Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley
Rise Up! Social Justice
“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society.” — Angela Davis
The San José Museum of Art retains a form of liberation in its DNA, through its origin story. Founded in 1969 by artists in a time of political upheaval, the Museum created a downtown gathering place with the arts and culture at its core. The historic wing, built in 1892, remained, but its purpose changed radically to present the ideas of modern and contemporary artists, avant-garde thinkers, and arts educators. At its heart, the San José Museum of Art presents modern and contemporary art exhibitions that are international in scope and celebrate the cutting-edge vision of California artists. As a collecting institution, the Museum pursues acquisitions by artists who are groundbreaking, independent thinkers. As a part of the Museum’s 50th-anniversary plans, we are creating something new: a major publication that celebrates the lives of fifty core artists in the permanent collection and embraces the principles of open scholarship, which develops a network of connections—among artists as well as with galleries, museums, archives, magazines, newspapers, curators, and historians. Appropriate to the Museum’s location in the capital of Silicon Valley, this digital publication will provide free access to a selection of rich multimedia materials and commentary. We are looking forward even as we look back. I had the great fortune to meet J. Michael Bewley in 2015, when I joined the staff of the San José Museum of Art. An avid art collector, Mike has been a member of the Museum’s acquisitions committee since 2001 and also served on the Board of Trustees from 2009–2014. Everywhere I go in the Bay Area arts ecosystem, Mike is there. At the Armory Fair in New York, there he is. He knows artists, he knows gallerists, and he is a close friend of curators past and present. He looks me in the eye and he asks me what I think about the art in front of us. It is an honest and natural dialog, which I enjoy. He is inquisitive. He never misses an exhibition or art fair, which he refers to as “burning the shoe leather”—a crucial asset for an art collector. Several months after I joined the staff, Mike gave a significant group of work from his collection to the San José Museum of Art, included here in the exhibition Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley. The opportunity to celebrate Mike’s generosity and collecting vision comes at an extremely anxious time in our political history as we look to artists to present alternatives to the deep existential crises we face today. We embrace the radical, which after all, simply means “grasping things at the root.” The San José Museum of Art is grateful to donors like J. Michael Bewley, whose clarity of vision and spirit of generosity help build a great public collection for the citizens of San José and Silicon Valley. Gratitude goes to Kathryn Wade, curatorial associate, for organizing this exhibition, with initial input from Marja van der Loo, former curatorial associate. Rich Karson, Dan Becker, Anamarie Alongi, and the entire exhibitions team created this inspired installation. Thank you McManis Faulkner for essential exhibition sponsorship, and your shared conviction for progressive social issues. S. Sayre Batton, Oshman Executive Director
Tino Rodriguez Zephyrus, 2002; Oil on panel; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography. Marlene Dumas Purple Pose, 1999; Lithograph; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography.
Squeak Carnwath Insomnia, 1986; Oil and alkyd on cotton canvas; San JosĂŠ Museum of Art, Gift of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by Douglas Sandberg. Kara Walker African/American, 1998; Linocut; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography.
Interview with J. Michael Bewley by Kathryn Wade conducted March 16, 2018 and edited for length.
I had only been collecting for two years. When you first start
how did you initially encounter it?
Five Times for Harvey is an early piece;
In the chronology of your collecting,
A call to
KW / Kathryn Wade
MB / Mike Bewley
I saw Five Times for Harvey in 1987 in a San Francisco gallery. collecting, you’re not terribly focused; you’re exploring, and the things that initially attracted you change. If you’re sensitive to it, this change can happen rapidly. When I bought Arneson’s portraits of Harvey Milk [California’s first openly gay elected official], my collecting dramatically shifted in a direction that I have since continued down. It was on the floor in the gallery’s back room and I had this sense that it was hidden back there. This piece was just too dangerous, too confrontational, too difficult to actually put out on view. Though it had been five years since Arneson made the work and a full ten years since the assassination of Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, I remember being struck by how tough it was. Here we were a decade later and it was still raw—perhaps that’s why the gallery didn’t have the work up. The gay community had rebelled dramatically, pounding on the doors of city hall when the killer, Dan White, was acquitted. It was a huge moment; the abuse and discrimination had been welling up for years and the community was not going to be silenced.
More than three decades in the making, J. Michael Bewley’s art collection is a portrayal of the person: a collector, lawyer, and life-long advocate for
social justice. His collection is an unconventional gathering that reaches across medium, time, and place. Not selected to “hang above the couch,” these artworks are deeply tied to Bewley’s personal experiences and beliefs, as well as to his law practice here in Silicon Valley, where much of his collection was on display for years in his downtown San José office only a few blocks from SJMA. In Bewley’s atypical suburban San José home, where most of his collection is now installed, sculptures, large installations, paintings, and photographs have supplanted the furniture, house plants, and most of the markings of a domestic life. Black-andwhite family photographs turn out to be discreetly disguised Cindy Sherman portraits. A fabric replica of Do Ho Suh’s bathroom offers an uncanny pairing with Jannis Kounellis’s box of tailor’s scissors. An early Egon Schiele print of an emaciated figure keeps company with Tim Hawkinson’s anatomical self-portrait. We met here to discuss collecting and living with art, Bewley’s early exposure to activism in Berkeley in the late 1960s, and the #MeToo movement. Our conversation began with an artwork that has lived in this home; an artwork with which Bewley entered a bond with some trepidation; an insignia that eventually greeted clients and adversaries alike in the lobby of his law office; and finally, a work of major artistic, cultural, and political significance that Bewley gave to the permanent collection of the San José Museum of Art: Robert Arneson’s Five Times for Harvey (1982).
action
MB
by the city.
Commission that was eventually rejected
Mayor Moscone by the San Francisco Art
commission for a public sculpture of
the heated dispute around Arneson’s
Bay Area and gay rights. It also followed
public, moment in the history of the
us through a solitary, but ultimately very
the work narrates his death. It moves
five bullets that struck and killed Milk—
In five large sheets—a reference to the
KW
Robert Arneson Five Times for Harvey, 1982; Mixed media on paper, five sheets; San José Museum of Art, Gift of J. Michael Bewley; © Estate of Robert Arneson, 2018, licensed by VAGA, New York; Photo by Douglas Sandberg.
The Moscone controversy may have changed Arneson. His work became more political and biting. When you look at these pieces up close, what makes them so dramatic is the words Arneson wrote on the faces: the first reads “deviant”—this is Harvey as the first gay supervisor in San Francisco. These words were weapons, and still today they penetrate. While I was drawn to the difficulty of the piece, I did question whether I could live with it because at that time it was very different from the work I’d been collecting. I set up a brief loan agreement with the gallery. I put the work in my bedroom, so not only was I living with it, I woke up and went to bed with it every day. There is a beauty to this work (and most of the work in my collection) that draws you in and holds you, allowing time for the content of the piece to take shape. Ten years later when I moved into a new law office in San José, this work was hung in the lobby. Harvey had become a legend— the man Arneson depicted in the fifth and final panel with a star across his face. Because Five Times for Harvey was a very pivotal work for me, I wanted it to be on view to the public, where people could relate to it, and where it made a statement about the identity of the firm and what I stood for.
Luis Cruz Azaceta Self-Portrait Scavenger, 1984; Charcoal and oil pastel on paper; San José Museum of Art, Gift of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by Douglas Sandberg.
view there?
what context were other artworks on
work was visible to all who entered. In
certain potency. In the lobby, Arneson’s
environment, the works assume a
at this time. On view in this particular
moved from your home to your law office
A significant portion of your collection
KW
Enrique Chagoya Hand of Power (Mano Poderosa), 1992; Oil on steel; San José Museum of Art, Gift of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by Douglas Sandberg.
MB
Enrique Chagoya’s Powerful Hand (Mano Poderosa) (1992) is a commanding painting on steel made in response to the Gulf War that I hung in the conference room. It depicts a symbolic retablo rising above a blood-filled Gulf. The powerful hand spouts oil from its palm and at the edge of each finger are symbols of media, defense, even art—all entities benefiting from this blood oil—while a brown human hand gushes its own blood into the Gulf. This work was in the direct sightline of the defense lawyers during depositions. Since I always represented the employee side, usually a big law firm would represent the defense. As they sat there, they had to face that powerful hand and contemplate the implications of the painting. The work I placed across from my own desk and never grew tired of seeing was Luis Cruz Azaceta’s Self-Portrait Scavenger (1984), a nude man crouching like a bug amid thorns. It’s reminiscent of Azaceta’s experience leaving Cuba and coming to New York—the immigrant experience in the US—and it always reminds me of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
corporeal figures.
surround us in your home, are powerful
bodies, along with many of those that
even exposed—anxious, bleeding—these
enacted upon (certain) bodies. But
vulnerability and the real violence
their portrayal of the human body’s
A striking aspect of these works is
KW
MB
Most of the works in my collection are figurative and many evoke the strength and beauty of the human form, as well as its sensitivities. Lesley Dill’s Translucent Poem Girl (1995), for example, deals very seriously with gender. Lines from Emily Dickinson’s poem “I took my Power in my Hand” shroud a woman’s naked body: “Was it Goliath—was too large—Or was myself—too small?” I think about that in the context of today’s society and the #MeToo movement. Do we have the courage to stand up to the forces against women? This is a beautiful piece on muslin with long white threads hanging loosely from a woman’s naked body like raw nerve endings, out there and exposed. One might not be standing there nude, as this woman is, but the piece evokes a palpable vulnerability. There is real fortitude here, too. Alison Saar’s sculpture Deluge (2016) is about African American women and the importance of hair. The whole concept of hair in this piece, which comprises the bulk of the work, is that the head is being held up by the power of that hair. In one sense, the hair is falling in a kind of deluge, but the hair also buoys up the head. Made out of wire, the hair is tough, strong, and supportive.
Lesley Dill Translucent Poem Girl, 1995; Oil paint, ink, and thread on stained muslin; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography.
Alison Saar Deluge, 2016; Wood, ceiling tin, and cast iron; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography. Mickalene Thomas Portrait of Qusuquzah #5, 2011. Acrylic, rhinestones, and enamel on wood panel; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography.
quality to their being.
that lend a physical and substantive
marked by incredible and diverse textures
glitter and rhinestones—the pieces are
Mutu—all of whom make use of shimmering
Thomas, Sadie Barnette, and Wangechi
remarkably tactile. Along with Mickalene
these works by Dill and Saar are
In addition to their figurative qualities,
KW
MB
The stunning rhinestone work in Mickalene Thomas’s Portrait of Qusuquzah #5 (2011) gives it vibrancy and life. The necklace, glistening eye make-up, and flashes of red rhinestones in the hair beautifully celebrate black femininity, imbuing it with a royal quality. The artist carefully placed each rhinestone by hand. Her attention to these decorative details evokes a tenderness and love that I think only a woman painting another woman can achieve.
Sadie Barnette Untitled (Palm Tree), 2016; Collage on glitter paper; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography.
Chris Ofili Untitled (Couple E), 2002; Watercolor and pencil on paper; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; Photo by JKA Photography.
MB
There is a physical engagement with the works. Art collecting is visual and I tend not to over intellectualize my choices—I don’t have to understand everything all at once. Going back to the summers of ’67 and ’68 in Berkeley, the issues I have been thinking about since early in my life, and in my professional work, are reflected in the collection. When I started out, I didn’t think consciously that I would collect this kind of hard-hitting work, but that’s what drew me. Looking back, I can see exactly why these pieces were meaningful to me and they have remained relevant to my life and the world around us. These works look at me—at us—and they remind me of my values; they are a call to action.
at us.
sets of penetrating eyes looking directly
where in any one room there are multiple
is echoed throughout your collection,
The intensity of the eyes in this work
KW
controversial bust of George Moscone.
the work was on view, and Arneson’s
funding from the Brooklyn Museum where
Rudy Giuliani to threaten cutting public
which provoked then New York Mayor
Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin of Mary (1996),
fiery cultural and political debate—notably
you collect have made works that incited
of the controversial. A number of artists
In your collecting, you’ve not been afraid
KW
MB
I’m not seeking controversy in the works I bring to the collection. But the Arneson piece solidified my ability to live with really charged pieces and learn through long-term exposure to them. Another challenging Arneson work that has changed in my perception over time is I’m looking for you, Whitey (1989). After the Moscone sculpture controversy, Arneson started making more overtly political work. In 1988–90, he did what’s called the “Black” series that was shown at Frumkin Adams Gallery in New York at the same time the murder of the Central Park jogger was dominating the news. I already knew I liked Arneson’s work, but I’d never seen anything that struck me like this strong portrait of a black man with the phrase “I’m looking for you, Whitey” written three times across his head. Living with this work, the eyes follow you around the room at night. It’s aggressive and intense, but I’ve looked at it now for a long time and I see a knowing expression in his eyes now—I see the eyes of an individual. Both of those things are happening at once. Racial tension was really high in New York at the time. Many white people were terrified of young black teenagers, when who should really be afraid are these black men. And this is something we have to think seriously about. Every African American parent has to have the talk with their child that if you’re black and out at night and there is a police officer, you are in danger. I think this piece demonstrates that so powerfully.
List of works in the exhibition
Robert Arneson Five Times for Harvey, 1982 Mixed media on paper, five sheets 30 x 24 inches each San José Museum of Art Gift of J. Michael Bewley 2015.07.01a-e
Lesley Dill Poem Wedding Dress, 1995 Newspaper, thread, and ink on cloth 56 ¾ x 44 x 12 inches San José Museum of Art Gift of J. Michael Bewley 2015.07.08
Robert Arneson I’m looking for you, Whitey, 1989 Latex, enamel, acrylic, and oil stick on paper 72 x 51 ¾ inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley
Lesley Dill Translucent Poem Girl, 1995 Oil paint, ink, and thread on stained muslin 159 X 43 inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley
Sadie Barnette Untitled (Palm Tree), 2016 Collage on glitter paper 15 ¼ x 15 ½ inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Squeak Carnwath Insomnia, 1986 Oil and alkyd on canvas 70 x 70 inches San José Museum of Art Gift of J. Michael Bewley 2015.07.04 Enrique Chagoya Hand of Power (Mano Poderosa), 1992 Oil on steel 60 ¼ x 48 ¼ inches San José Museum of Art Gift of J. Michael Bewley 2015.07.05 Dorothy Cross Eyecamera, 2004 Bronze 6 x 3 x 4 inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Luis Cruz Azaceta The Scream, 1987 Lithograph 48 ¾ x 35 ¾ inches San José Museum of Art Gift of J. Michael Bewley 2015.07.06
Robert Arneson I’m looking for you, Whitey, 1989; Latex, enamel, acrylic, and oil stick on paper; Collection of J. Michael Bewley; © Estate of Robert Arneson, 2018, licensed by VAGA, New York; Photo by JKA Photography.
Luis Cruz Azaceta Self-Portrait Scavenger, 1984 Charcoal and oil pastel on paper 47 ⅜ x 60 ¼ inches San José Museum of Art Gift of J. Michael Bewley 2015.07.07
Marlene Dumas Purple Pose, 1999 Lithograph 48 x 26 ⅞ inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley George Grosz “Es ist doch Eine jammerliche Rolle, der Hase sein zu mussen auf dieser Welt—Aber der gnadige Herr braucht Hasen,” 1922 Lithograph 39 x 31 ½ inches San José Museum of Art Gift of J. Michael Bewley 2015.07.09
Tino Rodriguez Zephyrus, 2002 Oil on panel 14 x 11 inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Alison Saar Deluge, 2016 Wood, ceiling tin, and cast iron 68 x 64 x 70 inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Mickalene Thomas Portrait of Qusuquzah #5, 2011 Acrylic, rhinestones, and enamel on wood panel 72 x 48 inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Mickalene Thomas Photomontage 8, 2008 Mixed media, six panels 12 x 12 x 3 ½ inches each Collection of J. Michael Bewley Kara Walker African/American, 1998 Linocut 49 x 60 ½ inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley
Wangechi Mutu Untitled, 2001 Glitter, sequins, graphite, and watercolor on paper 12 x 7 ½ inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Wangechi Mutu Untitled, 2001 Glitter, graphite, and watercolor on paper 12 x 7 ½ inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Wangechi Mutu Wambera, 2001 Glitter, sequins, paper collage, graphite, and watercolor on paper 12 x 7 ½ inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley Chris Ofili Untitled (Couple E), 2002 Watercolor and pencil on paper 12 ¾ x 8 inches Collection of J. Michael Bewley
Designed by Connie Hwang Edited by Terry Ann R. Neff
Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley is on view at the San José Museum of Art, June 8– September 30, 2018. Rise Up! Social Justice in Art from the Collection of J. Michael Bewley is made possible by generous support from
The San José Museum of Art is supported, in part, by a Cultural Affairs grant from the City of San José, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Richard A. Karp Charitable Foundation, The Lipman Family Foundation, Yvonne and Mike Nevens, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the San José Museum of Art Endowment Fund established by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
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