Have you ever felt compelled, for the flimsiest of reasons, to do something & then, having done it, realized your life was immeasurably enriched by it? That was precisely what happened last Sunday when Tom & I drove up to the Milwaukee Art Museum to see the Sam Francis: Master Printmaker exhibit.
The first time I heard the name “Sam Francis” was back in the Seventies in an art history class in Central California. The professor mentioned that the two of them had been fellow art students at one time &, for whatever reason, the name stuck in my head. (Interestingly, the professor’s didn’t.) Over the decades, I’ve probably encountered a Sam Francis work in a museum two or three times at most, although at some point, I did get the vague notion that he lived & worked in the Los Angeles area. Hmmm, or was that Richard Diebenkorn? Well, my point is, if I was looking for solid, convincing reasons to drive 90-odd miles north to see this exhibit, there was indeed very little to hang my hat on. Nevertheless, off we went…
And, as we used to say in the Seventies, the exhibit blew my mind. The gorgeous, saturated colors of Francis’ ink, his generous use of white space & the large scale of the lithographs themselves all combined to create a visually-exhilarating experience. As we worked our way through the exhibit, we also saw densely-layered, dark prints against which miniscule flecks of white functioned like the sparkles of light thrown off by a diamond. Other images featured his rich reds, blues & yellows supported by either black, grid-like patterns or nested rectangular ones.
My favorite prints, though, were the ones which suggested nothing. They simply consisted of shapes of juicy color & white space. Without visual symbols, with nothing hinted at or referred to, one was freed up to respond to only color & light. This struck me as surprisingly relaxing. In fact, I speculated to Tom that I would probably be more successful at meditating if I could gaze at a Sam Francis litho rather than having to close my eyes!
I also found myself speculating on why this particular exhibit resonated so very much with me. I think it has something to do with the dearth of knowledge & therefore, of expectations, with which I approached it. Only my curiosity about an artist whom I’d heard of long ago accompanied me into those galleries. Without the usual protective barrier of facts & information, I was left to my emotional devices, so to speak. Such a situation is not always possible & arguably, it is rarely desirable, but this time it served me well.
Oh, & yes, Sam Francis did live & work in the L.A. area for a time – in Santa Monica, to be exact – as did Diebenkorn.