Sculpture of two horizontal stainless steel pieces balancing on a vertical stainless steel pole attached to a wood base.
Ceramic Pot with Lavendar Design
American, St. Louis Missouri, 1920 - 1992
Ceramic Plate with Horse and Standing Rider
Beatrice Wood was a master ceramicist whose works, so seemingly simple, belie a rigor that few modern artists had achieved prior. She was internationally recognized for the beauty of her forms and the startling quality of her lusters. Luster, the glazed surface, is produced through the careful combination of chemicals, which are brushed onto the clay surfaces, and the firing process during which oxygen is reduced for prescribed periods of time. Wood began making ceramics at the age of 40 upon enrolling in an adult education class. She developed recipes for a myriad of lusters which look similar to ancient antique vessels. This similarity in appearance is understandable given the artists life-long interest in folk crafts and her exploration of universal shapes and forms. Historians attribute Woods daring developments in ceramics to her involvement with the Dada movement in the early 1900s, which cultivated an ironic and playful sensibility that encouraged a disavowal of prescribed ideas about art. Indeed this flamboyant artist was often referred to as the Mama of Dada and counted artists such as Marcel Duchamp as good friends. And like Duchamps porcelain urinal, Fountain, Woods works claimed an irrepressible sense of freedom that looked towards the progressive in art.
Ceramic Plate with Nude Female on a Horse
irridescent glazed rimBeatrice Wood was a master ceramicist whose works, so seemingly simple, belie a rigor that few modern artists had achieved prior. She was internationally recognized for the beauty of her forms and the startling quality of her lusters. Luster, the glazed surface, is produced through the careful combination of chemicals, which are brushed onto the clay surfaces, and the firing process during which oxygen is reduced for prescribed periods of time. Wood began making ceramics at the age of 40 upon enrolling in an adult education class. She developed recipes for a myriad of lusters which look similar to ancient antique vessels. This similarity in appearance is understandable given the artists life-long interest in folk crafts and her exploration of universal shapes and forms. Historians attribute Woods daring developments in ceramics to her involvement with the Dada movement in the early 1900s, which cultivated an ironic and playful sensibility that encouraged a disavowal of prescribed ideas about art. Indeed this flamboyant artist was often referred to as the Mama of Dada and counted artists such as Marcel Duchamp as good friends. And like Duchamps porcelain urinal, Fountain, Woods works claimed an irrepressible sense of freedom that looked towards the progressive in art
Beatrice Wood was a master ceramicist whose works, so seemingly simple, belie a rigor that few modern artists had achieved prior. She was internationally recognized for the beauty of her forms and the startling quality of her lusters. Luster, the glazed surface, is produced through the careful combination of chemicals, which are brushed onto the clay surfaces, and the firing process during which oxygen is reduced for prescribed periods of time. Wood began making ceramics at the age of 40 upon enrolling in an adult education class. She developed recipes for a myriad of lusters which look similar to ancient antique vessels. This similarity in appearance is understandable given the artists life-long interest in folk crafts and her exploration of universal shapes and forms. Historians attribute Woods daring developments in ceramics to her involvement with the Dada movement in the early 1900s, which cultivated an ironic and playful sensibility that encouraged a disavowal of prescribed ideas about art. Indeed this flamboyant artist was often referred to as the Mama of Dada and counted artists such as Marcel Duchamp as good friends. And like Duchamps porcelain urinal, Fountain, Woods works claimed an irrepressible sense of freedom that looked towards the progressive in art
cubed steel box with hinges so box unfolds into multiplanar object
expandable steel (similar to Chain 1970.40)
Kinetic sculpture in two pieces. Aluminum blades are held in place by an upright lead mast-like sculpture.
Gift of Mr. Charles E. Craig, Jr. through UCSB Art Affiliates
Wood carved openwork plaque depicting the Holy Family with the dove and two angels above.
Relief of 2 figures, water, boat and volcano
LANDER, Carl (formerly BUCHER, Carl)
fiberglass coated with blue acrylic lacquer
Project model for moving water-landing sculpture.
Swiss, b. Zurich 1935 - lives Toronto, Canada
Gift of Harriette Von Breton through UCSB Art Affiliates
Michelle, Heidi, Mayo and Indigo
relief in polyurthane foam, vinyl base, iridescent
framed, boxed collage: wood, paper, rubber
Variable edition lithograph with collage, painted map tacks, and gold pins
Lithograph employing elements of collage, painted map tacks, and gold pins to create an image of a woman's head. The woman's face, adorned with pins, is positioned below a celestial eye. Both the woman's face and the eye are arranged against a background of floral motifs. Gold dotted pins are present throughout the work. On reverse, artist signature, date of completion, title, and number of print.
BASCHET, Francois and Bernard
Maquette for Reclining Interior Oval
English, Castleford, Yorkshire 1898 - 1986 Much Hadham, Hertford
Gift of Elena Siff Erenberg and Samuel Erenberg
BAYER, Herbert and KNOWLES, Mel (fabricator)
curvilinear form w/ rectangular center space
Rose fur direkte Demokratie, [Rose for Direct Democracy]
Rose fur direkte Demokratie etched in glassThis multiple derives from Josef Beuys Office for Direct Democracy through Referendum (ODD) installation at Documenta 5 (1972) and is typical of the Fluxus artists call for an engaged conceptual art practice that would break down clear-cut distinctions between established art discourse and the politics of everyday life. Beuys employed two parallel processes during this period, namely the creation of concrete artworks and action-performances on the one hand, and counter-institutional frameworksthe basis for free grass-roots public debate on social and ideological issues, particularly the dismantling of traditional party politicson the other. For Documenta, he transposed the Dseldorf office of ODDdesks, filing cabinets, blackboardsdirectly into the exhibition space, creating an information and educational center designed to critique and expand the institutional framework of the event itself. The office included two multiples: We wont do it without the rose, a photograph depicting Beuys didactically engaging with a Documenta visitor; and Rose for direct democracy, a single red rose in an etched, graduated chemistry beaker. The symbolic meaning of the latter is fairly clear, constructing a dialectical binary between passionate love and revolutionary socialism, art and science, bodily affect and empirical investigation. However, Beuys also saw the rose as symptomatic of an evolutionary progress toward a concrete revolutionary goal outside of conventional party hierarchies. (CHECK FILE FOR FULL TEXT0
part of "German Language Summits" series
Bronze scultpure of a small skull on a stone base.
Gift of Don Trevey to the Ken Trevey Collection of American Realist Prints
corn husks, starched muslin over wire armature; copper and wood base
Gift of Michael Warshaw and Claudia Sole
buttons (29, black) on canvas, black yarn
Black buttons attached to white canvas with black yarn
Images of arrows and a grid system painted on clear Plexiglas.Nancy Dwyer likens her work to pictograms or signs that comment on the ways and means by which the media, especially advertising, infiltrates and seduces the public. She attempts to undermine advertising by using the language and graphic design inherent to it. In Diet Life Force, Dwyer shows brightly colored arrows that zoom toward the center of a mirrored expanse, perfectly framing the viewer. Like a lot of marketing related to diets, the work both distorts ones body image and also seems to proffer a fast, easy solution easy.
Two metal forms with rounded top fused with white plaster.
Composition with Y.B. and R. #33
"wonder" brand english muffin bags, acrylic, fasteners
In 1980, Michael Gonzalez enrolled in the California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) at the age of 26, when his artistic references stemmed from comic books and custom cars. Influenced by visual culture, his works critique the glossy aesthetics of optical art, minimalism, and geometric abstraction through everyday materials, in turn raising timely questions about consumption and discarded material culture. This 1990s series exemplifies that approach: Gonzalez manually deconstructs the Wonder brand’s brightly colored bread packaging and presses it in plexiglass to create provocative compositions. Throughout the Wonder series, the ubiquitous logo is rendered as a pattern. The depth, created not only by layers of plexiglass but also by Gonzalez's hypnotic play with dimension, appears to extend toward infinity. In one work, the Wonder logo plunges toward the bottom of the transparent canvas into a seemingly haphazard mess of colored circles, typography, and white rectangles, with the gallery wall occupying the negative space. In another, Wonder’s branding is reduced to a geometric abstraction, as Gonzalez takes advantage of the blue circles' ready-made transparency.
GONZALEZ, Michael b. United States, 1953
Child's dress dipped in plaster of Paris, interior decorated with colored ink and graphite inscriptions
clay vessel with gold luminescent glaze; cylindrical in shape with 4 legs on bottom;Beatrice Wood was a master ceramicist whose works, so seemingly simple, belie a rigor that few modern artists had achieved prior. She was internationally recognized for the beauty of her forms and the startling quality of her lusters. Luster, the glazed surface, is produced through the careful combination of chemicals, which are brushed onto the clay surfaces, and the firing process during which oxygen is reduced for prescribed periods of time. Wood began making ceramics at the age of 40 upon enrolling in an adult education class. She developed recipes for a myriad of lusters which look similar to ancient antique vessels. This similarity in appearance is understandable given the artists life-long interest in folk crafts and her exploration of universal shapes and forms. Historians attribute Woods daring developments in ceramics to her involvement with the Dada movement in the early 1900s, which cultivated an ironic and playful sensibility that encouraged a disavowal of prescribed ideas about art. Indeed this flamboyant artist was often referred to as the Mama of Dada and counted artists such as Marcel Duchamp as good friends. And like Duchamps porcelain urinal, Fountain, Woods works claimed an irrepressible sense of freedom that looked towards the progressive in art
Graphite, pigment, stamps, paper on wood with cassette tape
Irregular black shape with curved protrusions at top and right. Copper cube and and square plaque mounted at top left.
Caryatid Figure from the ARCO building
Steel light box with Fluorescent lights and movie strip
Brushed steel square with horizontal slit cut into center.Gretchen Benders work mines the tropes and language of mass media which she considered a cannibalistic riverthat absorbs everything. Her work, Total Recall, has a sinister appearance with its cold, metal surface and horizontal slit. Only by stepping closer and peering into the seeming void can viewers make out the illuminated words: Life Force, Moving Violation, Bio Toxin and Code of Silence, among others, all film titles. As she states: We recognize the film industry as a very important part of our culture economically and aesthetically and I think its a whole area that should be provoked more. Film and its invocations are much more powerful instruments economically and politically in our lives than we seem aware of. We say were aware of it, but in a glib way. Benders work explores the relationship between the film industry and the multi-national corporations that own them and in her words, own the worldthe mechanisms that make the world run.
acrylic medium, pigment, carpet pad on card board
recycled fiber carpet pad with numerous smears of acrylic paint and incised areas
Rectangular sheet of metal: recto includes 4 circles on a purple field, verso has six regtangular painted areas; mounted on steel support shaft attached to black base. Sculpture is deisigned to move with a breeze
Ceramic vessel in the shape of an elongated gourd with a very smooth surface.
Gift of Barry A. Kitnick and Jill Alexander Kitnick, Anthony Slayter-Ralph and the artist
Oblique Strategies: One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas
In 1975, theBritish musician, producer, and visual artist, Brian Eno, together with the late English painter Peter Schmidt, addressed the challenge of breaking out of creative roadblocks by writing a series of phrases they dubbed "worthwhile dilemmas." These phrases, which suggest approaches from another direction, became known as Oblique Strategies. Originally published as a deck of cards in an austere format, they became an underground hit and sold out in three revised editions and were part of the Norton Christmas Gift. In 1996, as the Strategies were long out of print, Mr. Norton suggested to Eno a "fourth, yet again revised, and more universal edition." Norton edited the newly revised phrases and commissioned their translation into the six languages collectively spoken (English, Mandarin, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic). Artist Pae White was commissioned to turn the cards' plain black-and-white format into an extravagantly colored format and housed in a Corian container that is known separately as "Bill's Bad Bone." These strategy cards have found widespread use in dozens of countries, at writers' desks, in artists' studios, and even in boardrooms.
British, b. 1948 (lives in the United States)
graphite, colored pencil, acrylic on wood
Two sided mixed media work with a male figure on one side;; second side includes a female figure with starfish form.
Memorial urn in two pieces: (a) vessel (b) lid.
VASA (MIHICH, Vasa Velizar)
Vasa Mihich creates his optically complex sculptures by laminating clear industrially-made acrylic sheets between thinner colored acrylic sheets. Once polished, the geometric forms can appear to be made of solid transparent colors even though they may be up to 90% clear. Comprehending the construction can be difficult, since areas may appear transparent when in fact they are showing a reflection.
wood plank, 10 cement blocks, wire cable.
Print, laquer and polyester resin on aluminum
An avid motorcycle rider, Billy Al Bengston adapted the spray-gun technique used in customizing cycles to his own art work in the 1960s. Working on the unyielding surfaces of Masonite or metal, Bengston employed spray guns and airbrushes to achieve a sleek surface which he then marked with a recognizable yet out-of-context symbols, such as a cross, heart, iris, or, as in this work, sergeant stripes. While familiar, these centrally placed emblems resist a narrative interpretation and instead heighten awareness of the painted surface. Similarly, the dented metal both disrupts the composition and becomes art of it.
Bengston, Billy Al American, b. 1934
Sachzwang III (Administration Complex III)
A construction composed of file drawers arranged in a square formation, held together with wood and steel strapping.
ERICSON, Kate and ZIEGLER, Mel
Four Jars from Winter Cellar Series
etched jars, vegetables: wax beans, corn, green beans and tomato sauce
Gift of Councilman Joel Wachs, Los Angeles
Cylindrical pot with handle, thin spout and lid;Beatrice Wood was a master ceramicist whose works, so seemingly simple, belie a rigor that few modern artists had achieved prior. She was internationally recognized for the beauty of her forms and the startling quality of her lusters. Luster, the glazed surface, is produced through the careful combination of chemicals, which are brushed onto the clay surfaces, and the firing process during which oxygen is reduced for prescribed periods of time. Wood began making ceramics at the age of 40 upon enrolling in an adult education class. She developed recipes for a myriad of lusters which look similar to ancient antique vessels. This similarity in appearance is understandable given the artists life-long interest in folk crafts and her exploration of universal shapes and forms. Historians attribute Woods daring developments in ceramics to her involvement with the Dada movement in the early 1900s, which cultivated an ironic and playful sensibility that encouraged a disavowal of prescribed ideas about art. Indeed this flamboyant artist was often referred to as the Mama of Dada and counted artists such as Marcel Duchamp as good friends. And like Duchamps porcelain urinal, Fountain, Woods works claimed an irrepressible sense of freedom that looked towards the progressive in art
Enlarged thermos and lunchbox crafted in gray polyester resin
b. 1964 Switzerland, lives and works in New York City
Vertical sculpture in the form of an eloganted cube representing a figure.
Oak sculpture; long plank witht wo forms attached; at left is an upright form; at right, triangular form both have surface holes.
Crude sculpture of the torso and head of a female figure in madrone wood.
wood box with top sliding lid; contains 35 individual collages/sheets of paper; one is made in shell dispenser with paper roll
Given in memory of Paul Chadbourne Mills
large bronze sculpture of intertwined figures; surface treatment includes stipled effect; signed at lower right.
b. Allan C. Haozous, Chiricahua Apache, 1914-1994
Orange molded plastic square-like form ontop of a custom-made brass stand.
Floor sculpture with painted colored Corten Steel.
Glazed ceramic plate with orbs outlined in blue
Fluorescent paper on panel with drawing, watercolor and print image located at center left
TANNER, Joan; REESE, Harry; REESE, Sandra
Edition consists of 20 portfolios; individual portfolios consists of a 16 page signature of handmade paper on which the artist's writing has been shaped and relief printed from metal type accompanied by 3 unique drawings. The AD&AM's copy consists of two portfolios, one without the drawings. The porfolio binding unfolds to reveal an original painting on a 10 x 16 inch wooden panel. (a) removable portfolio with images (b) painting loose portfolio without images (d) CD (e) videotape (f) paint brush
Paper Collage with musical notes at in pencil