The Endurance of Bay Area Figurative Art

by Bruce Klein

Rejecting the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, a group of San Francisco Bay Area artists returned to figurative painting during the 1950s and ‘60s—but with a twist. These former non-objective painters still worked in a generally abstract style, but included stylized human figures and other more realistic elements. As Elmer Bischoff said, Abstract Expressionism was “playing itself dry. I can only compare it to the end of a love affair.”

Bischoff, David Park, Richard Diebenkorn and James Weeks formed the core of the first generation Bay Area figurative artists. Their students—Joan Brown, Bruce McGaw, Manuel Neri, Nathan Oliveira, Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner—carried on or transformed their figurative influences. Many of these artists worked or studied at The San Francisco Art Institute, the California College of Arts and Crafts and the University of California, Berkeley. The book Bay Area Figurative Art 1950-65 by art historian Caroline Jones is perhaps the best chronicle of this movement.

Like many others, I came to UC Berkeley to study with Joan Brown and Elmer Bischoff. In the courses I took with him, Bischoff’s emphasis was on keeping your painterly process open, on finding your painting’s subject matter through the act of painting and on letting the painting lead. These ideas continue to characterize my practice.

Once during a portfolio review in his office, he picked out a painting I thought of little value. “That,” he said, “was a gift. Put it up in your studio and look at it until you can see why I think it is beautiful.” I thought he was nuts—a great teacher, maybe, but a little off his rocker. I was interested in painting the figure. He had picked an abstract piece that I hadn’t even brought in for review, but had used to wrap some figure studies. So I put it up. Looking at it every day for months, I finally began to see the piece’s beauty and realize it had a certain kind of presence that I couldn’t make happen, or force to happen. That experience ultimately led me to understand that, for me, my highest aesthetic level was reached not through conscious, meticulous control of media and of the creative process but through simply starting out with a blank canvas and seeing what happens.

In my studio I’ve tacked up this Bischoff quote: “What is most desired in the final outcome is a condition of form which dissolves all tangible facts into intangibles of feeling.”* This serves as both a goal and reminder.

Joan Brown did something similar for me. I wanted to paint but was terrified I had no ability. I brought in a stack of drawings, hoping she’d look at them and say, “Yes, you have ability. You can be an artist.” I was on my hands and knees laying them out on the floor, afraid to get up and turn around because I was sure she was going to say, “You poor slob, you don’t have any ability. Quit wasting my time.”

Instead, sensitive to what was happening, she said, “You don’t have to do this. You don’t ever have to ask anyone to certify you.” I may be misquoting her, but what Joan Brown did was to give me confidence and help me trust my own developing sense of my own abilities.

In teaching adults, children and the developmentally disabled, I have attempted in my own way to pass on these lessons. Many beginning students in some way question whether they have ability, and many students over-control their creative processes, trying to ensure successful outcomes. What Joan Brown and Elmer Bischoff did for me, I try to do for them.

Drawing the figure has been an on-and-off thirty-year preoccupation, initiated by my love of the figure drawings of Bischoff and Diebenkorn. For years, like many others, I did poor imitations of their drawing style. Finally, by limiting my means to charcoal, by treating the figure in isolation, and by focusing on structural concerns, I have found my voice in drawing.

*Charles Strong, The Drawings of Elmer Bischoff: From the Collection of Family and Friends (Belmont CA: Wiegand Gallery College of Notre Dame, 1993)

See more of Bruce Klein’s drawings at brucesartblog.blogspot.com. His figure and landscape paintings are at kleinfineart.com.