The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 132
ARTISTS' BIOGRAPHIES
Arneson, Robert
American; (b. 1930, Benicia, CA; d. 1992, Benicia, CA)
1958 MFA Mills College, Oakland, CA
1954 BA California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
1949–1951 College of Marin, Kentfield, CA
Arneson began his influential tenure at the University of California, Davis in 1962 as
SELECTED REFERENCES:
a professor of sculpture after completing his MFA at Mills College where he studied
Fairbanks, Jonathan L., and
under Tony Prieto. Informed by Expressionist and neo-Dada artistic tendencies,
Kenworth W. Moffett. Directions in
Arneson launched his prolific career with irreverent sculptural ceramics—banal
objects formed from clay and often anthropomorphized with body parts—that
positioned him as a central figure in California’s “Funk” movement. The rejection
of traditionally constructed functional objects in favor of ordinary items turned
confrontational was a central tenet of the Funk art movement. Arneson’s work
grew more reflective marked by a period of self-portraits in the 1970s before
taking on a political tenor in the 1980s most notably with his Ground Zero series
that included ten sculptures and ten drawings portending nuclear warfare.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT ARNESON WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
Doggie Bob
Joint (study for Sarcophagus)
Kangas, Matthew. Craft and
McTwigan, Michael. “A Portrait
Concept: The Rematerialization
of our Time.” American Ceramics
of the Art Object. New York:
5 no. 3 (1987): 35–43.
Midmarch Arts Press, 2006.
“Robert Arneson: Ground Zero.”
Ceramics Monthly 32, no. 9
(November 1984): 36–37.
13 0
Contemporary American Ceramics.
Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1984.
Neff, Terry Ann R., ed. An
Uncommon Vision: The Des
Moines Art Center. Des Moines:
Des Moines Art Center, 1998.
Racz, Imogen. Contemporary Crafts.
Oxford; New York: Berg, 2009.