Exhibits focus on Eames, Gauguin, Warhol
Also: Berkeley Art Museum explores avant-garde 1930s ‘Dimensionism’
In the fall, some Bay Area museums are exploring — often with innovative techniques — the legacy of art from the 20th century.
A manifesto from 1936, calling on artists to respond to the century’s scientific revolutions, inspires an exhibit at the Berkeley Art Museum. Joseph Cornell’s boxed stilllifes and Alexander Calder’s mobiles will help display the results.
Charles and Ray Eames, whose California studio aimed to mass-produce contemporary design midcentury, get a wide-ranging exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California. New to many visitors will be their delightful films about design and modern life.
Video installations will help chart the Vietnamese diaspora in the work of Dinh Q. Le at the San Jose Museum of Art. At the Cantor Arts Center, Andy Warhol’s documentation of pop culture — and his influence on it — will be on the museum walls and in a vast digital trove. Here are season highlights, in the order they open:
“DINH Q. LE: TRUE JOURNEY IS
RETURN” >> Video and photography installations are part of this large-scale solo exhibit from the Vietnamese-American artist born in 1968. It includes narratives
of war and migration and the Vietnamese diaspora. It also highlights refugees who, like Le himself, have recently returned to Vietnam.
DETAILS >> Sept. 14-April 7; San Jose Museum of Art; $5-$10; 408-271-6840, sjmusart.org. “CONTACT WARHOL: PHOTOGRAPHY WITHOUT END” >> Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center has a trove of more than 130,000 photographic exposures by Andy Warhol. What to make of them for a single exhibit? Curators have winnowed them down to trace Warhol’s photography
from basic contact sheets to large-scale silkscreen paintings. Among the subjects are Liza Minnelli, Michael Jackson and Nancy Reagan. The exhibit will include touch screens and monitors so visitors can zoom in on the entire collection.
DETAILS >> Sept. 29-Jan. 6; Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University; free; 650723-4177, museum.stanford.edu.
“THE WORLD OF CHARLES
AND RAY EAMES” >> The enduring appeal of midcentury modern, with its slick, colorful, geometric and organic designs, sometimes
glosses over the people who created it. Among them were the husband-and-wife team of Charles and Ray Eames, whose techniques grew out of World War II demands and then envisioned a California lifestyle for the nation. Furniture, prototypes and films help explore their innovation and influence.
DETAILS >> Oct. 13-Feb. 27; Oakland Museum of California; $6.95-$15.95; 510318-8400, museumca.org. “DIMENSIONISM: MODERN ART IN THE AGE OF EINSTEIN” >> It’s a perfect exhibit for Berkeley — even if
it does come from Amherst College in Massachusetts. This show takes off from a 1936 “Dimensionism Manifesto” calling for artists to respond to the century’s scientific revolutions. Alexander Calder, Roberto Matta, Joan Miro and Dorothy Tanning are among those represented. And don’t miss the Nov. 14 gallery talk, “Relativity and Quantum Mechanics Made Simple.”
DETAILS >> Nov. 7-March 3; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; $11$13; 510-642-0808, bampfa. berkeley.edu. “GAUGUIN: A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY”
>> The French-born, post-impressionist painter is certainly well known for his colorful, often mysterious images of Tahiti. This exhibit will bring more than 60 Gauguin pieces to San Francisco for the first time — and as a bonus, they’ll be displayed with art of the Pacific Islands from the de Young Museum’s own collection. The theme is Gauguin’s quest to understand spirituality, both his own and that of cultures he encountered.
DETAILS >> Nov. 17-April 7; de Young Museum, San Francisco; $13-$28; 415-7503600; deyoung.famsf.org.