JANUARY 11 - MARCH 03, 2007
New York and San Francisco in the 1950s and 60s
Hackett-Freedman Gallery presents “A Culture in the Making: New York and San Francisco in the 1950s and ’60s,” January 11–March 3, 2007. This survey exhibition examines the art of these two seminal decades in American history by juxtaposing and connecting works by New York and San Francisco artists and the teachers that influenced them. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, January 11, 2007, from 5:30 to 7:30pm.
Jed Perl, the author of the critically acclaimed New Art City, a history of mid-century New York culture, has written an original essay for the catalogue, addressing the experience of postwar artists in both San Francisco and New York and their legacies. Perl’s essay considers the artists and their differing methodologies, with an eye toward “the tapestried heterogeneity” that inspired artists in both cities. “If San Francisco, with its what-the-hell freedom, aspired to New York’s gravitas and boundless egotism,” Perl writes, “what New York saw and envied in San Francisco was an easygoingness, an unruliness—a celebration of the unexpected and inexplicable passions and possibilities of the id.”
This specially curated and important gathering of works by major American artists from both coasts comprises a rare, museum-quality exhibition that includes prime examples of works by artists such as Josef Albers, Elmer Bischoff, Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Frank Lobdell, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Manuel Neri, David Park, Jon Schueler, Wayne Thiebaud, and Andy Warhol. When exhibited together, these works highlight the common themes and visual idioms that arose in tandem on both coasts, as evidenced in the figuration of David Park and Willem de Kooning and in the abstractions of Ad Reinhardt and James Budd Dixon.
The exhibition also explores the subtle and surprising differences, in ambition and approach, that emerge in each city—the work of Bay Area figurative artists, such as David Park and Elmer Bischoff, for example, develops along very different lines than that of Hofmann-trained New York figurative artists Larry Rivers or Robert De Niro, Sr. It is these connections and contrasts—historical, aesthetic, or otherwise—that this exhibition explores. The installation shall suggest connections between painters both well-known and obscure and aims to bring alive the context of the times in which they were created. By highlighting and juxtaposing notable works by artists from both cities, the show recalls the atmosphere of intense exchange and creative energy that created America’s postwar visual culture.
This exhibition is an expanded version of Hackett-Freedman Gallery’s 2006 Art Basel|Miami Beach exhibition, which was on view December 7–10, 2006, in Florida.