Beyond the Paint

Transcript

Katy: Situated in the sculpture garden at the de Young museum, this is Heights I by Rose B. Simpson: an androgynous human figure who stands tall and alludes to the idea of profound spiritual growth. Through its antenna, the figure appears taller, yes in height but also in knowledge — as if it’s showing us an extension of wisdom that grows from the brain. I ask Rose B. Simpson how she hopes people will feel in front of this work.

Rose: When you stand in front of my piece, Heights I, I hope that you feel, inside of yourself, a deep knowing. That you see reflected in the piece a part of yourself that is connected to information that is always available to us if we put up the right kind of antenna. So, how does that feel inside your body? What questions do you have that can be answered when you extend that type of antenna?

Katy: Simpson is a mixed-media artist from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, a Tewa tribal community next to Española, New Mexico. She comes from a long lineage of ceramicists, including her mother, and her work is grounded in Pueblo traditions and ideologies.

Rose: All I saw around me were women working in clay. I feel that they helped build a neural pathway inside of myself that allowed me to believe that it’s possible to (a) work in clay and have a deep relationship to ceramics and (b) to make it a lifestyle.

This is the first sculpture by a Native American artist installed in the de Young’s sculpture garden. Located at one of the museum’s entrances, it also makes us think about what kind of experience we want to have.

Rose: To have Heights I in the foreground of the museum, outside in a natural world, in the Bay Area, it feels important to me because that space is a threshold where we’re going through our daily lives, navigating the mundane, and entering into a museum, into a space of art, representation, and honoring of the creative processes of our human world. That we kind of shift gears, and we start paying attention in a different way. To have Heights I out there in front of the museum to me is really special because we need to tap into a different sense of witness when we’re approaching the creative processes in our world. And those creative processes are connecting to a deeper awareness, and I think oftentimes that deeper awareness also happens when we’re in the natural world.

So, if you can, take a minute before you enter the museum and take a deep breath and look around and notice the weather, notice the sounds, notice the sculpture of trees, notice the sculpture of humans, in space, in the way we navigate our world and each other, but also the sky and the buildings, and how we have co-created this incredible world, and that we are all artists of our own existence.

Image: Rose B. Simpson, Heights I, 2022. Patinated bronze, 85 x 16 x 9 1/2 in. (215.9 x 40.64 x 24.13 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Major Accessions (AOA), 2023.11

Transcript:

My name’s Michael Mel. I’m from the Mogei community in Mount Hagan.

What you see in that image is obviously a warrior from my area in the Western Highlands Province of the Highlands of Papua New Guinea. When this image was taken, it would’ve been taken at a cultural show or festival, and a group of them would’ve been asked to perform. The headdress and the performance are fairly significant to Western Islands communities because they indicated a significant aspect of cultural life.

It’s the kind of decoration people would’ve had when they were dancing and performing and celebrating peacemaking ceremony.

What is atop the man’s head is a wig — a wig that is made entirely of human hair. The hair would’ve been collected mostly from young men. The boys were asked to bring their hair in and a specialist, or a person whose skills are to build the wig, would trim their hair, and then he would gradually put all of those hair together in that shape.

That wig is worn by young men who’ve been initiated and who are now part of the community, and then passed on to others in the generation. Men used to wear them, but also women, particularly wives of chiefs and very significant women.

The other aspect that’s very significant are the leaves — those three white leaves. The underside is the white, the topside is usually green, as well as the green moss, quite often that’s up in the higher altitudes, adding to the decorations of the wig, and the face, and the ears, and so forth. So it’s a connection to the land and to the environment.

You will see the man’s eyes and face have been partly covered in black, and that’s made of ash that would’ve been crushed and then mixed with fat to stick onto the face of the dancer. And then the white strips, as well as the “glasses,” if you like, that surround the dancer’s eyes are made of white clay. And that relates very much to when you look at the birds of paradise. What is around the eyes — and the color and the very fine featherwork that nature, in its own way, has had to put on the birds’ faces, and in particular around the eyes, were very significant to Highlands communities. So taking on that aspect of the birds onto our own faces, so we are like birds as well.

The eyes are very significant and the ears are very significant senses for the Highlands communities because that’s the way they read the environment and the environment, if you like, read them. So interpreting, reading signs and that — for example, you hear a bird at a certain time, you know that it’s going to rain.

A splendid array of featherwork, that would’ve been planted on top of the wig for the dancer. And that would’ve been coming from so many species of birds of paradise. And so when you danced and performed, the flightiness and the movements all aligned with birds.

When the men would’ve danced, they would sing of the great leaders, and there’d be recollection of memory and history, but all put into that musical format. They’d do a small plié, a set of them, almost on tippy-toes, where you’d go up and down and up and down, and that would then allow the feathers to sway back and forth in time. And then you’d have drums that would accompany.

The photograph would’ve been taken when the dancer had actually come out of the performance; he had put away his precious feathers. And people do not wear the wig alone, so he had to wear the two sticks on either side on the wig, just to show that it’s not empty.

Quite often people in our communities see body decoration as a window into your soul, so that very fine things are displayed to show what is really on the inside, to those on the outside.

Image: Irving Penn, New Guinea Man with Painted on Glasses, 1970, printed July 1979. Platinum-palladium print, 20 3/16 x 19 3/4 in. (51.3 x 50.1 cm.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation, 2020, 2020.314.9 © The Irving Penn Foundation

In Lee Mingwei’s Sonic Blossom (2013–present), an opera singer approaches visitors and invites them to be serenaded with a song selected from Franz Schubert’s lieder (songs written for one voice). Lee Mingwei listened to these songs with his mother while caring for her after heart surgery in 2012, as she used to sing them to him as a child. Listen on to experience these powerful songs for yourself.

Song: Nacht und Träume, D. 827 “Night and Dream”

Singer: Chea Young Kang

Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care is on view at the de Young from February 17 through July 7.

Learn more: https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/lee-mingwei

In Lee Mingwei’s Sonic Blossom (2013–present), an opera singer approaches visitors and invites them to be serenaded with a song selected from Franz Schubert’s lieder (songs written for one voice). Lee Mingwei listened to these songs with his mother while caring for her after heart surgery in 2012, as she used to sing them to him as a child. Listen on to experience these powerful songs for yourself.

Song: Frühlingsglaube, D. 686 “Spring Faith”

Singer: Kyla Knox

Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care is on view at the de Young from February 17 through July 7.

Learn more: www.famsf.org/exhibitions/lee-mingwei

In Lee Mingwei’s Sonic Blossom (2013–present), an opera singer approaches visitors and invites them to be serenaded with a song selected from Franz Schubert’s lieder (songs written for one voice). Lee Mingwei listened to these songs with his mother while caring for her after heart surgery in 2012, as she used to sing them to him as a child. Listen on to experience these powerful songs for yourself.

Song: Du bist die Ruh, D. 776 “You are Peace, the Mild Peace”

Singer: Jayne Diliberto

Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care is on view at the de Young from February 17 through July 7.

Learn more: https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/lee-mingwei

In Lee Mingwei’s Sonic Blossom (2013–present), an opera singer approaches visitors and invites them to be serenaded with a song selected from Franz Schubert’s lieder (songs written for one voice). Lee Mingwei listened to these songs with his mother while caring for her after heart surgery in 2012, as she used to sing them to him as a child. Listen on to experience these powerful songs for yourself.

Song: Auf dem Wasser zu singen, D. 774 “In the Middle of the Shimmer of the Reflecting Waves

Singer: Chea Young Kang

Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care is on view at the de Young from February 17 through July 7.

Learn more: https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/lee-mingwei

In Lee Mingwei’s Sonic Blossom (2013–present), an opera singer approaches visitors and invites them to be serenaded with a song selected from Franz Schubert’s lieder (songs written for one voice). Lee Mingwei listened to these songs with his mother while caring for her after heart surgery in 2012, as she used to sing them to him as a child. Listen on to experience these powerful songs for yourself.

Song: An den Mond, D. 193 “To The Moon”

Singer: Becky Lau

Lee Mingwei: Rituals of Care is on view at the de Young from February 17 through July 7.

Learn more: https://www.famsf.org/exhibitions/lee-mingwei

Transcript

Nicknamed the Baroness with the Brush, Lempicka was famed for her jazz-age style that fused the meticulousness of the Renaissance with the hard-edges of Art Deco.

Her figures are often tightly cropped within the four corners of the frame, and I find they have a metallic quality to them — or perhaps a magic magnetism — drawing you in with their sharp gazes and angular cheekbones.

Born in Poland at the end of the 19th century, Lempicka was raised in Russia, but escaped at the outbreak of the revolution. From there, she settled in Paris, the center of the avant-garde, where she thrived. She painted celebrated characters in the highest fashions of the day and embraced sexual liberation.

She epitomized the modern woman and was apparently known to break for only “baths and champagne.” This was, of course, in her modernist apartment-slash-studio, designed by her equally successful sister, Adrienne Górska.

Here we meet her in 1932, through an intimate study of her daughter, Kizette. With a typical ’30s hairdo, Kizette clutches a sketchbook and looks out, slightly ominously, into the distance. She appears on the CUSP of adulthood; although her face is mature, her collar and polka-dot dress give away her youthful age. Lempicka was only in her teens when she had Kizette, and often told people they were sisters. Although their relationship was close, it came with complications.

Hailed for her exuberantly colored portraits, Lempicka is to my mind just as important a draftsperson as she is a painter. And it’s through this exquisite drawing, rendered in black chalk, that we see these skills executed in her distinctive Art Deco aesthetic.

It’s also historically important to note that this is the first work by Lempicka to have ever been actively purchased by a North American museum. All other works in museums were either given or bequeathed. The Legion of Honor is also the first museum in the US to stage a solo exhibition by Lempicka, in 2024.

Image: Étude pour une jeune fille dessinant (study for a Young Girl Drawing) (detail), 1932. Graphite on paper, 12 13/16 x 9 1/8 in. (32.544 x 23.178 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Lisa Sardegna and David Carrillo, Phoebe Cowles and Robert Girard, and Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts Endowment Fund, 2022.10 ©️ 2024 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, NY

Transcript

Ruth Asawa is somewhat of a legend in San Francisco. Her sculptures, often made collaboratively with local communities, populate street corners, parks and schools. But the de Young museum is where you’ll find the largest collection of her sculptures in the world.

Just look at those wired cells cocooning smaller ones, or those radiating out like fireworks frozen in time! Ruth Asawa was an artist who pushed the boundaries of what sculpture could be, but she was also a great educator. Born in 1926, she was subjected to heightened racism after the US government targeted Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Along with her family, she was forcibly removed from their home and sent to a concentration camp.

Against the backdrop of the abhorrent conditions of the camps, those who were incarcerated came together to support each other. Adults used their skills to teach the next generation. And this included professional artists, such as the Disney animator Tom Okamoto, who helped instill a love of art in the young Ruth Asawa. You can see where that love of the line came from — it’s almost like her sculptures are a continuous line, in all shapes and sizes.

Ruth Asawa went on to train at Black Mountain College, a progressive school which emphasized “learning through doing,” making things with your hands, and saw the likes of math, science, art, and dancing all on an equal level.

But it was a trip to Mexico in the late 1940s that really helped Asawa develop her style. Moving to San Francisco in 1949, she set up her studio, and in the ensuing years would loop sculptures at her kitchen table with her six children.

Standing among Ruth Asawa’s artwork here at the de Young is like being in a subterranean universe. I feel enraptured by the sculptures and their shadows. And standing on the threshold between the two makes me feel like I am also part of the installation.

Asawa’s sculptures look like coral, trees, or a macro view of the cells that live inside our bodies. They shift between hard and soft, strong and vulnerable, as they expand and contract, changing their appearance the more you look at them.

This permanent installation at the de Young has been on view since 2005 and was installed under the supervision of Ruth Asawa herself. It’s free to the public, in line with her vision for art for all in this city. Asawa founded the Alvarado School Arts Workshop in 1968, which enabled children of all backgrounds to make art from accessible materials. In 1982, she founded the first public arts school in the city, which was renamed Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in her honor in 2010. And today, Asawa’s teaching philosophies continue to inform the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco’s free-of-charge school and family programs.

Image: Ruth Asawa installation, de Young. Photograph by Henrik Kam ©️ Ruth Asawa Lanier, Inc. / Courtesy David Zwirner / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Transcript

I find this scene of a woman bathing full of intimacy. But also privacy, as if we’ve just stumbled into her space, unsure of whether we should be here or not. The woman’s long, smooth, nude back is turned towards us, while her bottom half is covered in striped cloth — a dress undone, with sleeves dangling by her sides…

Her face is concealed — both to us and in her reflection in the mirror — bringing an air of mystery as we catch her in action, dipping her hands into the cerulean water, about to splash her face, and look up…

This is Mary Cassatt’s Woman Bathing (La Toilette) from 1890–91. To me, Cassatt is most notable for her charming paintings of mothers and children, swept up in a loose, feathery style evocative of her Impressionist contemporaries. Here, however, is an example of one of her aquatints — a printmaking method reminiscent of watercolor-like effects.

Aquatints were especially popular in Japan. A year prior to making this work, Cassatt saw an exhibition of more than 700 Japanese prints in Paris. These became popular thanks to new trade links between Japan and the West in the mid-1800s, which hadn't existed for centuries, owing to Japanese isolationism, which was a response to unfair Western trade practices. The Impressionists were especially influenced by the prints, and would draw from their cropped compositions, flat shapes, and skill with color.

Cassatt herself was a collector of Japanese prints. Looking closely at this work, we can see where she's drawn inspiration from them. The flat-shaped jug in the foreground, the floral-patterned floor that’s tilted and slightly off-perspective, and the block colors — the dusty pink on the dress, turquoise background, and diluted umber on the cupboard.

Mary Cassatt was born in the US in 1844 to a supportive family who took her on trips to France and encouraged her art making. She arrived in Paris in 1866, and exhibited at four of the eight Impressionist exhibitions. These were organized outside of the French Royal Academy and paved the way for a new style of art.

While many male Impressionists painted landscapes or other outdoor subjects, setting up their studios outside (thanks to recent inventions like the paint tube), women were restricted. They often painted indoor scenes featuring other women, capturing the essence of what it was like to be a woman in the 19th century. And it’s this that we see in this work.

Woman Bathing (La Toilette) earned Cassatt widespread acclaim. So much so that in 1976, it set the record for the highest price paid at auction for a print by an American artist, regardless of gender.

Image: Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing (La Toilette) (detail), 1890–91. Color aquatint and drypoint, 14 3/8 x 10 1/2 in. (36.5 x 26.6 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts Endowment Fund and William H. Noble Bequest Fund, 1980.1.8