The True Artist is an Amazing Luminous Fountain
April 23-July 31, 2004
Robert Hudon,
E-Flat, 1986.
Bronze and horn. Photo by Greg Staley
In celebration of its 10th anniversary, The Kreeger Museum presented art from the di Rosa Preserve in Napa, seen outside California for the first time since 1997.
The Kreeger Museum was the inaugural venue for this traveling show. Jack Rasmussen, a long time friend of the Museum and independent curator of art, well-known in the Washington region, curated the exhibition as the newly appointed Director of the Preserve.
Featured were approximately 44 works by the 18 artists who have most shaped Bay Area art after the rise of the Bay Area Figurative School of the 1950s.
Manuel Neri, Coming in Last Thursday, 1981.
Bronze enamel
The exhibition gives special emphasis to the Beat-influenced painting and sculpture coming out of San Francisco's North Beach (Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hendrick, Manuel Neri) and the flourishing of ceramic art that began in the University of California, Davis/Sacramento region (Robert Arneson, Viola Frey, James Melchert, Richard Shaw, Peter Voulkos). Fine examples from the "Funk Art" movement, identified by their Dada influenced use of new materials and their exuberant outrageous wit (Clayton Bailey, Roy DeForest, Robert Hudson, William Wiley) were on view as wereassorted mavericks who do not fit into any particular category, save that of coming from California (William Allan, David Best, David Ireland, Paul Kos).
The exhibition catalogue featured essays by Allan, Hedrick, Melchert and others.
