John Baldessari

Accordionist (with Crowd), 1994
25 color lithograph/serigraph
Purchased, 2009

California born, raised and educated, John Baldessari has become one the world’s most recognized Contemporary artists. Born in National City, California, Baldessari began his undergraduate work at San Diego State College and continued his graduate work at Otis Art Institute and other institutions such as the Chouinard Art Institute and the University of California at Berkeley. Between showing at over 200 solo exhibitions and 900 group exhibitions, Baldessari’s work has ranged from video, films, lithographs and prints.

Chapman University has added John Baldessari’s Accordionist (With Crowd) to their growing permanent collection in 2009. Working in his iconic style of color while denying information to the viewer, this piece is a fine example of Baldessari’s process of distancing the viewer from crucial information and disrupting common images with geometric fields of color. In 2009, Baldessari won the prestigious Golden Lion Lifetime Achievement award at the 53^rd International Venice Biennale, Italy. He taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia for 18 years and the University of California Los Angeles from 1996-2007. John Baldessari still lives and continues his work in Southern California and stands as one of the most important figures in not only American, but also International Contemporary Art.

Karlie Harstad

Chapman University

Art History, Spring 2009

Eric Orr

Dark 14, 1989
Oil on Panel
Gift of Anton Segerstom, 2007

Part of the Southern California Light and Space movement of the 1960s-70s, Orr was a contemporary conceptual artist dealing primarily with installation, sculpture, and painting. His work is based on a religio-philosophical conceptualization of space icons found in ancient religions and cultures, such as Egyptian symbolism and Buddhist spiritualism. In his installations, Orr worked with the elemental qualities of natural materials—stone, metal, water, and fire—with the intention of eliciting a visceral response from the viewer. Other materials Orr used include gold leaf, lead, blood, human skull, and AM/FM radio parts. Orr’s body of work also include monochromatic paintings, as well as large scale fountains that can be viewed in a variety of public and private spaces around the city of Los Angeles.

Orr is an internationally acknowledged artists with work in the collections of the Pompidou Center in Paris, France, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Farm in New Zealand, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and The Guggenheim.

For more info please visit: www.robertbermangallery.com

Billy Al Bengston

Venice Watercolor, 1973
Watercolor on paper
Gift of Anton Segerstom, 2007

Born in Dodge City, Kansas in the 1930’s, he moved to Los Angeles in 1948. Begston attended Manual Arts High School where he developed an interest in ceramics. He became an avid surfer and while working as a lifeguard, befriended fellow surfer and later artist Kenneth Price. At the California College of Arts and Crafts he studied painting with Ricahrd Diebenkorn and participated in a group exhibition at the avantguard Six Gallery in San Francisco in 1956. Later he enrolled in what is now the Otis Art Institute and studied ceramics with Peter Voulkos. His attention gradually shifted from ceramics to painting.

Bengston live and works in Venice Beach, California.

Bruce Nauman

Untitled (Salmon Pink), 1971

Lithography

22 1/4" x 28 1/4"

Gift of the Steinmetz Family, 2001

2001.2.8

Bruce Nauman was born in Indiana in 1941 and received B.F.A. from University of California, Davis. Working across mediums including sculpture, film, performance and printmaking, Nauman calls upon daily actives and everyday materials. With over 26 solo exhibitions and countless group exhibitions to his name, Bruce Nauman’s artistic influence has traversed decades. Nauman has received inspiration from his various living locations throughout California and abroad funded initially through his Artist Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1968. Internationally exhibited, Nauman’s work has been show at both national institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as various locations abroad including top German institutions.

Untitled (Grey), 1971

Lithography

23" x 42"

Gift of the Steinmetz Family, 2001

2001.2.9

In 2001 Chapman University received two lithographs of Nauman’s displaying his plurality of mediums and artistic endeavors. The two obtained works, Untitled (Salmon Pink) and Untitled (Gray), both 1971, were completed while Nauman lived in Pasadena, California and briefly taught at University of California, Irvine. Nauman’s display of three-dimensional space on paper shows evidence of his questioning of the capabilities of a medium. Throughout his career, Bruce Nauman has collaborated with an assortment of artists of varying genres and has experimented with countless mediums to stand as a paradigm of the acceptance of mediums beyond painting and sculpture that commenced during the 1960s.

Karlie Harstad

Chapman University

Art History, Spring 2009

Jay Sagen

Jay Sagen

Untitled, 1993

Acrylic and ink on canvas

66" x 66"

Gift of the artist, 2008

2008.12.1

Local Coastline Community College gallery curator Jay Sagen pulls his influence from abstract expressionists in the San Francisco bay area. After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1972, Sagen began working in galleries and began his prolific career as both an artist and curator. Sagen was eventually drawn to teaching in 1977 and has continued with his philosophy to educated through experience while exposing students to important historical artists, styles and movements ever since.

While completing his Master in Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, Sagen focused on abstracts compositions in printmaking. The abstraction of black and white compositions has long been a strong reoccurring theme throughout his career and is evident shown in his large painting, Untitled that has been in Chapman University’s permanent art collection since 2008. As an artist, Sagen’s main focus has been on nonrepresentational forms on alternative medium such as recent works that utilize latex, ink and Masonite. As a curator, he has created a purpose and focus of displaying and contextualizing local Orange County artists.

Karlie Harstad

Chapman University

Art History, Spring 2009

Richard Serra

Richard Serra

Paths and Edges #4, 2007

1 color etching, edition of 60

21 1/2" x 38 1/2"

Purchased w/ acquisition funds, 2008

2008.10.1

San Francisco born artist Richard Serra worked in local steel mills during his college years for extra money. This experience along with his Minimalist tendencies have lead him to be famously known for his monumental sculptures that push and question the boundaries of industrial mediums. From rubber belts with neon tubes to splashing molten lead, Serra epitomizes the growing presence of alternative medium paired with the dialect between the body of the viewer and the object that flourished in 1960 America.

In the 1970s Serra began to use rolled steel and was commissioned for public art works around the world. Large-scale sculptures such as Serra’s Torqued Ellipse exude a looming physicality and impact and have been installed at locations such as the University of California, Los Angeles and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum. Serra currently shows at Gagosian galleries, one of the world’s top gallery forces, and has exhibited at MoMA, the Louvre and the Guggenheim.

In recent years, Richard Serra has kept his industrial and minimal tendencies and has begun creating drawings and mixed media images. In 2008, Chapman University gained one of Serra’s etchings on paper, Paths and Edges #4, to its collection. Part of a series, this piece displays both the past and future of the artist’s development and continues Serra’s prolific study of geometric form. American born and internationally renowned, Richard Serra’s work holds artistic importance that spans decades, locations and mediums.

Karlie Harstad

Chapman University

Art History, Spring 2009

Lisa Adams, Busy Bodies, 1988

Lisa Adams

Busy Bodies, 1988

Oil, acrylic and linoleum on canvas

20 x 16 in

Gift of Anne Ayers, 2003

2003.1.1

Los Angeles based artist Lisa Adams began her artist career with a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from Scripps College located in Claremont, California. Adams then continued her skill through Claremont Graduate University’s Master in Fine Arts program. Working in a Post Modern artistic sense of layering and mixed media, Adams creates texture and depth within the two-dimensional painting space. A Fulbright Professional Scholar, Adams’ work has been widely acclaimed and collected notably by philanthropist and avid art collector Eli Broad has added Adams to his collection. Lisa Adams currently practices out of Los Angeles but has participated in artist residencies all around the world from Finland, to Japan and Costa Rica.

Overlapping forms and subtle accents of color create the composition of Adams’ 1988 Busy Bodies. Obtained by Chapman University in 2003, Busy Bodies displays her exploration of the physical qualities of paint. Adams past and recent works display parallel attributions to artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and American artist Jasper Johns. Whether she is independently curating art shows or designing the BMW of North America Art Car, Lisa Adams stands as important practicing female artist standing as a progressive individual while concurrently calling upon historical art practice as well.

Karlie Harstad

Chapman University

Art History, Spring 2009