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French Paper Clip


Author
Jeff Gunderson

Decade

1890s 1900s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s


Tags

Mark Hopkins Photography 
Poetry Publications
Tattoos



The SFAI archives are full of ephemera, fugitive material, broadsides, posters, flyers, manuscripts, ledgers, photographs, and objects. Often the items that hold documents together ruin the original materials over time and need to be replaced. Paper fasteners include clips, needles, and staples, all of which can rust and destroy documents. These “french paper clips” added a little extra fanciness to a 1990s student publication, The Organizers of This Publication Assume No Responsibility for the Content Herein.

 JG 


Slideshow ︎︎︎


SFAI (originally the San Francisco Art Association, as you can see here) published exhibition catalogs, course listings, flyers, leaflets, pamphlets, and brochures since its founding in 1871, but it was not until December 1899 that a journal was produced, The Mark Hopkins Institute Review of Art. The name reflected the fact that in 1893 the school and gallery had moved to the Mark Hopkins mansion, gifted to the University of California and to be used by the SFAA. The Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, its Mary Frances Searles Gallery, and The Mark Hopkins Institute Review of Art were centerpieces of the cultural life of San Francisco. The journal included art news from around the world but focused on exhibitions, social activities, and San Francisco’s artists. The contents of the Review and its successors are fertile ground for researchers of California art history as well as the social history of San Francisco. The first issue of the San Francisco Art Association Bulletin (April 1930) featured a stunning photograph of the new library with its views of the Bay, and its oak tables, fireplace, and built-in shelving filled with books. The letter from the SFAA board president, William Gerstle, mentioned the recent visit by Henri Matisse, who “expressed himself as having spent one of the most pleasant days of his stay in America when he visited the classes at work.” Matisse said “he had never seen such magnificent lighting and working conditions in Europe.” The cover of the October 1934 San Francisco Art Association Bulletin featured Forever Free by sculptor, muralist, and public artist Sargent Claude Johnson (studied 1919–23, 1939–40). Johnson was one of the first Black artists from California to achieve a national reputation and the only West Coast artist to be considered part of the Harlem Renaissance. Ralph Stackpole, in his cover article “Montgomery Street Gossip,” writes of those many artists with studios in the neighborhood where the Transamerica Pyramid is today. Stackpole laments how the art “market lags behind production” while congratulating “Mr. and Mrs. Liebes” for their purchase of the Johnson sculpture. Also mentioned are “Cuneo’s show,” “Piazzoni’s ranch up in the mountains near Mount Torro [sic],” radio personality Tommy Howe, and the soon-to-be-opened Coit Tower with its recently finished frescoes. The Thanksgiving 1934 issue of the San Francisco Art Association Bulletin highlighted noteworthy local news, including the opening of SFAA’s Museum of Art (now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) at the corner of Van Ness and McAllister, “adding a new chapter to a history already distinguished” as the SFAA “assumes this new responsibility with faith in San Francisco as a western metropolis.” The San Francisco Art Association Bulletin also included the musings of artists on the art and philosophical issues of the times. Charles Howard, in his cover essay “What Concerns Me,” said the “language of a modern artist is the language of people who are living.” He continued: “It refers to the whole world, everything in it, the little and the big and the medium sized, what’s over the earth and underneath, the insects, the birds, the trees, the minerals, fish, mountains, the motes in the eye—all these things and the million million more: accidents, hazards and the unconsidered. It is expressive of what these things have done to mankind and what man makes of them: their totemic significance, their poetry and their everyday use.” This noted contemporary artist goes on to describe his own creative process as a painter as “a wearing occupation.” He said, “I do not get what you might call fun out of painting. It is not a frisky business. It is drudgery. It is a tedious, circuitous battle with an intractable medium. It is disappointing at every turn . . . I suppose that’s why I am what is known as a slow painter. I look more than I paint, and I struggle with the paint and with myself. No, it is not an easeful pursuit.” The June–July 1946 issue of the San Francisco Art Association Bulletin included a photo from the top of the gallery stairs, and reported that three thousand people had attended the exhibition of the “work accomplished at the California School of Fine Arts during the past year—a year of innovation and experiment—and a year of success.” The cover of the September 1947 San Francisco Art Association Bulletin reproduced a photo by Ellen Bransten, who was exhibiting her work at the de Young Museum: “several portraits and landscapes, along with studies of ‘hardboiled realism.’” Bransten studied at SFAI in the first classes taught by Ansel Adams. Adams had set up a six-week session, to be followed by a full class in the summer of 1946, and the launching of the Photography Department in the fall. The first issue of Aperture, 1952.Although not an SFAI publication, Aperture was founded in 1952 with plenty of SFAI photographers attached. Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model, Fritz Kaeser, Ernest Louie, and Melton Ferris were all involved with the creation of this key photography periodical. Many initial sustaining subscribers were members of the school’s community, including alumni Ellen Bransten, Don Whyte, and Charles Wong. And its first—and longtime—editor was faculty member Minor White. In 1956 White wrote of his “Unique Experience in Teaching Photography” at SFAI for Aperture, describing the school’s program as a “fabulous experiment” because of the nature of San Francisco: “cosmopolitan, dramatic, western, and full of verve,” but most importantly the “quality of the students.” White thought it essentially a program “in photography at the graduate level” where he learned, along with the students, how “to see with the eyes of a poet.” Benjamen Chinn, who had been a student during the first three years of the school’s photography program, was featured on the cover of the second issue of Aperture with Flea Market, Paris. Chinn grew up in Chinatown with eleven brothers and sisters, worked as a photographer during WWII, and entered Ansel Adams’s new Photography Department on the GI Bill. He was one of the few photo students who took painting classes with Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Park, as well as making films like The Lead Shoes in Sidney Peterson’s Workshop 20 film classes. In 1950 Chinn moved to Paris to take photographs. He became friends with Henri Cartier-Bresson and Fernand Léger, studied sculpture with Alberto Giacometti, and studied geography and philosophy at the Sorbonne. Charles Wong’s photo essay The Year of the Dragon was published by Minor White in this same issue of Aperture. It was an insightful glimpse into the Americanization of Chinese Americans in San Francisco and the ramifications of the recent Communist takeover of mainland China. Wong was a WWII veteran from San Francisco and the first photographer to win the prestigious Albert Bender Award in photography in 1952. This student newspaper from the late 1950s, The Tower, was filled with current events, news, opinion, and artwork (and consequently is a gold mine for future researchers!). Class officers were listed in these issues—George McWilliams, Buffy Heffelfinger, Phoebe Allen, Fritz Wasser, and editor Jerry Burchard—as well as “news” of faculty member/librarian/ogre Mr. Murphy’s house being burned to the ground, “so now there is a new bed in our library.” Articles by Kenneth Rexroth and poetry by Carlos Villa accompanied hustles for the “Jazz Concert Today featuring Doug Skinner and Friends,” a show of Robert Morris paintings opening at the Dilexi Gallery, and the news that “Mike Fender is the President,” along with investigative questions like “Why is a Giant Frog kept under lock and key in the School’s Tower?” By the early 1960s the SFAI News had changed to a 9-by-9-inch format with this snazzy font. This square format mimicked that of the college catalog and the new Artforum magazine, all designed by faculty member James Robertson. Lots of news here: Bruce Conner received the Nealie Sullivan Award, which had been established by Adaline Kent (and was later named after her); a “Faculty Exhibit Now in Gallery”; and tickets were being sold for the 1963 Fine Arts Auction sponsored by Cissie Swig and Mrs. John Lyman, shown sitting by the pond in the courtyard and admiring Robert Howard’s floating sculpture. The 1969/70 SFAI newsletters were in the form of posters (29 by 19 inches) like this one, announcing the “World Premiere” of two films: Bleu Shut, by Film Department chair Robert Nelson, and Last Supper, by student filmmaker and painter William M. Henderson (aka Mike Henderson). On the reverse side was the November 1969 SFAI newsletter, The Front. This issue included faculty members Carlos Villa and Rodger Jacobsen interviewing twenty-three Bay Area artists about how the recent Vietnam Moratorium Day protests had influenced their artwork. The student newspapers throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s were rich with news, photography, art, poetry, opinion, current events, scatological references, want ads, art writing, criticism, recipes, and lonely hearts columns. They took their cue from the underground student newspapers of the 1960s, adopting a punk aesthetic coupled with gonzo journalism, and they included amazing contributions from faculty like Reagan Louie and Jim Pomeroy, who discussed art education, and Angela Davis, who talked about art and politics. The December 1976 issue introduced an iconic eyeball to replace the I in SFAI; it also had a full-page photo portrait of Babeth VanLoo by Stanley Greene. A January 1981 issue of the student newspaper, then known as The Toot, included an extensive interview with faculty member Angela Davis by student Dan Augustine—her second interview published by the student journalists at SFAI. The first issue of Tattootime featuring the “New Tribalism,” 1982.Ed Hardy first explored the history of tattooing for a grade-school assignment on possible careers; he did his research at the Los Angeles Public Library, where he found very little material. In 1982 he filled this need for tattoo information by founding Tattootime, a groundbreaking periodical that provided a much-needed resource about tattooers and the cultural history of tattooing. This was the beginning of Hardy/Marks Publications, founded by Hardy and Francesca Passalacqua, which has since published more than forty books on tattoos, tattoo art, and tattoo art history. Éxpo-See 13 (November–December 1984), with Wally Hedrick cover.Éxpo-See magazine was created by artist, faculty member, and one-time publishing entrepreneur Mark Van Proyen. From 1983 through 1986, the journal covered “art galleries and alternative spaces in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.” Van Proyen claims that Éxpo-See was the “very first desktop published art periodical.” It included fascinating interviews with Bruce Conner, Joan Brown, Bill Fontana, Wally Hedrick, and Anna Halprin, and it featured occasional guest editors such as Rolando Castellon and Bill Berkson. In the late 1990s, a group of students that included Bob Linder, Corrina Peipon, Chris Cobb, and Will Rogan started an occasional serialized publication, aka “a culpability magazine,” titled The Organizers of This Publication Assume No Responsibility for the Content Herein. Covers of various issues were done by Dan Golden, Chris Johanson, Fynnegan Sloyan, Mads Lynnerup, Cliff Hengst, Erin Thurlow, and this one by Julia Leonard. The publication, sometimes held together with “french paper clips,” featured content about the Bay Area art world. An experimental publication produced by Jonn Herschend and SFAI alum, faculty, and long time Anne Bremer Memorial Library colleague, Will Rogan. Will’s deep dive into the SFAI Library’s collections--especially the artists’ published periodicals, artists’ ephemera, and artists’ produced extraneous materials--seems like it may have influenced some of the underpinnings of this unique innovative periodical. THE THING is a quarterly publication in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers were invited to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text. The object was reproduced and hand wrapped at wrapping parties and then mailed to the homes of the subscribers with the help of the United States Postal Service. THING contributors have included artists Miranda July, Anne Walsh, Kota Ezawa, Trisha Donelly, Chris Johanson, Tucker Nichols, Lucy Pullen, Dave Eggers, John Baldessari, Ryan Gander, Tucker Nichols, Allora & Calzadilla, the writer Jonathan Lethem, and experimental geographer Trevor Paglen. The issues have ranged from pull-down window shades with text silk-screened onto them, to beermats (coasters), to door-stops to a shower curtain And of particular note, issue #15 of THE THING, by MacFadden & Thorpe, a flag with specific markings as to its proper handling, folding, and ceremonial care. Photo credit: Lenny Gonzalez.


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