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I received my teaching credential in the spring of
1952, had a very bad time finding a job, and finally got one with the
Maxwell Unified School District in the Fall of 1952. That
the semester had already begun by the time I was hired proves both how
undesirable Maxwell was as a place to teach--they had not been able to
find anyone willing to go there--and how undesirable I was as a new
hire--I had been looking for six months and Maxwell was the only place
that would have me.
We rented a one bedroom house. The bedroom
was for our son, Demian; and we slept on a sofabed in the living room.
The unheated garage was my studio. Maxwell is in the Northern
Sacramento Valley and the winters are very cold. I used an
old-fashioned kerosene stove for heat in the garage, especially
because we had one to heat the bathroom when I was a child in Alameda
and always loved the spots of light the stove made on the ceiling.
Same in the garage.
The Maxwell period lasted from fall 1952 through
spring 1954 with an interval summer 1953 in Stinson Beach. In
the spring of 1954, Jean said she would never go back to Maxwell after
my current contract with the Maxwell School District expired. I
applied to and was accepted in the Art Department for the MA program
(there were no MFA degrees in those days) at UC Berkeley for the fall
of 1954.
We returned to Berkeley in June 1954, living in our
College Avenue place with my studio in the basement. I began the
figure paintings there sometime late that summer, finishing the series
(running out of new ideas) early that fall and then returning to
abstraction.
Click here for an extended text about
this period of my art and life.
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Spring 1953. Approx 60 x 48 in.
It was painted in my garage studio in Maxwell, California. I
called it "Evening."
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Spring 1953. Approx. 36 x 60 in.
It was painted in my garage studio in Maxwell, California. I
called it "Oceanic."
(No enlarged view available.) |
Summer 1953. Approx 36 x 60 in.
It was painted during our stay at Stinson Beach.
I called it "Triumphs and Terrors of Sxe," a rather lame way of
avoiding the word sex, which was what the painting was about.
The painting is now in the collection of the Oakland Museum of
California |
Fall 1953. Approx 60 x 36 in.
I called it "Untitled V."
It was painted in my garage studio in Maxwell, California.
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Figure #1, late summer, 1954
Approx. 60 x 40 in.
Painted in my College Avenue studio. |
Figure #2, late summer, 1954
Approx. 60 x 40 in.
Painted in my College Avenue studio.
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Figure #5, late summer, 1954
Approx. 72 x 60 in.
Painted in my College Avenue studio.
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Detail from Figure #5.
If a life has periods--youth, maturity, old age--the paintings of this
time were the images of my coming of age: my cock and the pomegranate,
my cock the sign and embodiment of my manhood, the pomegranate my sign
for woman. That the two could meet in this painting meant
(although I did not know) my maturity and its tasks had begun: family
and homestead and work in the world.
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Fall or Spring, 1955.
Approx. 30 x 30 in.
I called it "Crisis #1"
I was trying to paint out everything
that didn't work.
"Color Field" and "Post Painterly Abstraction" hadn't been invented
yet; and, for that matter, I was not trying to invent a new movement,
only trying "just once to get it right." The other students in
the Graduate Program thought my paintings like this were ridiculous
and several students brought parodies of them to the Graduate Critique
Seminars.
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Fall or Spring, 1955.
Approx. 72 x 36 in.
I called it "Talking of Dawn"
It may have been painted over one of the figures.
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Click here for an extended text about
this period of my art and life.
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Click
here for 1955-57
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