Interiors and Places

“Intimism shuns the grandiose.… It has no need for allegory or moralizing. The subjects of the artist are all around him, in his private life…. Intimism likes the interior view.”  Robert Hughes

Hackett Mill presents Interiors and Places, David Park, Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff, an exhibition that brings together rare paintings from the founding members of the Bay Area Figurative Movement and focuses on the artists’ unique treatment of intimate scenery. The exhibition features one of Park’s last large-scale canvases, Woman with Coffeepot (1958) on loan from the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and on view for the first time on the West Coast. The paintings encourage an examination of the architectural language—space, pattern and light—these three artists used to create private spaces.

Bay Area Figuration has its roots in the affectionate scenes of everyday life that Park painted in the early 1950s. Returning to recognizable subject matter after a period of abstraction allowed these artists to celebrate the simple, everyday activities and objects of human life, and to restore a level of intimacy to American painting. The paintings in ‘Interiors and Places’ show the artists idealizing the quietude and beauty of familiar figures and settings while also incorporating aspects of Abstract Expressionism, including strong gesture and visceral paint application.

Hackett Mill will host a lecture with Nancy Boas, author of David Park, A Painter's Life, on February 19, 2015.