Beyond the Paint

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I can’t help but be overwhelmed by the energy and dynamism of this painting. Made up of thick impasto, with layers upon layers of reds, yellows, greens, and blues, blazing across the canvas, this work is an explosion of paint. Filled with images that morph in and out of abstraction — like the two red panthers in the foreground — it’s almost as though we are watching a scene play out that can’t quite be distilled. It’s full of motion; it layers both paint and stories.

Mary Lovelace O’Neal is a beloved Bay Area artist who taught at Berkeley for many years. Born in 1942 in Jackson, Mississippi, she was the daughter of a music director at the University of Arkansas and Tougaloo College, something that connects to the content of this painting. Because “I live in a black marble palace with black panthers and white doves” is a line from the opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, sung by King Balthazar, representing Africa. This was a production which her father staged every year and that Lovelace O’Neal starred in.

Painted in 1990, the artwork was also made in reaction to a trip she took to Morocco, a place she has described as “the biblical presence of North Africa.” Looking at it now, you get a sense of the heat and atmosphere of a place that clearly had such an effect on her.

A loaded and politically charged symbol, the panthers speeding through the canvas could allude to the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, founded nearby in Oakland, California.

I love reading this work like an altarpiece, in three sections, with the lighter yellow panel in the center differentiating itself from the others. Architectural in style, to me it feels like we’re walking into the Black Marble Palace.

Image: Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Driskell’s Red Dogs, aka I Live in a Black Marble Palace with Black Panthers and White Doves #8 (detail), ca. 1990. Mixed media on canvas, 81 x 138 in. (205.74 x 350.521 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Major Accessions, 2022.35. Photograph of installation at the de Young museum, 2023

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The year is 1791. France is in the throes of the Revolution, and the future of the country is in turmoil. This painting is of a mythological story, but it speaks to the political moment much more than we might at first think. Let’s take a closer look.

On the far right we have Psyche, in a white dress, embracing her mother for the very last time. Their emotions are illustrated by both the stormy sky behind and the crystal-like tears that fall from their eyes. Also in a state of suffering is Psyche’s father, dressed in red on the far left, with his head buried in his hand, while her sisters comfort each other. The figure praying is the oracle of Delphi.

Here's Emily Beeny, Chief Curator of the Legion of Honor and Barbara Wolf Curator in Charge of European Art, to explain the story.

The story of Cupid and Psyche begins as a tragedy and ends as a comedy. Psyche is the daughter of a king and her father receives a prophecy from the Delphic oracle saying that his daughter will marry a creature of immeasurable destructive power. So in order to save the kingdom from the predations of her anticipated bridegroom, Psyche’s family decides to abandon her on a rock overlooking the sea. And so the moment depicted in Benoist’s painting is that moment of parting, when Psyche’s parents are about to leave her behind to be claimed by her monstrous bridegroom.

Of course, the creature of immeasurable destructive power invoked by the sibyl, was actually Cupid, god of love, who ends up as the spouse of Psyche and the happy ending of the story. And it is that later portion of the story that’s usually represented by artists in the period — the love story bit with the two lovely nudes as opposed to this turbulent, tragic moment of, sort of, wrenching family drama that Benoist has selected.

What makes Benoist’s version interesting — and different to most — is that Cupid is not present, and we see the story from Psyche’s perspective. Benoist makes us feel the agony Psyche experienced leaving her family, and we empathize with the sacrifice she has to make.

Benoist was 23 years old when she made and exhibited this painting in 1791. That year marked the first time the biannual Salon in Paris was open to those who weren’t members of the Royal Academy. And this opened the door for more women to submit and exhibit their work.

Image: Marie-Guillemine Benoist, Psyche Bidding Her Family Farewell (detail), 1791. Oil on canvas, 43 3/4 x 57 1/8 in. (111 x 145 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn; Phoebe Cowles and Robert Girard; Margaret and William R. Hearst III; Diane B. Wilsey; Barbara A. Wolfe; The Jay and Clara McEvoy Trust; The Michael Taylor Trust; The Margaret Oakes Endowment Income Fund; The Harris Family; Ariane and Lionel Sauvage; and an anonymous donor, 2022.2

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“It’s not the medium that counts. It is what you see in it and what you do with it,” said Louise Nevelson. She was one of the most inventive sculptors working in the mid-20th century, and is hailed for her monochromatic, architectural wall sculptures, amassed from recycled objects and painted black, gold, or white.

Sky Cathedral's Presence I, made from 1959 to 1962, is one of her more monumental works. Let's take a look.

While at first you might see painted boxes stacked on top of each other, get up close and you’ll find much more.

On the right-hand side, we see bits of banisters framed in a box, or a circle that creates harmony against the broken planks of wood underneath it. You question whether you are looking at a fruit basket, a bedside table, or a filing cabinet that held important documents. By showing them as defunct, Nevelson gets you to think about the past lives of these objects, and beyond that, how they were made from wood that was once a tree. Nevelson’s Ukrainian Jewish family worked as woodcutters before emigrating to the US at the turn of the 20th century.

Now try standing back, and look around you. Perhaps there’s a monochromatic painting by Robert Motherwell, or another work of abstracted shapes. Suddenly, to me, these paintings appear different. By looking closely at Nevelson’s sculpture, she gets us to look beyond these abstracted marks and to the historical context in which they were made; the emotion that was bound up in them, and the empty void that artists of the post–World War II era had to fill — to comprehend a broken world that was in need of rebuilding.

Let’s think about the title: Sky Cathedral. When Nevelson was making this work, the city of New York was being built up around her with skyscrapers that soared upwards towards the clouds. This work gives the feeling of infinite building blocks, but the idea that it’s a cathedral also makes me think about what it could represent: respite and reprieve in a time of devastation and darkness.

By amassing her work from scraps found on the street, Nevelson shows us how we can physically reformulate detritus and turn it into something new. A reminder of the possibilities of making new dialogues, forming new communities, and finding beauty in something that has been thrown away.

Image: Louise Nevelson, Sky Cathedral's Presence I (detail), 1959–1962. Painted wood and found objects, 107 x 120 1/8 x 21 1/2 in. (271.8 x 305.1 x 54.6 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Foundation purchase, Phyllis C. Watts Fund for Major Accessions, 2017.50 ©️ Estate of Louise Nevelson / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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This is a double-sided drawing by the great Surrealist Leonor Fini. It is a study for a costume design for two characters in the ballet Le Rêve de Léonor, translating to “the dream of Leonor.”

The ballet premiered at London's Royal Opera House in 1949. It was inspired by a dream Fini had and was a highly imaginative production.

Set to music by Benjamin Britten, with choreography by Sir Frederick Ashton — who was known for Cinderella and Fini’s favorite, the Tales of Beatrix Potter — the ballet follows the story of a young bald girl who chases a beautiful blond wig.

Set in a nocturnal landscape, with monsters and dragons, the story goes that the bald girl chasing the wig was captured by “voluptuous and mocking figures covered with long hair.” I wonder if this could be the character on the left…

Sent by a pomegranate to the Underworld, where she is tempted by gluttony in the form of King Nougat and his whipped creams, the girl dreams she has become a white owl and plays with beautiful feathered beings. Then dawn arrives and she awakes…

Leonor Fini had a penchant for the fantastical. Born in Argentina in 1907, as a child she fled to Italy with her mother to escape her domineering Catholic father. After suffering from conjunctivitis, she had her eyes bandaged for months. According to her, this let her look deep inside her imagination.

Exposed to books and Renaissance art, she taught herself to paint, and landed in Paris in the 1920s, where she mixed with the Surrealists. She has been described by art historian Whitney Chadwick as “tall and striking, with jet-black hair and piercing eyes … possessing a strange combination of feline grace.” Qualities, which I think, are evident in these characters.

The purpose for this study is one of function: to show the dancers how they can embody the personality of their characters. On the front side, we see figures dancing en pointe, and on the reverse we see the story play out: the bald girl chasing that beautiful blond wig…

Dance and theater is steeped in the history of the Legion of Honor. When the museum was established in 1924, cofounder Alma Spreckles — a huge fan of music and ballet — began a collection focusing on drawings of costumes and set designs, which the museum continues to pursue. This history is something to keep in mind when looking around the museum.

Functional and full of imagination, for me, this drawing captures the spirit of Fini, an artist who spanned artforms, defied genres, and was constantly pushing the boundaries of art — translating the worlds that exist deep in our head!

Image: Leonor Fini, Costume designs for the ballet “Le Rêve de Léonor” (recto) (detail), 1949. Gouache and pen and ink on green paper (recto); Gouache and pen and ink and graphite on paper, 12 1/4 x 9 1/4 in. (31.115 x 23.495 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts Fund and Prints and Drawings Fund, 2023.45a ©️ 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

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Helen Frankenthaler once described the act of painting as having “the landscape in my arms as I painted it. I like to think this is what we see in Crusades, a giant orange abyss that immerses you from the top to the bottom. Oranges are interspersed with greens, and the reds subtly and silently sail throughout the canvas.

Frankenthaler gives us an education in looking. She tests our vision and the shapes and forms that we might be witnessing. As I stand in front of this work, I ask myself: Am I looking at something from afar . . . or at the minutiae of something up close . . . and, from what angle?

I like to look at this painting as though I have my back to the floor, looking up to the sky on a blazing hot day in California. My eyes sore from aftervision — when you’ve been looking at sunlight for too long and everything is tainted with that glowing orange color. That red mark on the lower right-hand side is just about visible, as if subbing in for a plane cruising through the sky, leaving behind a glimmer of its contrails.

Or, flip it, and it’s as if I am on that plane, looking down onto a desert flooded with dry arid colors. It’s known that she made this work after a visit to Arizona.

Helen Frankenthaler was born in 1928 and raised in New York City. She was taught by the great Mexican muralist Rufino Tamayo and, in the early 1950s, joined the Abstract Expressionists in Downtown Manhattan. It’s a style known for both heavy, action-like brushstrokes and calming fields of color, and Frankenthaler carved out her own language. She called this her “soak-stain” technique. She removed the canvas from the easel and placed it on the floor, thinned down oil paint, and poured and brushed it onto raw canvas, creating surfaces flooded with spontaneous, multilayered shapes and forms.

As Frankenthaler stated, “What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it’s pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is — did I make a beautiful picture?” Frakenthaler’s works are an invitation to see what we want in them, immerse ourselves in color, and feel transported to wherever they might take us.

Image: Helen Frankenthaler, Crusades (detail), 1976. Acrylic on canvas, Object: 108 1/4 x 60 1/16 in. (275 x 152.6 cm); Frame: 109 1/4 x 61 3/4 x 2 in. (277.5 x 156.8 x 5.1 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purhcase, Bequest of Susan Euphrat, 2014.55 ©️ Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Elizabeth Catlett was a trailblazer. Born in Washington, DC, in 1915, she spent her childhood hearing stories of enslavement and resistance told to her by her grandmother. Fueled by her history and heritage, Catlett dedicated seven decades to a career that saw her sculpt, draw, and print dignified and uplifting portraits of African American people. The sculpture Stepping Out from the year 2000 is one such example.

Let’s go back to Catlett’s beginnings. A student of Howard University, a historically Black research university in Washington, DC, in the 1930s, Catlett was taught by Lois Mailou Jones, a key painter and figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Later, she would study with the American Realist Grant Wood, and it was he who encouraged her to make art about what she knew best: her own story.

Catlett made prints of sharecroppers, mother and child sculptures, and drawings of men and women to inspire people at a time of political and social unrest. Through her art, she advocated for social change with key political messaging.

She based herself in the US, but due to growing suspicions of Communist leanings, in the 1940s, Catlett relocated to Mexico City. She joined the radical printmaking collective the Taller de Gráfica Popular and remained in Mexico for the rest of her life.

Stepping Out is a near life-size sculpture of a woman and was completed towards the end of her career. Positioned with one foot forward, as if moving — or perhaps “stepping out” — into the future, she wears a formfitting dress and low heeled shoes on her feet, as if to show and own her femininity.

When I first saw this work at the de Young, I looked around me at the other works displayed here. In the modern and contemporary art gallery, we see paintings of workers, stories exploring American Realism and urbanization, and the tensions between city and rural life. Many of these artists in the space grew up at a similar time to Catlett, but I love how the curators made Stepping Out the room’s focal point — as if punctuating it with the voice and image of a woman going about her day with poise and elegance.

So many of our museums are populated with sculptures of Grecian-style women — such as the nude or seminude Aphrodite, goddess of love and sex. But here, Catlett shows us a new icon: the everyday woman, an icon for a more hopeful, and more real, liberated world.

Just as Catlett wrote of her art: “It must answer a question, or wake somebody up, or give a shove in the right direction — our liberation.”

Image: Elizabeth Catlett, Stepping Out, 2000. Laminated mahogany, 64 1/2 x 21 x 17 1/2 in. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, The Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. Art Fund, Inc., Beta Upsilon Boulé - Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, The Links, Incorporated - San Francisco Chapter, Fine Arts Museums Tribute Funds, Ms. Del M. Anderson and Mr. John Handy, Mrs. Marguerite Archer, Rena Merritt Bancroft, PhD; Ms. Jo-Ann Beverly, Rev. “J” Edgar Boyd, Mrs. Mary Pat Cress, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Geist, Maxwell C. and Frankie Jacobs Gillette, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Johnson, Jr.; Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Lathan, Mr. and Mrs. Terry E. Perucca and Dr. Alma Ribbs, 1999.199 ©️ Catlett Mora Family Trust / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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This giant 3-meter-high tapestry of a man in a flamboyant suit combines African American quilting traditions with contemporary designer labels. His gaze meets ours with poise and nobility.

Bisa Butler’s work starts with an image. Earlier on in her career, it was portraits of people she knew, but recently it’s been images of Black sitters she found in the National Archives. She’s drawn to those who dressed up for staged portraits, women with exuberant dresses or men with sharp suits. But, when she looked at how they’d been described — billed with labels such as “washerwoman,” as opposed to their name or other roles in life — she wanted to repurpose their images with a whole range of personalities.

Through her work, Butler honors and reconfigures the people in these pictures. She elevates them through dazzling colors in giant textile works that give them new life. In All Power To The People, we meet a local man who lived in the Bay Area in the 1960s and 70s. He was photographed by Leon Borensztein — an instructor from the San Francisco Art Institute known for taking pictures of people in the community.

Let’s now think about the multiple layers of lenses. An image taken through the lens of Borensztein, re-interpreted and responded to by Butler, who imagines the character through vivid textiles, beads, and more. She now invites us to add our interpretation, and for this person to enter our lives. What’s so powerful about Butler’s work is that even if we don’t have the name of this sitter, she keeps their image alive; as if to say, this person matters.

Let’s take a closer look at the details: the dignified gaze; the colors that make up his face in a painterly effect, an afro of glistening stitched beads. My eye is then drawn to his grip. Firm hands show him as in control of his image. And although the background doesn’t situate him in any specific place or time, I love how it vibrates and pulsates, keeping his image in motion.

To my mind, Butler’s works are just as much a portrait as they are a study in fiber, a medium that the artist has said everyone shares and understands. Think about what you’re wearing right now; how does that piece of clothing sit and feel on your body? Sewing has been in Butler’s DNA forever – and she comes from a lineage of women who made their own clothes.

This work came into the de Young museum collection in an unusual way. When Laura Camerlengo, curator in charge of costume and textile arts, expressed her desire to acquire the textile for the Museums’ collection, dozens of (mainly) women and Bay Area artists stepped forward to help. These benefactors included members of the Textile Arts Council, the support group of the Museums’ textile arts department. I love that it is of a figure from the San Francisco community, funded by the San Francisco community.

Image: Bisa Butler, All Power To The People (after Man with Afro, San Francisco, California, by Leon A. Borensztein) (detail), 2023. Printed cotton, printed synthetic, synthetic lamé, cotton velvet, synthetic net, vinyl; quilted and appliquéd, 114 x 67 in. (289.561 x 170.18 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Textile Art Trust Fund and donations from Bettina S. Bryant, Joyce Dostale, and other textile arts supporters

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This sculpture may be smaller than most of the statues and portrait busts in the Legion of Honor’s galleries, but to me, it’s just as powerful.

This sculpture was made by Claudel in 1899, at the cusp of a new century. Its title translates to “dreaming by the fireside.” And it’s an introspective work, what Claudel called “sketches from nature” of a woman resting by a fire, engaged in an intimate — almost dreamlike — act, free from the burdens of the outside world, and on her own terms.

Claudel was often inspired by what she called the “small incidents of life.” She was known to walk through the streets and promenades of Paris, catching moments that would spark endless ideas for future compositions.

She was born in 1864 and was one of the first women to complete her training at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. Claudel, famously, worked as a studio assistant for Auguste Rodin, and the pair had a passionate love affair. Both used each other as their subjects and muses — immortalizing their love in sensual compositions, intertwined and dancing, but also in subjects that reflected their complicated relationship, from loss to abandonment.

Despite her influence on him, critics continued to position her as his follower — and, to a degree, they still do to this day, with his name towering over hers. Her frustration at this injustice led to her distancing herself from him, and taking her work in a new direction. But following this departure, Rodin and his community largely cut her off, cementing her outcast status in a tight-knit art world.

The piece you're looking at now was made on both practical and commercial grounds and reflects Claudel's financial struggles. Like many of her pieces, this work was reproduced numerous times, in this case, 65. Due to its small scale, it could double as a nightlight. Looking closely, you can see the thinness of the marble — when lit from behind, the logs illuminate.

Only a matter of years later, in 1913, Claudel entered an asylum, where she remained until her death in 1943. Although her brother staged a posthumous exhibition of her work eight years after her death, it was derided and dismissed. Her work was not taken seriously again until after the feminist era of the 1970s, and much of it is only coming to light now.

Image: Camille Claudel, Rêve au coin du feu (Dreaming by the Fireside), 1899. Marble, 8 3/4 x 12 1/2 x 9 3/4 in. (22.2 x 31.8 x 24.8 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Museum purchase, Gift of Marie-Joséphe de Touzalin Dunaway, 2018.88

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Hello everyone and welcome to Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Without Men. My name is Katy Hessel. I am an art historian from London, and I’ve made it my mission in life to celebrate the work of women artists.

You may know me from my Instagram and podcast called The Great Women Artists, or my book: The Story of Art Without Men. Now, I want to tackle the gender imbalance in our museums by highlighting some of the best works by women and gender non-conforming artists in permanent collections worldwide.

This is an audio guide featuring collection works at the Legion of Honor and de Young museums. Today, we’ll explore expansive abstract landscapes, immersive sculptural worlds, costume drawings, textiles, art that fights for political and social justice, and a whole lot more. Let’s get going!

ABRAM JACKSON: Una arqueología del silencio. Kehinde Wiley dio este nombre a esta escultura monumental y a la propia exposición. Hay mucho que reflexionar aquí. Encuentre un espacio cercano donde pueda estar cómodo por unos minutos, mientras escuchamos al artista y a Hodari Davis:

KEHINDE WILEY: La cuestión es utilizar el lenguaje de lo monumental para decir que estamos en una crisis profunda. Usted, espectador, tiene que llegar a un acuerdo en cuanto a cómo percibimos el cuerpo de la persona negra. Aquí, el cuerpo está desprovisto de vida; sin embargo, el caballo sigue encabritado, aún moviéndose.

HODARI DAVIS: Es casi como ¿con quién se identifica? ¿Es usted ese caballo del Imperio que hemos visto tantas veces marchando sobre tantas ciudades por todo el mundo? ¿O es usted el cuerpo sobre el lomo de este caballo? Muchos de nosotros hemos sido educados para jurar lealtad a ese caballo, para estar orgullosos de los logros de ese caballo y a no ver ese cuerpo que está sobre el lomo del caballo, a no verlo en realidad.

ABRAM JACKSON: Las estatuas de los generales de la Guerra Civil a caballo en Richmond, Virginia, fueron removidas tras las protestas por el asesinato de George Floyd en 2020. Pero la experiencia de Wiley con ellas, unos cuantos años atrás, le hicieron pensar a fondo acerca de las obras de arte que pueden encerrar tanto poder.

KEHINDE WILEY: Por lo general, fueron producidas en las décadas de los 20 y los 30, como una forma de aterrorizar a la población negra del sur. Yo quería recrear ese lenguaje, quería inhalarlo y exhalar algo que fuera diferente.

Arqueología es el acto de mover el pasado hacia el presente. Y pienso que mucho de lo que pasó tras el brutal asesinato de George Floyd tiene que ver con nuestro reconocimiento de su humanidad y la humanidad de tantos quienes nos parecemos a él, generaciones de gente que han sufrido la esclavitud de la persona como propiedad y la presencia del Imperio.

¿Se trata de destrucción? No. Se trata, absolutamente, de la capacidad humana de sanar y reconstruir. Se trata de la resiliencia que ha sido nuestra salvación por generaciones. Mi trabajo se trata de la creación de estrategias para brillar, estrategias para extraer historias terribles y crear nuevos campos de providencia.

HODARI DAVIS: Así que, ¿qué sucede cuando la gente confronta esto? Sé que el arte tiene la capacidad de hacer que las conversaciones difíciles se conviertan en muy fáciles y las conversaciones fáciles en muy difíciles. Eso es arte, ¿cierto? Con el simple hecho de presentarlo al mundo cambia nuestra opinión, cambia la manera en la que pensamos, cambia el tipo de conversaciones que hubiéramos tenido o no si no nos hubieran provocado tanto. Ese es el poder que tiene el arte.

ABRAM JACKSON: Esta es la última sala de la exposición y el final de la audioguía. Pero de ninguna manera es el fin de la conversación.

Tenemos varios recursos adicionales para ayudarle a que pueda dar sentido a esta poderosa exposición; entre ellos, un espacio para la reflexión crítica en el salón de murales Piazzoni Murals Room. Está en el primer piso, bajando las escaleras, justo afuera de Wilsey Court. También tenemos un cortometraje sobre la trayectoria de Kehinde Wiley y su proceso artístico, al cual puede accederse en la página web de la exposición.

Deseamos agradecer a todas las personas entrevistadas: a la reverenda Wanda Johnson, de Oscar Grant Foundation; Hodari Davis, de Entretenimiento Educativo para la Equidad; la curadora Claudia Schmuckli; y, por supuesto, al propio artista.

La audioguía está respaldada por Google.org, lo que permite que todos los visitantes accedan a ella de manera gratuita.

El recorrido en audio estuvo narrado por mí, Abram Jackson. Fue escrito y producido por Frances Homan Jue. El diseño de sonido estuvo a cargo de Dennis Hysom. Gracias por escuchar.