conversations that I now wish I could have had you know where I would have said what's with the rat Jan you know so many people have so many different theories um we're going to come to the painting that's at the caner and I do want to talk about that because that's so loaded um but each of these paintings are just they're they're so full of of you know her personal iconography fears and and the loves and anyway if we can go back just one second yeah go back you don't have to L Joe Jonas yet but that's okay so what one of the things that I particularly love about our exhibition is that in the first Gallery we have the sculpture from the Berkeley Art Museum which is this weird creepy like fur creature um that looks like you know more of a beaver to Me Maybe or like a fox or whatnot but you know because it's in the same collection as this painting and because there's the rat in this and the rat comes up again in towards the end of the exhibition and works um in painting on the obelis that's included maybe it is a rat but there's something really beautiful about also her sculpture and that's maybe something that we'll talk about but it's sort of a surprise for a lot of people in the exhibition is you know if they know Joan's work then they know her as a painter but she made these like Whimsical hilarious you know funny strange sculptures as well and you can see the relationship between her intention with um the the furry creature that's in the first gallery then you know the rat here could you go back to that I think it's number 10 uh if you could and I just there it is yeah oh wait not that one one before next one next one next one 11 11 sorry I got screwed up with the numbers yeah we could do a poll to think about you know what everyone thinks that this creature is um but you know I just um I I love that it's it has some paint on its tail it's you know wrapped in tape it seems like maybe it you know better days but you know it keeps moving um and so I I think that some of these um animals that show up in the work certainly the cat are some sort of alter ego you know for for Joan as well yeah yeah yeah this is not like a cuddly sort of animal you would uh you know go to bed with or anything it's a uh it's got lots of sharp stuff in it doesn't it that yeah but it also has eyes you know which is nice because you know of course that's how Jan shows herself right okay well we could keep moving along then uh yeah I threw in some Jon Jonas things just because she's very much in uh in my mind right now having seen the show in New York and I think there's a connection even though they're totally different media I think if uh if Joan had had a video camera she might have done things like Joan did uh certainly the influence of animals and uh this expansive sense of of identity and interest in mythology and World culture and uh the natural world so uh so people can talk about it or not I just thought uh it would be good to expand Jones's uh uh reach from the bay area where it becomes very kind of cloistered uh to show that there's this uh much larger I mean she was really trying to be a world artist and I think uh uh she uh she gets to that in a certain way I don't know if we can talk about that more perhaps I think they're both um doing this sort of subconscious exploration of the world I mean it's not it's not a pairing I would have naturally thought of on my own but it is interesting they're both exploring relationships of the body animal mythology they're both like starring in their own making um at a time in which like the female body putting itself in front and center Larger than Life is not necessarily typical or what people were necessarily interested or gravitating towards so they're both Pioneers in that sense too okay all right is this the one you were looking for George or is this no I I actually I don't see it on your checklist it's the one at the caner um but but I would say that the fish the one at the caner and and maybe some of you do know the painting um it's called family portrait and there's a cat a female figure is a cat there's a big teddy bear figure and then there's a fish on the floor and I don't think I have that one in there you don't have it I'm sorry I should have asked you to put it in yeah because it's one of the most revealing to me anyway it's the same time as this painting um but the cat is her mother and the teddy bear is her father and the fish on the floor out of water is Joan gasping for breath so whenever I see the fish I think that's Joan so that's in this one I think it's great too because if you look really carefully the paint on the paint brushes the same color palette as the fish so so sort of like echoing what you just said about producing yourself or coming into your own being she's she's self-referencing that she's painted the fish so like she's coming into her own as her artist and I love her artist Persona covered covered in clothes um and um you know Heidi mentioned earlier her eyes Shadow and her eyes H you she changes hair color styles you should dress us differently but but that remains persistent I love that the beauty mark shifting from Flor side side yeah that went very fast anybody wanted to talk more about woman with a mask we could uh one of one of the things that that I am drawn to in the paintings is the way that she Paints the floors and the flooring the tiles the wood the carpets um it's you know one of the areas in often a painting with a very reduced palette uh where she includes texture and color and form and and there's also like a spatial disorientation that happens you know there's she's obviously a super accomplished painter and I think some of the naive of the way that she is representing her subjects is emphasized in the floors so they often seem like they're at at an angle that would be impossible for the figures to stand on yeah George you got excited about that um I was reminded I was reading up on some on some quotes of Jones and one thing she admits to is she was terrible at perspective whenever you see that floor and it's not quite right that's that's because she couldn't do it but anyway I love it I mean I think that's a great Point yeah I just it's one of my favorite parts of the paintings and and I think when I look at them originally I'm very focused on on the figure and then the longer I look one of the things that I keep coming back to is the flooring and and the you know the details yeah yeah particularly love tiles I don't I don't know if we have any of the images when she's in the shower um but there's there's an amazing painting in the exhibition where she's sort of like fully clothed in a robe and like a shower cap and you know she got a pet with her and and the tiles come up you know almost three4 of the painting well this is another one with the four and uh strange this one I was thinking a little bit in terms of Joan Jonas and her mirror check uh performances where she takes a mirror and you can't see what she's but she's looking at her body through the mirror and we're watching her examine ourselves and uh here um Joan throws in the sort of cinematic thing sort of filmed wire with this strange dark street with a car outside her window which looks very threatening I love though you can also see the the attention to like the personal adornment so she's very particular about like the shoes or some of the accessories like she's really thinking about um a simple gesture that really carries a lot of meaning and I think I love that too in addition to the the sort of pattern as like a repetitive memory it like places you and gives you a sense of um Foundation like you're there with her but I love like just the tassels on the towel around her head and then the choice of the the style and color of the shoes and is she nervously smoking or casually smoking I found a I found a great letter that she wrote to Allan in probably 78 I think where she says after 23 years I finally give no there more than that I've finally given up smoking this time for real that's great uh yeah this is also influenced by Francis Bacon I think she liked the uh the she once called him the greatest painter of the 20th century um and uh she doesn't share his his application of paint but she's definitely focused on that isolated figure existential sort of so I love how she's a a student of of art and culture as well and and I love when other works of art enter into her paintings so my favorite is when and we have a lot in the exhibition where she includes paintings of her paintings and and often they're not installed often they're kind of they on the floor leaning against a wall or or they become kind of a background and and certainly all of the paintings that she made that are included in our exhibition that address the the challenging swim from Alcatraz um but I I love this here where again it's the primarily monochromatic painting there's the kind of odd uh use of perspective there is the the figure who's you know smoking um and you don't know if it if it is the artist but it probably is and you know here again she's a a student of of art and culture and it kind of brings you into her mind as she's you're seeing her visual experience she's sharing her screen in a way she's uh putting this in uh and there another Jon Jonas I just had to I could I saw this one I said oh well there is the same idea uh the sort of displacement of the image you know so that the uh Jon always draws but the drawing becomes something else and you can you know the drawing isn't the thing to look at but it's part of the whole performance so uh yeah I think even the next painting that's in the show um yeah this one where you really see like everything going on in her head and it's kind of amazing we just brought a painting into the collection last year a CLA real house painting that also has this sort of like swirling um set of different references which is another really interesting if you think relationship between Bay Area painters um but I just love this one because of the way it just shows the symbolism and the references and you see like the teddy bear that appears before and even the bride before the cat um mask goes on the fish from from that Crystal Bridge's like red background it's just you can see that all of these things are forming a vocabulary or a language that she's using to create or to speak and share outward yeah there's a red shoe on top of her head and Bob the dog down there in the lower corner well I find amazing about her is that she will be so direct painting like this which is clearly looking in the mirror she's looking straight at you and then you know a contemplative painting like the the previous one where she's got her back to you you know the food shifts yeah one of the things I I love this painting this is one of my favorite paintings in the show um for everything that that everyone has said and I also love like the bifurcation of the two colored backgrounds how you know one side is gray and the other side is is brown um and you know that kind of Duality I I feel like that is something that shows up in her work a lot and it's a duality between any of the things you could sort of feel in the blank for you know artist mother you know wife um swimmer uh you know Creator um dancer you know the all the different kind of characters that she plays and all the different parts and pieces that make up the whole of who she is and how she's addressing all of that and you know my first comment was about how she's the heroine of of her own story and I I love this painting because it it gives some kind of insight into um like the monkey mind right so I'm sure we'll get to one of the paintings that I think is the most unique in our exhibition and how it deals with spirituality and how present that always is and I think this is kind of how she starts right and that painting is kind of how she ends yeah I also think to hi's paint the thing that's so interesting about the paintings is that they have this Duality between being super in relationship with others and with a lived experience and then also this touch of loneliness or alien and isolation like the struggle to figure out like who you are where you fit how you want to be in the world and going back and forth between those two because they seem so much through a lived experience connected to her life but then you can also see her working through things and I think that Duality is something that makes the paintings really stand out for me I think in one of the essays maybe it was Karen sujimoto she mentioned there's an underlying Melancholy to uh many of her portraits H there's also the point that she talks about when things get too easy needing to make things more difficult and that's the Transitions and she said that that the transitions were just as important and I think that's that kind of you know tendency to step back struggle and then come out again and if you think about the different stages of her productivity when she came out of the Morandi phase she she R Vista she did the animals and she had um she had the exhibition in 68 I think it was in San Francisco and it got paned she retreated again work through it and then you know 1970 bang she's John Brown you know it's just amazing how she's able to just keep you know working through the struggles and being willing to struggle so I just saw a comment come up on the screen where someone said that there's a rat on her shoulder which is true it's on the side of the painting yeah and one of the things that is really kind of amazing about the rat too is that the tail comes like onto her neck so it's just so it's like it's not just like all of these things that are happening in her head right it also like permeates like her physicality as well yeah that's nice nice isn't there a story too about how the rat came from a dream she had that terrified her as when she was younger or I think that'ss yeah I mean I think it's it's so interesting if you think like rats persist like the really like just all the mythologies and or stories that we tell each other or that we learn as we grow up about our relationship to animals and how it crosses um narrative and mythology and culture like cats have nine lives they're you know part of transformation and then they have this sort of antagonistic relationship in terms of one trying to catch the other one and I don't know it it really like you can see that sort of like looped pursuit of um like working against something like taking steps forward and then having to retreat or transition and I feel like um in in some ways it's like a universal thing that people can sort of latch on to kind of grounds you in in an experience that can be wholly your own even though we're also sort of falling um really deep into the story of one particular person living a life I love that Courtney I just want to pick up and emphasize that idea of you know what it means to live a life and what it means to record The Living of a life and and share that and I think that's really very present in in the work and in in the exhibition oh I threw it at couple of Cindy Sherman because uh in the catalog uh for the San Francisco show Helen molesworth compares her to Sydney Sherman and I thought well it's worth exploring um to what extent they do share anything in common and uh certainly U there's some uh similarities um anyone have any thoughts on that I'm tempted to disagree go say yeah well I would say after after looking at the one with all the animals in her head you know I'm say well this is not you know this is not a Cindy Sherman kind of portrait um but go ahead and say what no I I guess maybe the early Black and Whites of Cindy but I I just feel like Joan is so she's so much more sincere on the level you know she's she's revealing so much more I don't see Cindy Sherman is revealing so much as reflecting right it's not about Cindy Sherman it's about a yeah yeah yeah I I agree with George you know I I think that Cindy Sherman is the object of her work but she's not the subject and and Joan is the is the subject of her work and she happens to also be the object but a totally different it's a totally different strategy and approach I think and now I come to more um Helen molesworth also said that she always looks different and I'm not sure I maybe I have trouble you know recognizing faces I know Chuck Close has that problem I look at these and I say well are they different or are they same I think I think it's both and I think she's changing through throughout all of the paintings her hair color the structure of her face like her mole flips I think the eyes stay very present and I think there's something um almost kind of like essential or I don't know what the word would be for it but that follows them all that you see Joan in all of them even though they look different so they feel um her even though you know she's changing or trying on different personas or ways of being um you can still tell it's it's it's funny one of the questions that um was asked when the show first opened by our audience was like why the title of the show is Joan Brown why didn't have a sort of subtitle or or thematic and um then the audience member answered their own question uh because after having seen the show they were like oh because it's it's all about her it doesn't need another title which I thought was kind of an amazing um revealing of its own so good so one thing i' I'd say I'd add to that is that I think it depends on her intention in making the painting um she made there was a tradition a kind of informal tradition in the gallery where the artist would make birthday portraits and this is true East Coast and West Coast um Bob arnes and Joan on the west coast in particular um and so I think there are times where she's really examining herself and and certainly the self port at age 42 for instance um there was one she did specifically for a portrait show we did um where she's really evaluating herself that parts of a woman is also you know really self-critical and other times it's more like coming up with this more Fantastical figure where she's sort of trying on a psychological Jone yeah I think the work is really radically revealing in a lot of ways and you know some of the paintings that came up already where she is posing in you know her underwear and you know looking at like her body and so if they're questions of well who's the subject or what is this work about you know the the next work you come upon is it's it's clear that it's her and that she is is offering herself as um a subject and object and something to be considered uh in a way that I think is very courageous and and authentic and I think that that's part of the spirit or the ethos of her work that really comes through in in the exhibition yeah you know and it's really different from you know someone um like you know Hannah Wilkey right who's looking at you know her body like subject as the subject or the or like scientifically um it's I think it's much more about like her soul and trying to capture like the essence of kind of what Courtney says like living living a life or or the essence of of Being Human or being alive yeah well we could go back to that one for a minute it would be good to introduce uh our swimming coach here this a a very different I mean George we're talking about the purpose of the painting well this one is clearly about uh affirming her allegiance to uh Charlie SAA the swim coach who transformed her swimming at least and I think some of her paintings too I definitely think the painting I mean she talks about um swimming as like a pursuit of progress and how much she learned about her practice her artistic practice from Charlie just thinking about like efficient forms for maximum effect like you can see that as a swimmer like as a technique but then you can think about it in relationship to her paintings where the simplest line is producing you know an entire environment that you come into immediately without her having to build it you know in a theatrical way just to add um I don't think they're in the show but she also did a full length and it's I think 84 or 90 inches tall portrait of Charly SAA in that same white Shir it's Monumental you know and it's just kind of like Charlie SAA you and then she did one of the greatest paintings ever which is Charlie Sava with friends rbr and Goya this is like how hysterical is that but it's just telling her that's that's her Pantheon you know at that moment it's just great incredible emotional honesty that she says well that's up he's up there with them and yeah that's right it's so just I mean it's just I don't know so Earnest I think in that earnestness too there is there's something that also comes across about the role of learning and the role of teaching I mean she was such a passionate teacher um and also a lifelong learner and you can see it in her practice like she's going back again and again to other painters art history but also employing um things that she's learning from people in her life and then seeing how they fit into her practice and um so I just I love that idea of like Charlie salvad rbrand Goya like all these people are the people that one learns from and equal um for Joan I was going to include that painting but it's so difficult to see the faces are so dark and then even darker there's Joan herself apparently according to Janet Bishop is in the background with her arm up and Triumph behind you look closely you can see that I don't know oh my god oh that's thank you Janet thank you but this one this one is amazing just the way she gets the ripples in the water but talk about you know economy and the way she's paying attention to the way she you know makes marks now compared to the early work where it was this spontaneous expressionistic stuff uh the the background is like a freeze of of Greek figures or something of athletes I guess very disciplined yeah I love the the swim lines and how it comes you know right into her bathing cap um and then you know that she Paints the goggles and then underneath the goggles again you see the blue eyes you know so like you just that kind of consistency of of um of representation I it's one of our best paintings I think and then I guess streamlining the figur she gets into these sculptural forms that are very simplified well so this is oh go ahead Courtney no you go you go so this was part of what I was referencing earlier when I was talking about the inclusion of the sculptures in in the exhibition and how they are made of these kind of you know Bol everyday forms and that they through the material Elevate the the every day to something more grand um so similar to the subject matter which seems like every day in benol it it gets elevated as well and so my favorite part of this is that above the water the swimmers are painted and below the water water it's just a pure material yeah I I think it's so great and the the way that this piece is installed in in the show here is it's in this sort of center of the gallery between two paintings that both show alcatra so also talking about the distance of swimming the like lifelong Pursuit that practice and it is again that sort of binary that you see often which is like the personal adornment or the things that you present on the outer world and then the elemental sort of nature of us all you know like we're all connected one thing I'll I'll add about these sculptures um my understanding is that there was a leak in the roof of The Barn at Rio Vista so she couldn't paint so she made these cardboard sculptures on the kitchen floor I mean just so great you know so she's making cardboard sculptures you know to try the sculptures when she's with manual in 6162 and then here she is 10 years later going ah I can do that again and it's completely different you know the smoker the dancers on the car I mean they're great they're just wonderful oh this is another one I love speaking of going back to heid's comment about the attention to the built environment or the pattern of the floor and for me her use of pattern is so interesting and you can see her almost disappear into it um as As She Goes forward in in her paintings and in her life and I love this like awkward leg like entering or exiting like making space like around the time that she's um suing the the dolphin clubs to allow women to to be able to participate and and you see the sort of window SL also other painting um that kind of places you in the Bay Area yeah this is titled the weit room at the Dolphin Club I think so it's the place where they would work out whatever excuse me the shoe ising for Joan always whenever you see a high heel shoe if she collected shoes she Lov shoes so that's you know that's just like just enough of Joan in the painting it's so great with the sock with the fold sock right really right Elanor you can maybe speed up a little bit we don't want to run out of time so if there's a but there's a lot of stories to tell too yeah oh yeah this this one in particular I think like for really stands out for me in terms of a lot of what we're talking about the sort of the way she's painted the wall then the painting within a painting um but also her use of pattern and her relationship to textiles like the the ship freighter that created um the waves that that almost that caused her near drowning is like now a part of her dress and then the butterflies and the things on the carpet and she's sitting here at this sort of like very Calon still we in the painting behind her Slammers are like frantically being pulled out of the water as they're almost drowning and that sort of Duality again between the calm and the wildness um I think coexisting it's just so great I love the I love the wire of the phone cord and how that kind of for me references like the sculpture where she's smoking as well so there's this kind of ethereal gesture through space but also the telephone the presence of the telephone is the spiritual connection she it's in a number of other ones and it's the kind of near-death thing and then on one of my last visits with her it was the in 89 right after the earthquake and she told me a story of being in her Studio at Berkeley she said I always leave at 5:00 but the telephone right and I say on the phone for maybe 5 or 10 minutes but if I hadn't been on the phone it would have been on the Bap Bridge during the earthquake and that just shook her you know so that whenever you see a telephone then numbers also she would add up numbers and come up with it you so that's very significant there's no reason for a telephone to be there but you see it in a couple of paintings from this P putting the drawing behind me great py I love this one too I love again going back to something Heidi eluded to which is sort of The Disappearance appearance of of the figure fading out almost always a male identified figure and in this case the outline um you know the wine glass like the mouth open and then the fully like layered like patterned um presence of of this group of of of folks in their bathing suits and the shoes I just think those white shoes with the the just so iconic of that moment in time um the show we had uh on view before this was an ALICE Neil show and there's a painting from around the exact same year um of her son heartley wearing those those shoes too I've never understood this painting because stylistically it's so such a radical departure yeah and I remember it was one of the first paintings I ever handled of and I I loved it I loved it immediately but it just didn't fit in and then still I'm you one of those questions I really wished I'd been able to ask it's very Funk isn't it it's kind of more of the funk aesthetic it's a throwback painting it's so throw so many way I mean it has more texture so it's definitely like she's mixing different elements or moments of time and alluding to a future where the pattern goes you know the body is almost disappearing into the pattern which happens later but she hasn't gotten there yet almost like she's both seeing into the future and harnessing the past yeah yeah yeah no it's great pain yeah I think it's a super weird painting I I think it's outlier in the exhibition also and it it makes me uncomfortable in a way that none of the other paintings in the exhibition do so and the the way that I sort of ground myself in it is the reclining figure the male outlined there so I'm like okay I'm still I'm still okay with this painting yeah that's I threw it another Cindy Sherman just because she's doing this sort of thing too you can uh just uh for reference this is the other thing she loved physical activities but dancing was one of her favorite things yeah ballroom dancing and always locating these paintings in San Francisco because of the skyline so I think that's a really important part as well y yeah I think it's it's so um exciting and interesting uh to see somebody who's getting a sort of psychic energy from the place that they're making work from and you can see it in her like use of landmarks and the mystical light that happens in the bay like she really found a source of inspiration in the place um and the life that she was living there and I think um I went to I lived in the bay for grad school and went to CCA and it's something that I didn't really understand until I had spent time there it's so nice to see it in these paintings so this painting is in our collection and it is one of the The Works that we started with when we opened the the new building and here you can again see the outlined reference of of the male can kind of be interchanged like husband one husband 2 husband three husband four right um and so I love that and I really feel like this painting emphasizes again Joan as the as the the lead character of her story and um and is the one who's you know interpreting things that are familiar but yet not fully comprehensible and what I always say in front of this work is that most people probably understand that this is Egyptian art and probably very few people can can transcribe the cartouch um so it's a really wonderful metaphor for looking at art and bringing with you to the experience what you know and having that be enough not needing to know everything so I what's the date of that painting do you remember of our painting yeah I think it's 78 I can double check I think it's 78 um let me double check so what I was thinking was that that she's traveling alone in Egypt I believe and it's and sometimes she makes paintings before she goes on a trip about where she's going to go this is really her like without a companion with and without or maybe the dream companion and then she meets Mike in 79 I love that thank you for adding that that's in struck me I mean they just struck me the male disappears in after the Modesta situation he's gone he he vanishes but this is a very firm outline so on the bell bottom pant gota love it I don't maybe it's D6 it's 1976 I was like it's towards the end you know it could be a reference to David 2 you know David in Egypt who she danced with and stuff but that the bell bottoms is what anyway something think think exactly the bell bottoms it's like these really simple um references to a specific style or moment and time that really then carve out like a character even though it's just an outline of a figure yeah no there's personality there think about that yeah this is probably my favorite painting in the whole show I love this painting I love the purple I love the boldness and the bigness and just the absorption of the paint um into the space and vice versa and and I love that again the blue eyes Shadow matches the blue burka I I just think this painting is perfect I think this is the most perfect painting sorry I will confess that this painting was in the first show that I did with Jan in 19 I would have been fall of 80 I think or January 81 and it was all the India paintings and I was completely baffled like what it's great painting absolutely wonderful it's so great because you can see her body and her sense of her own body even though it's completely obscured by the pattern and I think that's the thing that you see the shift in is that the body um in terms of being put forward is disappearing into the pattern but it's still super present and then I love even the small details of like the white space where the tiger isn't quite filled into its own form so it's like both in motion or coming into being and I think that really sort of um I don't know sets sets it apart from from like you can see her thinking through these things in in the work yeah and this plant that looks almost like fire also so it's not clear if it it's foliage or or if it's fire and and uh and then the the different like application of the paint in in that kind of form as opposed to you know the burka which is just like solid and um and like opaque so there's the combination of the different applications of paint which references back to her early style and and you know how heavily imposto they they were so she just shows like what a great painter she was as well and you know her hand handling of the diversity of the pain applications so there's the two sides of JN that you were talking about earlier I that's it's many it's so great and here I love too it's like she's still covered in paint holding the paint brush like it's she's still like presenting herself as a painter as an artist but the blue is also the blue the background of her as the cat and same with the sun and you have the Sun and the Moon and um also the the Fram it's the two two frames so they exist separately but also coming together this is one of like almost I would say like the final work that you see in the show and it's uh kind of the has that sort of takeaway that you've gone on this journey with her and she's sort of arrived at a place um where she feels comfortable in both of these personas at the same time yeah it's titled Harmony so I think that's our overall feeling about it yep do we have the red painting with the ceiling yeah yeah that's the last one we have two or three to go through but we could go through pretty quickly it's okay this is uh in her studio and you can see on the wall there the mark that was left when she completed Harmony that blue line curving on the wall behind her I like that she can go from these allegorical images to something that's like well here I am you know it's just this is it day by day this painting was done for a show we did called in the studio a very you know very direct mic and there's our husband yeah these energy field paintings I think are super interesting too like she's also trying out a different kind of style with the way that the backgrounds are rendered but then she eventually is goes goes back to the sort of the flat patterning that we that the tiger painting sort of portrays but this one I love because she has the inscription for Mike with love from Joan so one thing about that sort of energy field period in her work which is 7778 is that not very long ago I'm embarrassed to admit I was looking at one of them and there's all this underpainting underneath and what I discovered in the misunderstanding was there's a snake and if you look at the Monica drawings Monica with snakes it's that snake I'm still trying to figure out what was going on but there's there's all this so at the same time as she's making those Elmer Bishop is doing those um those layered paintings also of those late acrylics and I'm trying to figure out if there was some connection wow I didn't know that that's amazing this is when she's doing obelisks and shifting over to public art as she was telling George she's trying to get out of the painting business and yeah yeah I think it's so interesting because I think that shift just seems to be to me at least like an extension of her wanting to communicate outward and she really was trying to be in dialogue with people both in the paintings I think but as she's sort of trying to reconcile her spiritual quest with her quest of just being a human this like idea of how to to connect both to the universe but to other people and like to actually go out into public space to do it seems like um I don't know weirdly a natural progression maybe for her at that stage and um I love in this particular obisk the rat comes back but it's become part of the the patterning and then the cat and the the rat and their and their relationship together well she was definitely at at and I would say this probably starting about 85 maybe um definitely more skeptical if not disdainful of the commercial world and I think she really just well like public art is where I want to be there's none of that other kind of Alita stuff I mean it was really interesting shift [Music] yeah I think about this painting in the exhibition as sort of like the exception that proves the rule so is the uh the fan of course is spinning even though the switch is off and Janet talked about this work as being uh representative of of her spirituality and you know so it's something that I think you find throughout the entire exhibition and and this work is is sort of like the great reveal in in a certain way yeah I think this a really important painting yeah well well we've come about to the end of the slides here and it's just about time for questions so that worked out really well thank you Elanor for timing everything on hold on thank you Hearn thank you Courtney thanks Heidi thank you George this has been really really inspiring and what an amazing show um thank you for your insights we've got some questions here from the audience and if anyone else would like to ask a question please do um send a message in the chat um and our first question today will be from GE and I'll read it on his behalf so GE wrote can we say that in her overall deep consistency Joan was saying World shall world shape us or shall we shape ourselves in the world both both I say both too wonderful thank you um our next question is from James and James I will allow you to unmute here oh great you want me to talk go ahead I was just wondering um Joan was a teacher of mine in 1989 um uh so a great influence to me I'm really encourage me to actually be a painter but um I was just wondering about her connection if you guys had stories um related to uh Berkeley um at that James melchart um and then I was thinking of the Bay Area figurative tradition of um um David Park and arnes and those guys and like how humor that kind of special California Bay Area humor played into her work yeah I don't have a a specific story but I think that's right I I think the work is very much of of a time and and I think that one of the things that's been interesting is someone who who was kind of raised in the Bay Area and then you know lived there multiple times I I feel like the rest of the world has sort of caught up with the Bay Area and that idea of what the sort of values of of you know humor and play and idiosyncrasy and self-de and um and you know courageous Independence that you find in in all of the um creators that you mentioned and and in the spirit of what I would call sort of like a Bay Area ethos um is consistent within the really diverse practices and and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to do this show here in Orange county is um there's there's a relationship and it's also so [Music] different did she say anything about humor when she was teaching well interesting I think Mr Adams talked about uh how she came into a room and she just lit up the room and uh how encouraging she was and how inspiring she was and there was always a delightful kind of atmosphere that she created and uh super influential to me now as an art teacher here in Brooklyn in New York and I'm surprised how the Bay Area figurative tradition is not really talked about here um and uh should be I do it so people still ask me like oh you know how does the East Coast respond to Joan Brown like well she's been exhibiting in New York since 19 what 59 60 I mean you know um one thing I'll just quickly add um when I would come out I would visit all of the artists and I would end up staying with Joan at the end of the trip and Joan always made a points how's Roy and Joan was probably closest in aesthetic and sort of intent to arnison but Roy was a kind of kindred spirit and that always struck me as really interesting just that's something to chew on Thanks James for that question um thank you all also for your generous responses our last question in the Q&A here today will be from Chloe thank you all so much for this conversation which has been such a pleasure to listen to um my question is sort of a big one but I'm curious what each of you would say I'm curious what you think surrealism unlocked for Joan in her work um and in what she was trying to say um with her paintings we'll stop there St silence so I what I would say is that I think she had a real kind of uncanny ability to represent how she knew things and I think that there is an element of the seral to that so thinking of it in its most kind of big and and generous way which is you know how we understand reality and and how we choose to be in relationship to it so I think that her work is um filled with truly idiosyncratic representations of of both um images and content that is maybe informed from surrealism but certainly um with a lowercase s for sure Heidi I think you nailed it um I don't think Joan even saw a barrier between real ISM and you know the real and The Surreal it all flowed together you know she was so intuitive so spiritually connected that I think it just totally natural that things could occur simultaneously in both Realms yeah I just to to kind of pick up on that and and just reemphasize the idea of simultaneity and multiplicity and it's one of the things that I think is really speaking to the broad audience of her work now um is this idea of the both and rather than the either or and it was not necessarily um common at the time and we now exist in a way of of embracing multiplicities and I think that kind of embrace of the seemingly discordant or previously um dichotomus is is the way that we we live in time and I think that's one of the ways that her work is is connecting with audiences now nice that's a really good question it's a great question I think I think both of you answered it so well I think the thing that you can really get um exquisitly I think from the exhibition presentation to is is sort of that it it becomes a pattern that doesn't necessarily at first seem like it's going to make sense but it's intersectional so you loop around and you realize that it's made complete sense even though everything is changing the entire time that you're making the loop um and I think that just sort of goes to show um the sort of strengthen her pursuit of practice and and her way to communicate externally with others nice thank you all so much for those beautiful answers I'm gonna pass the mic back over to Eleanor that was a great question thank you Chloe um and thanks to you all so much for responding um that will conclude our Q&A for today but I'm really thrilled to pass it back over to Heidi for a reading thank you so we were told that um Brooklyn rail conversations always end with a poem and we were back and forth last night about how we might want to address that and we got excited about having a a baray area poet so my suggestion is Bill burkson and part of the reason that I chose bill um was because personally I I had joined the Berkeley Art Museum right at the time of Jan's last Museum retrospective and one of my colleagues there was Connie Luellen and of course Bill and Connie had a great love story and Joan had many great love stories and so I thought it would be wonderful to end the conversation with Bill berkson's poem which is called song for Connie so here it goes the sun met the moon at the corner moon in thin air commotion you later chose to notice love shapes the heart that once was pieces you take in hand the heart in mind your fate consistent alongside mine unless a mess your best guess that is right thanks the intimate fact that you elect it at Corners dressed or naked with lips taste full body time thick or thin fixated love take heart as heart takes shape and recognition ceases to be obscure one line down the center another flying outward enters perfect incredible thank you Heidi that was a really really perfect way to conclude today's nsse it's been truly such a joy and an honor thank you so much Courtney and George and Heidi and Hearn for today we'd also like to thank the terara foundation for American art who sponsor our NC program and make these daily conversations possible and you can also um explore for our archive on the Ra's YouTube channel and this conversation will be posted there very soon the rail has been free and independent for 23 years a donation will directly support a writers production staff and operations here at the rail and there's a link to that in the chat and join us tomorrow at 1 pm Eastern Time 11 or 10:00 a.m. um Pacific time for a conversation with Joyce J Scott and Angela and Caroll on the occasion of walk Mile and my dreams currently on view at Baltimore Museum of Art um thank you all so much for tuning in today on this Monday um you can now all turn on your microphones and say hello and goodbye as you leave thank you so much for being here today thank you you so mucho this thank you you thank you so much thank you thank you everybody everybody see I hope to see you thank you we see the show if you're on the west coast yeah worth the trip everybody Bye by

Channel: The Brooklyn Rail

Views: 170

Keywords: Heidi Zuckerman, Courtenay Finn, George Adams, Hearne Pardee, Interview, live conversation, artist, artists, poetry, poetry reading, The Brooklyn Rail, Brooklyn Rail, Phong Bui, The New Social Environment, Art, contemporary art, poet

Id: 37Hj5pcZi98

Length: 76min 10sec (4570 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2024