Back to the Real World

Tonight is our last night in Sacramento. I am facing the return to the Bay Area with mixed emotions, as I am always glad to be back by the bay, but there is something good about being here, too. It has been a long time since I have stayed a whole week here, and I am always amazed by how easy it is to return to a regular routine while here.

However, work is in the Bay Area, our home is there, at this point most of our close friends are there, so off we go.

On our expedition to William Land Park, the big park on the South side of town, I was reminded of the mixture of stark trees, their leaves shed for the winter, and the crystal clear blue skies. Looking up at the tangle of trees in a place that I know as well as any reminded me of my early inspirations towards drawing and later to painting.

My elementary school did not have extensive grounds so we had PE as well as many a science and art expedition to this park, which is right across the street from the school. Mr. Marcroft, the science and art teacher would give us our lessons in perspective indoors and then take us to the park to work from real life. Those webs of branches crisply defined against the sky were always a source of wonderment and excitement. When I saw Mondrian's work that led to his pure abstraction I always think of drawing those trees.

However, when I am not in Sacramento and I think of the light typical of the area I do not think of winter, rather late summer, when the shadows are long, cool, and inviting. Although Wayne Thibaud credits Richard Diebenkorn with the idea of using French ultramarine for shadow, I cannot help but think that Thibaud was really reflecting a bit of the hot, Central Valley summer where the shadows really do seem purple, in contrast to the intense heat and uncompromising light around them.

There is also something of the dusty golds and greens of the French symbolist painters to be found in late summer in Sacramento. It is probably for this reason, in addition to always being taught the supremacy of drawing over painting, that I always gravitate to the cloissonisme of Van Gogh and Gaugin.

Of course this sort of heavy outlining is contrary to the notion of pure painting.

"It is a pity that Vincent Van Gogh never learned how to paint," said Wayne Thiebaud at a lecture a few years back, "but boy he could draw with a paintbrush."

Thiebaud, of all the painters I can think of, is the best at dancing on the line between drawing and painting. His paint handling is magnificent, but often his forms are distinctly outlined in contrasting hues, often in rather heavy lines, sometimes even by means of sgraffito, in which the overpainting is scraped or restrained from the contrasting underpainting. While he may build a line of paint over these sections, I am confident that he almost always works this way. Little sections show through the thick-as-frosting outlines to show a methodical building up of color.

Thiebaud is our local hero. He was not born in Sacramento, but lived there most of his life. Now he divides his time between the Bay Area and Sacramento, but the key to understanding his approach to color has to be a good look at hot and dry summers here. Just as Diebenkorn is the master of Bay Area fog, Thiebaud is the artist who best understands this region.

Thiebaud's style is often copied, but rarely with any finesse. He won his individualistic vision through years of hard work, careful observation and stubborn determination. Any attempt to reduce him to formula will inevitably fail, as his paintings are too carefully constructed to be easily imitated.

Thinking of the cultural world's great contributors always leads to two writers: Joan Didion and Richard Rodriguez. Didion went to C.K. McClatchy High School, where I went. Rodriguez went to Christian Brothers (I think). They write from radically different perspectives, yet share an approach to the language that comes, in part, from the anxiety of growing up in Sacramento.

When one has artistic aspirations in this town, one has relatively easy access to the hip, exciting Bay Area, combined with enough belief in culture to not feel a complete oddball. There is not quite enough culture to distract, and the culture that is here is enough out of step with New York/Los Angeles/Bay Area trends that have almost completely destroyed the visual arts. A sheep's head in preservative would not make it in a gallery in Sacramento, at least not yet. A re-examination of techniques and ideas of the impressionists would not be laughed off the street as hopelessly retardaire either.

I think that the only direction open to painters is to retrench in the sanctuary of good technique. Matters of style are no longer relevant to making art that is original. Inventing radical ways of painting is a dead end that only leads to the grotesque. As a firm partisan of Abstract Expressionism, and the various post-AbEx styles that were anchored in good technique, firm composition and intelligent use of color, I am certainly not calling for a "back to beaux arts" movement.

Art never can go back. We must learn from what has happened, and part of that is realizing that "outmoded" forms are always fair game for reinterpretation, so long as this is not based in simple imitation. The pre-Raphaelites had a style that would have looked startlingly out of place in the era they championed. There were not simply attempting to turn back the clock, as many propose doing today.

Meanwhile we have an entrenched caste of idiots at the helm of our arts establishments. It will take a long time for them to realize that the chicanery and two-bit political pranksterism that masked as real innovation are even less viable and interesting today than they were thirty years ago. So the art museums in the big cities will continue for some time to slide into the abyss. Finally they will realize that they have been out of it for a long time, and they will have to turn to the smaller cities that have the resources to encourage young artists, enough cultural insight to realize that art is worth doing, yet enough isolation to ignore the crap that poses as art in the "hipper" places.

I would look to Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, and other towns of that size to produce the next generation of artists. Meanwhile, I will keep pushing on in the Bay Area. There is something to be said for being the malcontent who insists on pushing the envelope of 1956 Berkeley (or 1976 Ocean Park). Someone needs to be there to laugh out loud at the openings. Also, I have a deep love and attachment to the Bay Area. So I will stay for now, although when I see a great craftsman bungalow in the shade of a magnificent elm tree only a short bike ride from the Coffee Works or Corti Brothers or the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament (which promises to look really good after the restoration), I am tempted to throw in the towel on the Bay Area to come back.

Of course being a restaurant reviewer in this town could be a fairly limited gig!