Featured Works

Look at Me

a realistic graphite drawing of a pool scene

D.J. Hall, Look at Me, 2004, Graphite on paper, 22 x 30 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

Look at Me

D. J. Hall

Staff Pick | Monthly Muse April 2021

What is it about a sparkling pool on a hot summer day that makes kids want to show off their tricks and water skills to any adult within ear- and eyeshot?

I had a good chuckle the first time I saw D.J. Hall’s Look at Me and read its perfectly fitting title. It brought back summer memories of swimming with my brother and cousins. We constantly shouted, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!”, as we jumped, dove, bellyflopped, and splashed in the water. Meanwhile, our parents (sitting in the shade talking about “boring adult stuff”) humored us with quick glances and feigned enthusiasm—while in the same breath reminding us, again, that they didn’t want to get splashed.

My daughter, who is almost three years old, has already discovered the power of the phrase “look at me.” I suspect it will not be long before I am the parent finding myself caught between adult conversations off to the side and my child’s performance right in front of me. She will undoubtedly be just as determined as the girls in Hall’s drawing to capture the full attention of every adult sitting poolside with her best Esther Williams impressions. Hopefully, I won’t get too soaked from being in the splash zone.

Katie Zulueta
Assistant Museum Registrar, IMCA

Red and Green #1

James Budd Dixon, Red and Green #1, circa 1958, Oil on canvas, 84 x 50 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

Red and Green #1

James Budd Dixon

Staff Pick | Monthly Muse March 2021

In preparing for the First Glimpse exhibition [which introduced the public to Gerald Buck’s private collection gifted to UCI], I visited IMCA’s collection storage to see several works I had selected from the collector’s dog-eared notebooks. James Budd Dixon’s Red and Green #1 was not on my list. The painting was out, leaning in a corner, and half unwrapped nearby the works I had chosen to view. Its loamy, thick, encrusted, fetid, forest-floor energy caught my attention immediately. I spent a good deal of time with the painting that day, eventually deciding that I wanted to include it in First Glimpse and was willing to swap a work to give Red and Green #1 a prime wall in the exhibition.

It’s not a particularly clear or neighborly picture. It is all about the internal search of the painter made external through a kind of brutal material exploration. Its clotted, sludgy surface has a gloomy air of painting as an embodiment of murky nature—decay—an all-over impasto that appears to have been mixed in a cauldron with a wooden spoon as much as it was painted with brushes on a stretched canvas. Budd Dixon’s inelegant motions feel hard won and brutally strained. The painting feels primordial.

I’m a painter first and like all artists I have my ways of constructing works that is particular to my personality and connected to my motives. As an artist pushing at my own boundaries, I tend to gravitate toward works I can’t fully understand—and towards ways of painting that are unlike my own and go against the grain of my predilections. Red and Green #1 fits this bill. It’s a painting that shows its own struggle of becoming. In that way, it is like fully entering into another painter’s process—a process that challenges my own to perhaps look for more mess. Or at least be open to the difficulties of making a more monstrous picture.

Kevin Appel
Artist
Professor and Chair, Department of Art, UC Irvine
Interim Associate Director (Curatorial), IMCA

Suburban Nightmare

Carlos Almaraz, Suburban Nightmare, 1982, Pastel, 19 x 25 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art © The Carlos Almaraz Estate 2018

Suburban Nightmare

Carlos Almaraz

Staff Pick | Monthly Muse February 2021

This pastel drawing holds my gaze. It’s as if the artist was counting on the human urge that renders us incapable of averting our eyes from a disastrous scene. Through this act of observation, I become one of the bystanders—looking on as the house is devoured by flames and engulfed in a billowing cloud of black smoke. I am helplessly frozen in place, in awe of the unstoppable force of nature. Yet beyond this terrible scene, and in contrast, is another spectacular natural event on which my eyes can’t help but linger—a striking and vibrant sky.

Chanelle Mandell
Associate Museum Registrar, IMCA

San Gorgonio from Beaumont

Anna Hills, San Gorgonio from Beaumont, 1927, Oil on canvas, 20 x 30 in. UC Irvine Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of The Irvine Museum

San Gorgonio from Beaumont

Anna Hills

Staff Pick | Monthly Muse November 2020

San Gorgonio from Beaumont by Anna Hills reminds me of long, winding drives up to the mountains, the sight of our destination in the distance, and the expectation of an enjoyable time hiking and backpacking in nature. Even though over 90 years have passed since the artist made this painting, in many ways the view has changed very little. While houses, roads, and other aspects of our modern life have altered the landscape, the outline of the mountains and the round top of San Gorgonio, I imagine, would be recognizable to Anna Hills today.

Dawn Minegar
Assistant Museum Registrar, IMCA

Abstraction (Spheres)

Oskar Fischinger, Abstraction (Spheres), 1941, Oil on Celotex, 19 1/4 x 19 1/4 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art © Courtesy of the Elfriede Fischinger Trust

Abstraction (Spheres)

Oskar Fischinger

Staff Pick | Monthly Muse December 2020

It may not look it, but this shapely geometric abstraction carries a secret wish. Oskar Fischinger gifted Abstraction (Spheres) to his friend, art dealer Frank Perls, on December 28, 1951, requesting, as written in a note attached to the back of the work, that he “accept the square painting with the red ball as a Christmas present.” What resonates with me about this gift is the statement it makes about the evocative power of art.

Fischinger’s use of form—his dancing orbs that seem to thread between one another like planets in orbit or scattering billiard balls—balances a textured color field with harmonic movement. Yet, the brilliant, glassy red that colors the foremost sphere suggests none other than the ubiquitous ornamentation that crowns the edges of evergreen trees and their plastic facsimiles each winter. I enjoy Fischinger’s lighthearted jest, to see in his deft arrangement of geometry and color contrast the simple pleasure of a merry pun.

Erin Stout
Curatorial and Research Associate, IMCA

Alchemy

Agnes Pelton, Alchemy , 1937 – 1939, Oil on canvas, 36 x 26 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

Alchemy

Agnes Pelton

Staff Pick | Monthly Muse October 2020

I became obsessed with Agnes Pelton’s Alchemy from the moment I saw it. The “star” that first caught my eye is absolutely brilliant, literally. My interest in mysticism and the occult—particularly their symbols—drew me to the tarot-card-like composition of the work. The deep, velvety darkness of the background contrasting with the luminosity of the figurative forms beckoned me closer. The more time I spend with the painting, the more I see and the deeper my appreciation grows. It is difficult to talk about Alchemy because it evades easy categorization. It is natural and supernatural, historical and timeless, and exists as if perpetually in the middle of a transmutation.

Sebastián Vizcaíno Cortés
Community Engagement Assistant, IMCA