On view
Traditional versus cutting-edge, high-brow versus low-brow. A new generation of Mexican and Mexican-American artists is fascinated by these potentially contradictory concepts. The artists whose works are featured in this exhibition draw inspiration from Mexico’s deep well of visual culture.
Frank Lobdell conjures dreamlike landscapes of mystery and longing. His images—vibrantly colored and fantastical—are simultaneously mechanical, yet anthropomorphic. Though best known for his intense, brooding paintings and personal symbology, Lobdell has in recent yearsgiven color primary importance in his work. Frank Lobdell: Wonderland will examine the evolution of the artist’s work and the ways in which he organizes his forms and figures in space.
This exhibition features a selection from the museum’s permanent collection of Birk’s series of lithographs. Each meticulously drawn image incorporates a descriptive caption written in contemporary American vernacular. Birk transformed a centuries-old classic into an imaginary narrative with political relevance for today’s audiences.
Bawdy irreverence, iconoclasm, parody, and puns are hallmarks of the work spawned by the art department at the University of California, Davis, in the 1960s and 1970s. In keeping with the counterculture of the time, the tone of this humor was often aggressive and transgressive. Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, Peter VandenBerge, William T. Wiley, and others took new artistic license with the Bay Area’s figurative traditions. They jettisoned what they viewed as the pretension of the East Coast art world and adopted an earthy approach wholly authentic to the West Coast. Their laid-back, flippant attitudes reflected the shifting values of the time and often belied deeper social messages.
Just as weather is made up of basic elements such as wind, cloud, rain, snow, fog and heat, works of art consist of line, shape, color, texture, and space. Possibilities are endless when artists use these formal elements, a wide variety of art materials, and their imaginations. Feeling brave? We invite you to look, play, draw, and build in the family gallery.