Date: Thu 19-Feb-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDYC

Quick Words:

Johnson

Full Text:

Sargent Johnson At SFMOMA

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. -- More than 60 works by the prominent Bay Area artist

Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) will be on view through July 7 at the San

Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), 151 Third Street.

"Sargent Johnson: African-American Modernist" -- organized by guest curator

Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins, an art historian specializing in African-American

art -- will offer a thorough analysis of Johnson's stylistic development.

Sculpture, works on paper and paintings of polychrome porcelain enamel on

steel will be shown.

Johnson was one of the first African-American artists from California to

achieve a national reputation. The SFMOMA exhibition features examples of his

work from the 1930s and 1940s, when he created art as a regionalist with the

Works in Progress Administration, and as an artist associated with the Harmon

Foundation in New York, which was committed to fostering the creative efforts

of African Americans.

The exhibition also examines Johnson's work from the late 1930s through the

1960s, when the artist was an active participant in the bohemian artist

community of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Johnson lived and worked in the Bay Area during a time of great diversity in

intellectual, cultural and artistic production. Influenced by what was known

as the Negro Renaissance of the 1920s, he focused his early work on the issue

of racial identity, desiring to show the natural beauty and dignity of African

Americans. Bay Area art communities were flourishing when Johnson arrived in

1915, and he later became influential in an artistic environment that would

develop its own variety of modernism.

Although he is not known to have had formal sculptural training before coming

to California, Johnson briefly lived with his aunt May Howard Jackson, a

sculptor, in Washington, D.C. His formal training in sculpture began four

years later at the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art

Institute).

Johnson's artistic development benefited from the unique circumstances of

ethnic diversity and integration particular to the Bay Area at the time. Such

conditions likely contributed to his acceptance into the local art

establishment: he was elected to the San Francisco Art Association in 1932,

held a seat on its council board in 1934, and for several years served as a

member of the sculpture jury for the association's annual exhibition.

Initially concerned with liberating representations of blacks from the cruel

caricatures that had dominated the previous century, in his early career

Johnson developed not only African-American themes, as did other black

painters and sculptors of the era, but also styles reminiscent of African

sources: the masklike stylization of his faces, his use of polychrome and the

head-to-body ratios in his figures, for example. His brand of African-American

modernism also demonstrates the influence of the wide range of cultures with

which he interacted in the diverse communities of the Bay Area.

"Elizabeth Gee," the 1927 portrait bust of the child of a Chinese neighbor, is

a relatively naturalistic work that exhibits the eclecticism characteristic of

a develolping Bay Area style. The sculpture -- through the use of color and

choice of materials: glazed stoneware -- eschews the accepted norms of "high

art" and allies with more "decorative" styles at the same time as it reflects

the influences of Asian and Meso-American artistic traditions.

"Forever Free," 1933, demonstrates Johnson's commitment to both simplicity of

form and depth of content as well as his desire to positively represent the

physical and character traits that the sculptor saw as particular to African

Americans. The strong, columnar figure with broad, squared shoulders is firmly

rooted in the present, yet her uptilted head as well as the emergent

children's forms incised about her skirts engage a distant horizon, evoking

generations yet to come.

By 1939, Johnson's views on racial art had changed, and he moved toward the

Abstract Expressionist style in vogue among his white contemporaries, which

demanded a less representational model of artistic creation. In his

lithographs from the late 1930s and early 1940s -- including "Lenox Avenue,"

1938, and "Singing Saints," 1940 -- the artist focused on the fluid movement

of line, developing a lyrical style that celebrated African-American music

(jazz and folk songs/spirituals) in place of his former concentration on

celebrating a racial type.

His later work was greatly affected by his travels to Mexico in the 1940s and

his interest in the archaeological sites, Chelula polychrome pottery and

low-firing, black-clay pots from the region. These influences can be seen in

works on view in the exhibition, such as "The Politician," 1965. Continuing

into the 1960s, Johnson's later sculptures became even more minimal as the

artist sought less restrictive forms in which to work.

In addition to the works on view in the SFMOMA exhibition, several public art

works by Johnson are installed in the city of San Francisco. The slate facade

surrounding the main entrance of the Maritime Museum in San Francisco's

Aquatic Park -- decorated with incised designs of conventionalized marine

subjects -- was carved by Johnson and installed as part of the original

construction between 1937 and 1939. He also designed a mosaic tile mural of

abstracted fish on the bay side of the Maritime Museum, a project that was

never completed.

The George Washington High School football stadium in the Richmond district

contains a commissioned frieze from 1942 by Johnson, who was hired to replace

the original recipient of the commission, his former teacher and employer

Beniamino Bufano. The frieze depicts a procession of athletes, illustrating

competitive sports with figures in motion, and represents a return to a more

realistic figurative form.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a 108-page catalogue, published by

SFMOMA, including 40 color plates and essays by curator Lizzetta

LeFalle-Collins and Judith Wilson, assistant professor of the history of art

and of African and African-American studies at Yale University.

The museum is open daily (except Wednesdays), 11 am to 6 pm; and open late

Thursday, 11 am to 9 pm. Admission is $8.