The Six Gallery reading (also known as the Gallery Six reading or Six Angels in the Same Performance ) was an important poetry event that took place on Friday, October 7, 1955, at 3119 Fillmore Street in San Francisco , California.
102-642: Conceived by Wally Hedrick , this event was the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation and helped to herald the West Coast literary revolution that continued the San Francisco Renaissance . Peter Forakis created the poster for the reading. At the reading, five talented young poets— Allen Ginsberg , Philip Lamantia , Michael McClure , Gary Snyder , and Philip Whalen —who until then were known mainly within
204-402: A "progression" of figurative painting styles up to 1978. Nor does she acknowledge that "the extraordinary freedom" accorded the artist under such an arrangement is also useless, if standards for individuality multiply with number of individuals. Flexibility and subjectivity on these terms becomes excessive. Indeed, the development Tucker sketches might also be described as a drastic dissolution for
306-520: A bold wall paper in Interior with Sugar Talk , but the focus for this group is mainly upon the picture as a single, central motif, often with a border or frame, as in Linhares' Turkey (1977), Garabedian's Adam and Eve (1977). Works are generally executed in broad, open or loose brushstrokes, bright colours, a staple of textile design. Brown's work from this time often features patterned borders along
408-647: A cartoonish style and dealing particularly with the escalation of the Vietnam War. Hedrick joined the Studio 13 Jazz Band in 1952. The group was founded at the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1940s by two members of the Bay Area figurative painters David Park and Elmer Bischoff. He played the banjo. In 1953, one of the earliest paintings of his career as an artist presented
510-573: A close company of friends and other writers (such as Lionel Trilling and William Carlos Williams ), presented some of their latest works. For McClure, it was his first ever public reading. They were introduced by Kenneth Rexroth , a San Francisco poet of an older generation, who was a kind of literary father-figure for the younger poets and had helped to establish their burgeoning community through personal introductions at his weekly salon. Lamantia read poems by his dead friend John Hoffman . McClure read five poems, including "Point Lobos Animism" and "For
612-565: A crumpled American flag defaced with the word 'Peace'. Thomas E. Crow contrasts this work with Jasper Johns ’s "anonymous stenciling", drawing attention to the way Hedrick mimics the flamboyant calligraphy found in the decoration of hot-rod cars. Crow sees the work in contrast to Johns's reticence, as a protest aimed against the waste of lives in Korea, and at Cold War adventurism in general. Additionally, Peace (1953), "demonstrates an intuitive understanding of 'language as symbol' which predates
714-423: A decisive influence. It is clear from her catalogue essay, that Tucker saw "Bad" Painting as a dilemma for notions of progress and assessment. "The freedom with which these artists mix classical and popular art-historical sources, kitsch and traditional images, archetypal and personal fantasies, constitutes a rejection of the concept of progress per se... It would seem that, without a specific idea of progress toward
816-467: A fake, a fraud running a scam.” "The opening night was the big thing in San Francisco. The opening night and all the artists, mainly artists, went out there and those few people that were into socialites or whatever they were, they went out. And then after that, you could go out there during a weekday and there would be nobody in the gallery. Nobody gave a damn." -- John Saccaro Made from what
918-508: A flattened picture) worn by the woman, is also executed in the casual brushstrokes favoured by textile design. The picture thus shares an insouciant confluence of styles, an amusing "badness". Again though, it is worth noting that Brown's drawing of the figure in this example is traditional in proportion and modelling, contrary to Tucker's prescription. The fourth group brackets the work of Jenney and Chatelain, where vigorously brushed grounds to central, simple motifs are prominent. The derivation
1020-444: A further and final dissolution to this project, an end rather than a beginning. To briefly summarise the development - the use of cartoons and banal illustrations in the work of Pop Art pioneers, such as Andy Warhol (1928–1987) and Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1997), soon prompted painting from other kinds of cartoon and illustration and other qualities of painting with which to highlight such sources. The Hairy Who, for example, broadens
1122-604: A futuristic scene peopled with glowing skeletons, female nudes and a strangely mechanical bird. By iconography rather than technique, the work alludes to science fiction as much as Surrealism and to a genre native to print. It is the clash or confusion to style here that signals a poverty or "badness" to standards. Also of note, the drawing to figures in both Albertson and Carrillo does largely maintain classical proportions and foreshortening, contrary to Tucker's sweeping claims. Hilton's architectural scenes, from Roman and Medieval painting, feature precision and projections akin to
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#17327910667211224-465: A goal, the traditional means of valuing and validating works of art are useless. Bypassing the idea of progress implies an extraordinary freedom to do and to be whatever you want. In part, this is one of the most appealing aspects of "bad" painting - that the ideas of good and bad are flexible and subject to both the immediate and the larger context in which the work is seen." Unfortunately, Tucker does not supply this larger context, in which one might see
1326-467: A kind of pyramid, as sort of a mountain, so I called it American Everest ." The welded beer can sculptures "carried over until -- 1969." During the 1950s, Hedrick's efforts followed two main paths: painting and sculpture. More specifically, between 1952 and 1958, Hedrick begins his kinetic junk assemblages, beer can sculptures and 'Black Painting' series. Not only do Hedrick's junk kinetic beer can sculptures, now all lost or destroyed, possibly rank as
1428-427: A minimal depth – then shadows or volume, then more concrete objects in symmetrical patterns, and with these a measure of figuration. Patterns of repeating pictures, or serial motifs, are eventually a prominent feature of the style. Sources become textiles and other printed matter, such as wallpaper or wrapping paper. With these, P&D converges with Pop Art and following styles, dissipates as a project, or turns "bad" in
1530-594: A more directed mix of technical virtuosity with vulgarity, caricature with idealism , stylisation with realism . Such work is sometimes associated with "bad" painting, for degrading or conflating traditional iconography, but the difference lies in a narrowed scope for these later artists. Fewer "bad" elements are managed within a more obvious structure, are "bad" perhaps in anatomy or drawing, but "good" in volume or tone, colour or composition. Such work remains popular but generally earns no more precise grouping than Post Modern . By contrast, "bad painting" has been invoked by
1632-399: A picture. This is a far broader criterion for figurative painting than Tucker's Bad Painting or related subsequent developments and gains little by an association. Finally, the influence of "Bad" Painting was not immediate or sustained, on American painting or internationally. Albertson, Carrillo, Chatelain, Hilton, Siler and Staley achieved no wider recognition. However, the style anticipated
1734-503: A prevalent "classicizing" style for American painting and against which "Bad" Painting presents a challenge (although not a movement). At best, this explains the selection as a retreat from photographic or "classicizing" standards for figuration to an older style. Tucker identifies a shared theme of iconoclasm, and a preference for parody and antagonism for her selection, but again, these are qualities common to Expressionism and Surrealism, and even some Photo-realism. A further feature noted
1836-417: A rough draft of Howl , he changed his "fucking mind", as he put it. The large and excited audience included a drunken Jack Kerouac , who refused to read his own work but cheered the other poets on, shouting "Yeah! Go! Go!" during their performances. Still, Kerouac was able to recall much of what occurred at the reading, and wrote an account that he included in his novel The Dharma Bums . Also in attendance
1938-467: A seam of rigid iconography and painterly treatment, arrives at a ‘bad’ icon, or an icon treated "badly". All four groups thus trace a steady diffusion to print sources and the means with which painting distinguishes itself from them. The stylistic lineage offered here demonstrates a greater coherence and articulation than Tucker's catalogue essay, and indicates several inaccuracies to her description but essentially confirms her choices. "Bad" Painting remains
2040-580: A significant item of Bay Area art history. During this time, Hedrick was accused of stealing paintings, including a canvas by Clyfford Still , from the San Francisco Art Institute , where he was teaching, then either painting them black or painting his own iconoclastic pictures over them. In December 2008, Christopher Miles, art critic for the LA Weekly, nominated the War Room (exhibited at Mara McCarthy's The Box, March 21 - April 26, ) for Best Show of
2142-419: A strong illustrational style devoted to fine, continuous outline and mainly flat colours, even as it adopted less familiar content. In both cases, the work maintains a cool detachment in manner, as painting, even as its content is much less obviously popular or commonplace. Pop Art is also quick to use art historical references, such as Warhol's Mona Lisa or Lichtenstein's Mondrian and Cézanne illustrations, as
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#17327910667212244-422: A timer so that the piece "suddenly began flashing its lights, honking its horns, and playing its records." One woman who was standing next to the piece when it suddenly turned on found her fur coat tangled in it and then received an electrical shock. "It caused quite a sensation not because of its artistic merit, but because it attacked this lady, which I thought was very nice... I wasn't making it as an art thing. I
2346-430: A useful style with which to survey American figurative painting toward the end of the 1970s. Tucker's sense of an emerging post modern era was in part true, in as much as she detected a pervasive dissolution, but "Bad" Painting did not announce the end of progress, or further development in painting, as she supposed (see quote below). The style itself was too diffuse, too peripheral, geographically and stylistically, to exert
2448-421: A way of driving home the point about painting and print's differences. Subsequent allusion in following styles to famous paintings, inherits some of this irony, although the project steadily dilutes, turns "bad". Pattern and Decoration (P&D) actually derives from Minimalist abstraction, but through progressive expansion to compositional formats of basic symmetries and stripes, soon allows overlapping planes –
2550-507: Is a symptom of a growing diffusion, a weakening distinction for both styles. The work is "bad" for its minor variation, its feeble allusion. The third group brackets works by Brown, Garabedian, Hendon, Linhares, Urquhart and Wegman, where a derivation from P&D is foremost. Here, more decorative, frontal motifs often emphasise fabric supports, in works such as Urquhart's Interior with Sugar Talk (1977) and Hendon's tapestry-like Mallard with Friend (1977). Repeating motifs are incorporated as
2652-740: Is at once funny and moving, and often scandalous in its scorn for the standards of good taste." "Bad," as Tucker's use of scare quotes suggests, is thus a term of approval for eccentric and amusing deviations from accepted styles at the time. Artists included in the exhibition were James Albertson (1944–2015), Joan Brown (1938–1990), Eduardo Carrillo (1937–1997), James Chatelain (b. 1947), Cply (alias William Copley ) (1919–1996), Charles Garabedian (1923–2016), Cham Hendon (1936–2014), Joseph Hilton (b. 1946), Neil Jenney (b. 1945), Judith Linhares (b. 1940), P. Walter Siler (b. 1939), Earl Staley (b. 1938), Shari Urquhart (b. 1938), and William Wegman (b. 1943). On paper, Tucker's criterion for "Bad" Painting
2754-500: Is more wide-ranging. Bad Painting shares none of the shrillness, the social provocation often found in Neo-Expressionism. "Bad" Painting is typically more restrained, in scale and scope, more light-handed in touch, light-hearted in sentiment. Similarly, "Bad" Painting is often associated with New Image Painting, another trend in figurative painting defined by an exhibition later in 1978, curated by Richard Marshall. But there,
2856-455: Is much stricter, and excludes for example, the established Expressionism of a Leon Golub (1922–2004) or Jack Levine (1915–2010), the caricature of a Peter Saul (b. 1934) or Philip Guston (1913–1980), the fantasy of later Honoré Sharrer (1920–2009). Some further condition was obviously at work in her criterion. In the catalogue essay, a context of the preceding fifteen years is sketched, in which Minimalism and Photo-realism represent
2958-442: Is not concerned with surprising bargains for the conventional art collector. On the contrary, it is a catalogue of discarded or rejected tastes. It amounts to "bad" painting, in the more general sense, of poor judgement, technical incompetence or outsider indulgence. Its appearance and impact in 1990 demonstrates a further plurality to figurative styles of painting, an extension to Bad Painting, although not an exhaustive one. Because of
3060-505: Is not so much to Pop Art and print sources, but to Jasper Johns ' (b. 1930) use of stencils and templates, filled with short, broad, impasto strokes. Stencils, like prints, afford multiple instances and establish strict conventions in wide use, acquire a certain authority for it. They are essentially designs, whether of the American flag or a target. John's compliance with them remains rugged but respectful, or highly ambivalent. His work from
3162-420: Is offered here is simply a demonstration of the consistency of her selection, even as her description proves misleading or inadequate. The first group (in no particular order) brackets works that highlight illustrational styles derived from print sources, although more remotely than Pop Art. The works by Albertson, Carrillo, Hilton and Staley favour this. Note: reproductions of examples cited here, can be found on
Six Gallery reading - Misplaced Pages Continue
3264-420: Is rather generous, allowing merely that "the artists whose work will be shown have discarded classical drawing modes in order to present a humorous, often sardonic, intensely personal view of the world". But this alone would simply permit work with Expressionist or Surrealist tendencies, not to say caricature , styles already well established within a canon of good taste. In practice though, Tucker's criterion
3366-434: Is something Tucker's catalogue essay actually celebrates, a point to be returned to presently. The second group brackets the work by Cply and Siler, whom retain the strong outlines of comic-strip or animated cartoon figures, stylised drawing and mostly flat colours. Although, Cply's figures are notably looser in drawing than most comic- strips, while the attention to pattern and a decorative flattening in projection also aligns
3468-568: Is the name given by critic and curator Marcia Tucker to a trend in American figurative painting in the 1970s. Tucker curated an exhibition of the same name at the New Museum of Contemporary Art , New York, featuring the work of fourteen artists mostly unknown in New York at the time. The exhibition ran from January 14 to February 28, 1978. Tucker defined "Bad" Painting as a focused or deliberate disrespect for recent styles of painting, not
3570-400: Is the use of "non-high-art sources", the most prevalent being comics. Yet curiously, Tucker makes no mention of Pop Art , as inspiration or opposition. High and non-high (or low) art cannot be a matter of imagery or iconography, since high-art features as much irreverence and caricature as it does realism and veneration (for example, the work of Goya or Daumier, Lautrec or Arcimboldo). Nor can
3672-437: Is to notice how these preceding styles progressively depart from common or mass print imagery, while spelling out crucial differences between painting and prints – defining painting. In this way, they disclose telling differences in meaning between the two, even when imagery remains much the same. Tucker rightly senses this project travels in tandem with Minimalism, but without quite grasping the consequences. "Bad" Painting signals
3774-598: The Beat Generation when he helped to organize the Six Gallery Reading , and created the first artistic denunciation of American foreign policy in Vietnam. Wally Hedrick was known as an “idea artist” long before the label “conceptual art” entered the art world, and experimented with innovative use of language in art, at times resorting to puns. Wally Hedrick was born in Pasadena, California . He came out of
3876-683: The Korean War , Hedrick was drafted into the United States Army against his will, escorted away by US Army MPs without even having the chance to call his parents. "Wally must have been a problem for them, though, because Wally didn't ever do military things quite the way they intended...you told Wally not to do it, that's what he would do. He was stationed in Korea until 1952. During this time, his paintings and assemblages shifted from neo-cubism to metaphysics to political subjects painted in
3978-655: The Persian Gulf , Hedrick returned to making all-black paintings. On December 17, 2003, Hedrick died of congestive heart failure at his home in Sonoma County at the age of 75. "I can remember in about 1959 or '60, the joke going around the art school in the city was, 'A garage man had hauled away Hedrick's paintings and said, 'I don't know what art is.' We'd all laugh like mad, you know, 'cause most of us weren't sympathetic towards Wally Hedrick's art at that time." -- Terry St. John As early as 1963, John Coplans,
4080-490: The Persian Gulf War , slathering the older black paintings them with new statements in white acrylic paint like, "So damn, whose sane?". After 25 years, The War Room was brought out of storage to be the centerpiece for the 5th Annual San Francisco International Art Fair in 2003, courtesy of Lincart. The work was described as "the most topical thing on view." In 2003, with new American aggression taking place in
4182-410: The 1950s is usually seen as an important precursor, if not initiator, of Pop Art. Jenney's work from the late 1960s, such as Girl and Vase (1969), exchanges stencils for simple outlines, usually of a familiar or topical object. Yet the structure retains some of Johns' ambivalence. The precise outline constrains boldly brushed filling in narrow areas or shapes, while in broader, less defined areas, allows
Six Gallery reading - Misplaced Pages Continue
4284-407: The 1950s, before New York's Jasper Johns did. Soon after, Hedrick -- ever the anti-careerist -- painted many of those flags black to protest the Vietnam War." In the early 1950s, Vesuvio Cafe , a popular Beat hangout, employed Hedrick to sit in the window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals and create improvisational drawings and paintings. Hedrick's figure, therefore, helped ushered in
4386-506: The 1960s and 70s, a little closer. While art historical allusion, humour and fantasy are undoubtedly features of her selection, more precisely, they arise in deliberately citing popular print or publication sources, albeit with increasing distance or restraint. The strand to figurative painting discerned by Tucker surely derives from the styles of Pop Art , Pattern and Decoration , The Hairy Who , and affiliated Chicago groups, and Californian Funk Art . One way of understanding "Bad" Painting
4488-564: The Beat lifestyle which ballooned in the later 1950s; by 1958 tourists to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach Beat scene. Hedrick once confided to his student Jerry Garcia that "he and his friends were the real Beat Generation." At the time, Hedrick was one of the first San Francisco artists in the early 1950s to work almost exclusively with metal. He began welding in 1952, and these efforts are considered
4590-569: The Death of 100 Whales"; Snyder, "A Berry Feast"; and Whalen, "Plus Ca Change". Most famously, it was at this reading that Allen Ginsberg first presented his poem Howl . The poem was then incomplete, with only a draft of the first part read. Hedrick, a painter and veteran of the Korean War , approached Ginsberg in the summer of 1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused. But once he'd written
4692-785: The Korean War, when he was given the task of fixing radios. His paintings of the 1970s were mainly crude black and white renditions of old mail order catalogue illustrations. It was also rumored he was the originator of the tag SKIDS which appeared on road signs in Northern California . He also put that in paintings later . In the 1980s he shifted to large-scale canvases of rough and aggressive imagery, often sexual." From 1988 to his death, Hedrick lived and worked in Bodega Bay , California , with his long-time companion, Catherine Conlin, for whom, WWW (a.k.a) Wiggy With Wings
4794-483: The Museum of Modern Art or even go to see the exhibition, he further distanced himself from the mainstream art world by declaring that artists such as Jackson Pollock , Franz Kline , and Robert Motherwell were too firmly rooted in formal traditions. Instead, Hedrick asserted, “You’ve got to have a deep sense of the human and you have to have a political stance. Painting is not above politics. Anything that has to do with
4896-519: The New Museum of Contemporary Art's website, listed in the external references below. Albertson's mock symbolic or allegorical scenes, such as Memento Mori (1975) Sex, Violence, Religion + The Good Life (1976) and The Triumph of Chastity (1976) all supply humorous content in contrast with earnest titles, in a broad-brushed style, akin to movie posters or magazine illustration of an earlier era. Carrillo's large-scale Los Tropicanas (1974) presents
4998-428: The Six Gallery, when Allen Ginsberg , at Hedrick's invitation, read " Howl " for the first time. The event has become nearly as much a part of the city's mystique as the 1849 Gold Rush or the 1906 earthquake. Hedrick approached Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused, but once he'd written a rough draft of "How", he changed his mind. An account of
5100-445: The Vietnam War. Hedrick took "about 50" of his early canvases and painted them black. Hedrick's Black Paintings culminate in 1967 with "War Room". This series "was an idiosyncratic protest, but a passionate one." War Room is "a group of four eleven-by-eleven foot black canvases, each filling a wall of the room" then arranged "into a square...in the shape of a room...and a door to go in it." The installation has been described as
5202-517: The Year (2008). Also, in December 2008, Walead Beshty, art critic for Artforum Magazine, nominated the War Room (exhibited at Mara McCarthy's The Box, March 21 - April 26) among the most notable Los Angeles exhibitions in 2008. In the early 1970s Hedrick was fired from a teaching post at the San Francisco Art Institute , after circulating a petition protesting America's presence in Vietnam. After
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#17327910667215304-430: The artist Albert Oehlen (b. 1954) for dual exhibitions, contrasting bodies of work dedicated to "bad painting" and "good painting". But Oehlen's concern is really with accommodating figuration and abstraction within the same work, with demonstrating degrees or a spectrum between them. Good and bad here fall between a purity of means – formal or intrinsic properties to painting – and impurity of ends – extrinsic content to
5406-499: The beat poetry capital of the universe, but the visual artists who were part of the same epoch are less celebrated. The three-story building at 2322-24 Fillmore, where Hedrick and Jay DeFeo lived and worked was the unofficial center of the small San Francisco art world in 1955–65. Hedrick met artist Jay DeFeo , a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and they married in 1954. Jay DeFeo's best-known painting, "The Rose",
5508-504: The bottom of the picture; however, examples selected for "Bad" Painting concentrate instead on the centralised motif, flat colours and an oblique projection to the surrounding space. In Woman Wearing a Mask (1972) – one of the standouts to the show – it is presumably the attention given to modish black lace lingerie and high heels, content that recalls advertising, included within a more relaxed composition, that appealed to Tucker. The witty, trompe-l'œil cat mask (a flattened picture within
5610-450: The brushwork greater prominence, so that it undermines content there, creates a decorative or detached ground. Significantly, Jenney described this development as "bad drawing". But Jenney's selection for "Bad" Painting is curious, in that the work was nine years old at the time of the exhibition, and widely recognised. However, Tucker's selection concentrates on examples where the object or drawing style loses some of its familiarity and gives
5712-459: The course of Bay Area art: an elaborate kind of punning. The puns not only became titles...but appeared in the painting itself." Hedrick's mature artistic career began with paintings of popular imagery—American flags, radios, television cabinets and refrigerators—years before the rise of New York Pop Art . John Coplans included Hedrick's use of popular imagery in 1951 in his timeline of the antecedents to Pop Art. Hedrick "began painting flags in
5814-681: The critic, whereby each work must be accorded its own style, each style applied only to one work. Comparison or assessment thus becomes futile. Badness, on these terms, has little to recommend it. Bad Painting is sometimes seen a precursor to the wider movement of Neo-Expressionism that follows in the early 80s, a style with branches in Germany, Italy and France, amongst other nations. But there are important differences. Tucker's selection does not concentrate upon large-scale works, featuring broad, urgent facture, applied to allegorical or metaphorical themes, frequently political or historical. Her selection
5916-445: The difference rest purely upon technique, since paintings may be high or low-art. Yet, comics as a source, along with other commercial illustration cited, surely separates "Bad" Painting from earlier Expressionism and Surrealism, surely picks out a crucial trait across this otherwise disparate group. Tucker's essay cannot quite put her finger on it, but one might tease this out by considering preceding developments in figurative painting in
6018-424: The dismissal Hedrick began a period of self-imposed artistic exile, devoting most of his time to operating a home repair business (appropriately named, "Wally's Fix-It Shop") in the town of San Geronimo, California . This is an example of the way Hedrick "operates outside the busy highway of contemporary art". The small repair business proved moderately successful. Hedrick's repair skills were first recognized during
6120-471: The early 1960s. Hedrick's contributions to art include pioneering artworks in psychedelic light art, mechanical kinetic sculpture, junk/assemblage sculpture, Pop Art, and (California) Funk Art. Later in his life, he was a recognized forerunner in Happenings, Conceptual Art, Bad Painting , Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. Hedrick was also a key figure in the first important public manifestation of
6222-431: The first kinetic-junk assemblages. Hedrick made assemblages and sculptures from beer cans, lights, broken radio and television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines he found in junkyards. "What interests me", he said later, is "to take garbage and make it into art, kind of ironic art." He painted over the surfaces with thick layers of impasto and gesso which incorporated the work into the aesthetic of action painting. He
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#17327910667216324-408: The form of male and female genitalia perpetrating the deed." In 1959, both Hedrick and DeFeo became original members of Bruce Conner 's Rat Bastard Protective Association . Hedrick and DeFeo's apartment lease at 2322 Fillmore was suddenly terminated (due in part to DeFeo's excesses) toward the end of 1965. Hedrick and DeFeo divorced in 1969. The Black Paintings were Hedrick's protest against
6426-438: The future editor of Artforum Magazine (January 1972–January 1977), would confess the "fashionable world of contemporary painting" (i.e. East Coast) unpleasant reaction to the independent, offensive, 35-year-old Hedrick: "there is little doubt that Hedrick is an original, yet the fashionable world of contemporary painting tends to reject Wally Hedrick's work out of hand." Its no surprise, therefore, “the pathos of Hedrick’s situation
6528-566: The hands of fringe practitioners. P&D sources often carry an additional vulgar or kitsch quality with their earnest, sentimental motifs, once these are removed from a print context and scrutinised as painting. Kitsch, in these cases, becomes something like a badge for the extended exploitation of prints and pattern by painting, a sign of the project's exhaustion. With these precedents in mind, Tucker's examples of "Bad" Painting may be divided into roughly four groups. To be clear, Tucker does make this division in either her essay or exhibition. What
6630-612: The importance of being on hand for the opening, gave his plane ticket for the New York museum exhibition and spectacle to friends, rather than participate. It would be 25 years before Hedrick figured prominently again in New York City , during the Whitney Museum of American Art ’s, Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965 exhibition in 1995. Not only did Hedrick not attend the 1959 Sixteen Americans opening at
6732-477: The late 1940s he experimented with light. By 1953 he had created a “light machine” that combined keyboard, glass, speakers, and homemade projectors and colored lights that responded to changes in pitch, register, and volume, which was an early precursor of the psychedelic light shows of the '60s —and years before the light shows of Haight-Ashbury . Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead studied with Wally Hedrick and Elmer Bischoff at San Francisco Art Institute . It
6834-407: The members and a meeting place for poets and literati alike. "The Six" was a focal point for countercultural activity during a crucial transition point—unconventional artists were deep underground—partly because no audience encouraged them to emerge, partly because it was safer there. "The Six" delighted at the chance to defy authority. As the gallery director, Hedrick organized and participated in
6936-433: The military and car culture , first glimpsing the liberating promise of San Francisco bohemia in the late 1940s, then moving to the city permanently after seeing combat in the Korean War (1950–1953). Hedrick visited California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute ) in 1946. During this period, he joined Progressive Art Workers with David Simpson , John Stanley and others. The Progressive Art Workers
7038-468: The more common sense of technical incompetence, poor artistic judgement, or amateur or outsider dabbling. The press release for the exhibition summarized "Bad" Painting as "an ironic title for 'good painting', which is characterized by deformation of the figure, a mixture of art-historical and non-art resources, and fantastic and irreverent content. In its disregard for accurate representation and its rejection of conventional attitudes about art, 'bad' painting
7140-545: The night can be found in Jack Kerouac 's novel The Dharma Bums , where he describes collecting change from each audience member to buy jugs of wine with Hedrick. Hedrick's 'Six Gallery Reading' was the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation and helped to herald the West Coast artistic revolution that became known as the San Francisco Renaissance . In the late 1950s, San Francisco became
7242-447: The piece on at his house during a Christmas celebration for which Wally put on some Miles and Coltrane on and the sculpture went crazy! I also remember his assemblage Xmas Tree Sculpture, that lit up and danced!" Although using beer cans was popularized in 1960 by Jasper Johns , Hedrick began the practice in art many years earlier, during the early 1950s. One of Hedrick's favorite beer can sculptures "was made up of smashed beer cans in
7344-611: The present postmodern use (of language) by twenty years. Hedrick’s pre-pop paintings were included in John Coplan’s historical “Pop Art, USA," the first exhibition to attempt a collective look at the movement in the United States, presented at the Oakland Art Museum during September, 1963. Even after his Pop Art phase, Hedrick continued "his risk-taking forays into regions where, mostly, angels fear to tread". In
7446-486: The priority given to place of purchase in Thrift Store Painting, works are mainly easel-scale and devoted to traditional themes, factual and fictional. There is no place for "bad" Minimalism on a site-specific scale or geometric abstraction, for instance, no works abandoned by recent ambitious art students or failed post modernists. Thrift Store Paintings is devoted to the peripheral, the clumsy and comic, as
7548-411: The project, arriving at more stylised or abstracted cartoon captions and characters, although their inspiration is as much naïve and outsider art as the graphics of Pop Art. However, their wider acceptance with shows between 1966 and -68 surely reflects a momentum created by the success of Pop Art. Funk Art in San Francisco, as in the work of William T. Wiley (1937–2021), similarly continued to mine
7650-406: The rugged treatment a more mannered, arbitrary quality. A Chatelain example such as Untitled (1977) extends this development, so that figures have become more cursory, perhaps Expressionist. Any rationale for the stooping figure on the left of the picture, for example, is now lost and the surrounding ground, granted even greater latitude to impasto brushstroke and colour. Once more, the work exhausts
7752-473: The second-story windows. It houses a store called Silkroute International, whose rugs and pillows spill onto the sidewalk." The Gallery's 3119 address no longer exists, but a podium and plaque commemorating the 50th anniversary of the reading of "Howl" stand on the sidewalk in front of a restaurant at 3115 Fillmore. The black flower boxes are still there, without exuberant geraniums. Ginsberg recalled: "The Six Gallery reading had come about when Wally Hedrick, who
7854-614: The seminal "kinetic junk sculptures...made before Tinguely", but also, Hedrick is one of the first American artists to oppose US intervention in South Vietnam. Some artists at the time considered Hedrick a 'pre-conceptualist': "Wally's mind, I think... is of primary significance in this way. I think he's much more a preconceptualist than perhaps any of the others... the paintings, and the objects that he created are really more expressions of an idea." Indeed, Marcel Duchamp "was one of Wally's greatest gods, always." In 1951, during
7956-405: The seminal visual artists in the 1950s in San Francisco, including Hedrick, shunned the ‘beatnik’ label. None of them liked being called “Beats” and they especially abhorred the label “Beatniks”, a sobriquet of disparagement coined by San Francisco's famed columnist Herb Caen . As Bruce Conner stated: “I don’t know any artist that would call himself a beat artist…If somebody did, you’d consider him
8058-465: The soul also has to do with the stomach. In 1959, again recalling his Asian military experience, Hedrick painted "Anger" (or " Madame Nhu ’s Bar-B-Q"), the first artistic denunciation of American policy in Vietnam . Anger , visually equates an act of forceful sexual penetration with corrupt political manipulation. Explosive rage and indignation are symbolized by an atomic cloud serving double duty as
8160-444: The spontaneous exhibition/poetry reading/performance events that were the precursors of the 'Happenings' of the 1960s. "We didn't think of ourselves as a group. The other groups had a very strong group feeling, and they'd sit around and talk about taking over the world, or at least every art department in the Bay Area." In the wake of the artist collective galleries such as Ubu and Six came galleries run by professionals. "Hedrick
8262-410: The trend is focused upon New York-based artists and a derivation closer to that outlined for Jenney, who was also included. Where "Bad" Painting does find later resonance is with the publication of Thrift Store Paintings by the painter Jim Shaw in 1990. As the title suggests, Shaw's collection is drawn from humble, second-hand sources, rather than an explicit criterion of badness. But the collection
8364-404: The window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals and create improvisational drawings and paintings. Hedrick's figure, therefore, helped usher in the Beat lifestyle which ballooned in the later 1950s; by 1958 tourists to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach Beat scene. Although Hedrick once confided to Garcia that "he and his friends were the real Beat Generation",
8466-420: The work of Roger Brown (1941–1997), a key Chicago Imagist , and add equally stylised figures, much as architectural illustration uses. All four artists extend the derivation from print styles to less obvious means, less compelling features. The work is "bad" in comparison with Pop Art, for pursuing techniques and imagery to trivial or nugatory ends for painting, for blurring or obscuring reference in prints. This
8568-422: The work with P&D. In some examples, ribald subject matter pose something of an extension to the genres, presents a more eccentric extension. Siler's equally casual arrangements, such as Spookie Stove (1976) share affinities with Chicago artists such as Karl Wirsum (1939–2021) and Gladys Nilsson (born 1940), as well as Funk artists, such as the watercolours of Wiley from the late 1960s. The combination itself
8670-481: The young Garcia on to acoustic blues and Jack Kerouac ’s On the Road and all its attendant attitudes. On the Road changed Garcia’s life forever. “Wally taught me that art is not only something you do, but something you are.” As "a genuine beatnik" Hedrick was employed at a 'beatnik' bohemian sitting at the bar at Vesuvio Cafe , a famous hangout in San Francisco's North Beach. Vesuvio Cafe employed Hedrick to sit in
8772-562: Was Lawrence Ferlinghetti , who telegrammed Ginsberg the following day offering to publish his work. Neal Cassady passed around the wine jug and a collection plate. The Six Gallery, newly re-named by Hedrick, Deborah Remington , John Ryan the poet, Jack Spicer the poet, Hayward King, and David Simpson , was previously known as the King Ubu Gallery – a reference to Ubu Roi – which was founded by artist Jess Collins and poet Robert Duncan in 1952. Duncan's play, Faust Foutu ,
8874-399: Was "sort of the pinnacle of the kinetic junk sculptures because I'd never attempted anything so complicated", built out of "two radios, two phonographs, flashing lights, electric fans, saw motor--all controlled by timers, hooked so [they] would cycle all these things." One of the record players played "I Hate to See Christmas Come Around". At the opening, which Hedrick refused to attend, he set
8976-585: Was Tucker's Bad Painting. The difference is that Shaw allows a wider array of figurative styles, from the Naïve to Surreal or Expressionist, the Photo-realistic to Pop or decorative. But again, importantly, works are never wholly of one style; instead, hover uncomfortably or "badly" between conflicting categories, summoning too many standards, too weakly. Thrift Store Paintings is rarely linked to Bad Painting in published criticism, however. Shaw's publication
9078-433: Was a painter and one of the major people there, asked Rexroth if he knew any poets that would put on a reading. 37°47′54″N 122°26′09″W / 37.79828°N 122.43593°W / 37.79828; -122.43593 Wally Hedrick Wally Bill Hedrick (1928 – December 17, 2003) was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture, gallerist, and educator who came to prominence in
9180-466: Was a social club which also functioned as a co-operative through which the group the members were able to exhibit their works. At this time, too, Vesuvio Cafe in San Francisco's North Beach district hired Hedrick as an action painter to work (i.e. 'make paintings') while a jazz combo performed: "That was his job. He made these paintings and while he would paint the musicians would play along with him. He would go like this and they would go doodoo doop. It
9282-570: Was instrumental in transforming the cheery satire of Pop Art into the more outrageous bite of funk art." The birth of 'California Funk Art' can be found at the Six Gallery. Robert Arneson , the so-called "Father of the Ceramic Funk Art movement". considered Hedrick, "The Godfather of Funk Art". Hedrick received his B.F.A. in Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1955. "The Six Gallery reading " took place on October 7, 1955, at
9384-473: Was known as the King Ubu Gallery ("an all poet thing"), in 1954, Hedrick co-founded The Six Gallery in San Francisco , California with David Simpson , Hayward Ellis King , John Allen Ryan , Deborah Remington and Jack Spicer —and by 1955, had "become the official director". Although "the activities of the "6" were poorly documented", the Six Gallery functioned as an underground art gallery for
9486-475: Was like a cart (with a cane on it). -- Bruce Conner 'The Christmas Tree' was supposed to have something to do with playing colors by light, but it was totally random as far as I could tell, just absurd. -- Bruce Conner In 1958 one of his mechanical assemblages "attacked" a woman at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 's annual Christmas party and holiday exhibition. His "Xmas Tree"
9588-415: Was made in their Filmore Street apartment, took almost eight years to create and weighs 2,300 pounds, all paid for by her husband, Wally Hedrick. When I arrived in San Francisco in 1957, I remember going to The Place at North Beach with Michael McClure . There was this assemblage by Wally Hedrick in the window. I think it was part of a stovepipe, there was a doll's head in the vent, and it had wheels; it
9690-483: Was more interested in making a "thing", and if it attacked people—well I guess I knew it was going to attack...I knew it would probably attack because I laid the trap. So it entertained me; I thought the evening was a success." In 1955, art curator Dorothy Miller came to the West Coast. She included Hedrick in the 1959 Sixteen Americans show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City , NY. Hedrick, knowing full well
9792-510: Was painted. went on to paint and practice conceptual art and continued the tradition of making "bad art" in the form of music, when in the gestation period of nine months, she led her band, Bedtime Story, in releasing Dream Therapy, an album West Coast Performer Magazine dubbed "the worst album of the year", a title Conlin proudly touts to this day. Hedrick recycled the Black paintings -- recycling being another recurring theme in his work -- during
9894-417: Was particularly pleased when he could fix an abandoned appliance sufficiently that at least some piece of it would work and he could turn his assemblages into moving sculptures. "Some of his most memorable sculptures came from crushing and welding beer cans together, or stacking and welding them...In 1956 he made the first light sculpture that I had ever seen; a fixture that responded to sound. Later on he had
9996-494: Was performed there in January 1965. Before its association with art and poetry, it was an auto repair shop. The gallery was referred to as "The Six Gallery," "The 6 Gallery," "6 Gallery," and "The 6" by its founders and members. In 1995, literary pilgrim Tony Willard wrote of the location, "3119 Fillmore stands in the middle of block's west side, canary yellow with royal blue awnings, black flower boxes full of exuberant geraniums at
10098-432: Was received favourably and led to later exhibitions. Critics still occasionally revile them, but this is perhaps to miss their sophisticated appeal, their potent suggestion. Their acceptance also coincides, and possibly prompts work by John Currin (b. 1962), Lisa Yuskavage (b. 1962) and George Condo (b. 1957), for example, where the focus is upon portraiture and stereotypes, much like Thrift Store Paintings, but provides
10200-481: Was that few not already converted were ever likely to witness Hedrick’s accomplishments." Art curator Walter Hopps , in his forward to 1985 Hedrick's Adeline Kent Award exhibition catalogue at the San Francisco Art Institute , stated that Hedrick "decided to ignore the ideal of "career", "fame" and "greatness" to which his peers aspired, and settled for a simpler life, uncomplicated by openings and galleries and cocktail parties." Bad Painting "Bad" Painting
10302-556: Was the only school Garcia would ever be proud of attending. Hedrick served Garcia as a model not only as a painter but as an expositor of a way of life. To Garcia, Hedrick was a genuine beatnik. Hedrick thought Garcia bright and hip, and advised Garcia to attend poetry readings at the North Beach coffee houses, such as the Co-Existence Bagel Shop, the social centre of the Beat community. It was Hedrick who turned
10404-483: Was very popular in North Beach. The guy would make four or five paintings in an evening." Hedrick made an early break with the conventions of art training and art-making. "There were three directions an artist could take at that time," Hedrick says, "Figuration, Abstract-Expressionism. And this third thing, which was out of the surrealist and Dada tradition." Hedrick began "working out a form of personalized Dada", which led "perhaps to his most influential contribution to
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