Robert Arneson
American, 1930-1992

A Hollow Gesture, 1980
lithograph
40 1/4 x 30 1/8 in.

SBMA, Contemporary Graphics Center and the William Dole Fund
1980.53



Undated photo of Arneson

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Born in Benicia, California in 1930, Robert Arneson was encouraged by his father to draw. He became a proficient draftsman early in life and drew cartoons for a local newspaper as a teenager. After Arneson studied art education at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland he taught in a local high school, where he became interested in ceramics. He went on to receive an MFA from Mills College in 1958. Arneson became head of the ceramics department at the University of California at Davis in 1962 and became a full professor of art in 1973.
Arneson was greatly influenced by the expressionist work of fellow Californian Peter Voulkos, who had studied Pablo Picasso’s works in clay. This influence stimulated Arneson to be more adventurous and to break through previously established sculptural boundaries. Arneson rejected the idea that ceramic artists produce only utilitarian or decorative items. He began creating non-functional clay pieces, contradicting the more formal traditions previously associated with this medium. He created a number of self-portraits using photographs, mirrors, and drawings; each one seemed to reveal a new identity. Although by definition self-referential, the ironic and humorous self-portraits were used as vehicles to present universal concepts and feelings. Arneson was part of the dynamic group of irreverent California Pop artists whose work has come to be known as “Funk Art.”
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The University of California, Davis, has assembled its largest public show of work by faculty members Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Manuel Neri, Wayne Thiebaud and William T. Wiley -- five of the most significant artists ever to live and work in Northern California -- in a traveling exhibit that will premiere on campus and then stop at four other cities in California and Nevada throughout the next two years.

"History was made in the Central Valley in the early '60s when five great artists came together on the same faculty for over a decade and changed the nature and perception of art in California forever," said Nelson Gallery director Renny Pritikin.

All five artists came to teach at UC Davis between 1960 and 1965. Thiebaud, at 86 one of the most popular and respected American painters of the 20th century, continues to teach UC Davis art students. Arneson, who played a critical role in the elevation of ceramics from craft to fine art, remained on the faculty until his death from cancer in 1992 at age 62. Neri, regarded as one of America's most important figurative sculptors and the leading Latino artist of his generation, was a faculty member for 25 years. De Forest, who died in May at age 77, also spent nearly a quarter century on the faculty, amassing a body of work that continues to reflect and shape Northern California culture today. Wiley, who developed perhaps the most original and influential drawing style of his time, spent a decade teaching and creating art on the Davis campus. The three surviving artists continue to make strong work well into their 60s, 70s and beyond.

The five Davis artists are sometimes identified with "California funk," characterized by bawdy irreverence, iconoclasm and self-deprecating humor.

"This was an era when many intellectuals wanted to step back from high-minded, idealist projects and metaphorically bring it all back home again -- to become grounded again after the upheavals of the 1960s, to take possession of the country after the derangements of American engagement in Vietnam and Civil Rights," says UC Davis art historian Simon Sadler.

"The UC Davis campus was originally an offshoot of the Bay Area art world but soon became a center of its own, one that in many ways eclipsed the Bay Area scene and invigorated and shaped the entire region," she wrote. "Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the Davis/Bay Area artists at this time was the development of an alternative to New York, a regional art that spoke to and for Northern California and replaced the pretensions of the East Coast art world with an earthy, honest and vital local West Coast authenticity.

"Whether it is Neri's serious and raw explorations of human existence, Wiley's mystical contemplations, Arneson's investigation of his identity, Thiebaud's celebration of the everyday, or De Forest's happy fantasies, this is not a highly intellectual art removed from life; it is engaged with life."

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