The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 31

Arneson came back with a new, tougher body of work that dealt with more potent issues: the threat of nuclear holocaust, the dangers of the military industrial complex, and racial discrimination. This allowed his humor, which remained, to turn grotesque and blackly sardonic. We see this in a superb preparatory drawing in the The artist was short and stocky, built like a peasant collection, Joint (study for Sarcophagus) (1984), done potato-picker. Her slightly coarse features and her for a major work Sarcophagus (1985). It portrays the uniform of a denim smock and clay-stained boots Joint Chiefs of Staff presiding over a massacre. This added to that appearance, however, one could not and another drawing Joint Chiefs (1985), carry gory encounter a more sophisticated artist. Her knowledge details drawn from Matthias Grünewald’s sixteenth- of art history was encyclopedic, her critiques of art century Isenheim Altarpiece, which Arneson saw on (including popular culture) were brilliant, insightful, a trip to Europe. The pose of Joint Chiefs was inspired and always surprisingly original. Frey was a master by a magazine photograph of three generals from the of color science, which she taught at her school, Vietnam War with inappropriately happy smiles. then called California College of Arts and Crafts. Arneson’s approach to glaze paint and a bright, low- From this piece onwards the figures grew larger and fire palette is similar to that of his friend Viola Frey from larger until they topped eight feet. As this trend began, the Bay Area. Their styles, however, are different both I asked her what was driving the growth spurt. “I grew in form and in painting. While there are exceptions up on a winery and the vines were always taller than on both sides, Arneson veered closer to realism and me. I could never see beyond that,” she said. “I suppose precise painting that had an illustrative intent. my figures are made to look beyond the vines.” Frey’s forms are more abstract. Facial details, for She had another characteristically pragmatic answer when instance, are rudely formed, the detailing coming I asked in 1978 why she had not yet made many horizontal from painting and with little interest in realism. She figures. “I am not yet important enough,” she replied. “It’s uses color in a more expressionistic mode and often a matter of taking up space in an art collector’s real estate. very thickly on the surface, creating texture. It does not matter how tall a figure is, it still takes up a Frey’s grandmother figures are without argument the most-exhibited works by the artist. The series is relatively small footprint. But a horizontal figure takes up three to four times that space. I am not market-ready yet.” an exceptional part of her oeuvre and is what really Clearly by the time she made Man and His World caused her career to go viral and to increase in (1994) she was ready. Indeed, her huge figures were scale. Grandmother Figure (1978–1980) is modest very much in demand. The sculpture is eight feet in size, six-feet-two inches, but certainly large for a long and nearly four feet wide, occupying thirty-two grandmother, particularly Frey’s. Maybe they were square feet, tangible evidence that Frey had arrived. doppelgangers, but the face is clearly Viola’s. 29