The Other Coast

David Park Bathers

During the first year of the 1980’s, I moved to Manhattan Beach California. I was so young, only in my early twenties when my old Galaxy 500 nosed its way to the west coast. I’d studied art and art history, and of course, thought I was something of an authority on all things painted, drawn, seen, written, composed, etc. I was more than a little bit superior when it came to the fine art of painting and the full scope of meaningfulness contained therein. So, of course, the New York School was the only school of painters for me. The Abstract Expressionists.

Also, I thought you know, Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, John Updike, Norman Mailer, etc, were the only worthy writers. I tell all this as background to the story of having met my first west coast pal, Bill - Wild Bill, I took to calling him for his frequent vanishing acts. Bill, was a Torrance boy. Really young, but totally West Coast. I was from Denver and for some reason thought I was from New York - crazy as it seems. Bill introduced me to a lot of great, and to me, unknown writing. One day I told him with imperious assurance that all the great writing came exclusively from the east coast. He visibly stiffened and quickly disabused me of my arrogance, pointing out Joan Didion, Christopher Isherwood, Charles Bukowski, et al. living and working on the west coast. He also introduced me to other non-east coast writers, some Beats and some European, like Jean Genet.

I say this to remind myself that there is always more to know, and curiosity is always preferable to ignorance.  I’m 66 years old now and I have just now begun to understand and appreciate the west coast painting scene that was occurring simultaneously with the New York School. I think all I want to say about these west coast artists is look at them. See how the similarities in purpose and context with the New York School propelled the paintings of this group, and appreciate its remarkable achievement.

The painting at the top of this writing hangs at Hallmark, a place I worked for twenty years. I saw this painting everyday, looked at it, but even though this was a big, fully realized painting, I was drawn to the small Motherwell prints, some many floors away. Richard Diebenkorn has been a favorite for decades, but I really didn’t ever know or appreciate anything about his involvement with David Park’s west coast scene, or that there even was a west coast scene, until recently.

Turns out, Dick D. was a member of a sub-troika of really great painters of the west coast in the late 40’s and 50’s, including David Park, and Elmer Bischoff. It’s funny and I have a lot to say about this - just ask my wife - but these guys and gals, like their east coast contemporaries were beneficiaries of New Deal thinking. Just coming out of the service in WW2, visionary FDR programs like the GI Bill, helped establish these art communities that built and defined the concept of American art as we have come to understand it in its particular indigenousness.

The GI Bill enabled them to form actual art schools like the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and at California School of Fine Arts, and to help them recover emotionally from war. One of the things that was most astonishing to me, and one for which I’m certain my pal, Wild Bill, would give a gleeful wink, was that these post-war years brought a cross pollination between New York and the Bay Area. Major artists like Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still and Hans Hoffman came to the bay area to teach. And, further, the founding director of the SFMOMA, Grace L. McCann Morley, had the first shows for later-to-be-famous New York artists like Arshile Gorky and get this, Jackson Pollock . To this day his incredible painting, Guardians of the Secret, remains in the collection. None of this was happening in a vacuum, and in fact, as the saying goes, the street goes both ways. Artists including Deibenkorn went to the east coast, as did Neri and Park to reconnoiter, or work, or both, and then brought that experience back to California adding another layer of current modernism to their studios.

The allegiance of the bay area painters to the strictures of abstract painting as taught by Still et al, began to wane in the early 50’s, led by David Park, into what would become a singularly west coast figurative style. And these paintings, like the one I saw everyday at Hallmark are thoughtful and beautiful, bold and spontaneous. They are a kind of figuration that is nearly abstract, yet clearly recognizable. Unique and different from the east coasters, but informed of the same spirit of discovery and spontaneous expression.

I love these paintings. More importantly, I think, I love that there are always, and still, new paintings to explore, new relationships to understand. I love learning again, and again, and again, that the conditions of fear and ignorance are never resolved, but that an open mind and curiosity will always provide the antidote. That creation can be the provenance of America and not war.

I encourage anyone interested in these paintings to seek them out. See them and you’ll be smitten. Who knows, one might be in the building you work in everyday.