Recent Acquisitions

Sometimes I Daydream of Flying Away

multi-dimensional artwork featuring a human wearing painted wings, accompanied by two green parrots, flying over a lawnmower and bird bath

Jay Lynn Gomez, Sometimes I Daydream of Flying Away , 2019, Acrylic, house paint, and cardboard on canvas, 72 x 96 in. UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of Robert Hayden III and Richard Silver

Sometimes I Daydream of Flying Away

Jay Lynn Gomez

Sometimes I Daydream of Flying Away (2019)
Gifted by Robert Hayden III and Richard Silver

Jay Lynn Gomez (b. 1986)
This work by Jay Lynn Gomez contains themes of landscape, labor, race, and representation. Gomez began making work by painting figures of workers into images in Architectural Digest magazines during her breaks while working as a nanny. Her paintings often highlight unseen workers, in particular, Latinx nannies, gardeners, construction workers, and valets. She reinserts these workers—as cardboard cutout figures—into visual representations of landscapes where they are otherwise frequently omitted.

Gomez continues to work with cutout figures, placing them free standing around her exhibitions and collaging them onto her paintings, as seen in Sometimes I Daydream of Flying Away—a work that reveals the artist’s and subjects’ identities as well as features specific to Southern California. In an interview with Carolina Miranda for the Los Angeles Times Gomez stated, “I’m painting my own mother. I’m painting about my dad. I’m painting about myself.”

Year acquired: 2021

Untitled (probably 1962 – 63)

print of a black rectangle with soft edges and an empty oval shape in the upper middle of the rectangle

John Paul Jones, Untitled, probably 1962-1963, Lithograph, 11 x 7 in. UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of Theodore Barnett

Untitled

John Paul Jones

Untitled (probably 1962 – 63)
Gifted by Theodore Barnett

John Paul Jones (1924 – 1999)
Artist and educator John Paul Jones was considered a leading American printmaker during the 1960s. His work has been associated with postwar New Figuration, a period of figurative painting revived in the 1960s by such artists as Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Philip Gustin, and David Hockney. Jones taught for a decade at UCLA, from 1953 to 1963, where he established the printmaking department, and at UC Irvine for two decades, from 1969 to 1990. Untitled was produced at the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, an important print shop in Los Angeles at the time. Inspired by European artists like Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, and Francisco Goya, shadowy figures emerging from dark backgrounds are a recurring motif in Jones’ work.

Year acquired: 2021

Coastal Landscape

graphite drawing of waves crashing on rocks

Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Coastal Landscape, 1950, Graphite on paper, 20 x 26 in. UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of Maxine Stussy Frankel

Coastal Landscape

Stanton Macdonald-Wright

Coastal Landscape (1950)
Gifted by Maxine Stussy Frankel

Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890 – 1973)
Stanton Macdonald-Wright launched the Synchromism movement in 1913 in Paris with fellow American artist Morgan Russell (1886 – 1953). Considered one of the first American modernist movements, Synchromism advanced the theory that light, space, and form could be evoked through the modulation of color alone. Macdonald-Wright was introduced to Chinese art while studying at the Sorbonne (Paris, FR) from 1907 to 1908. East Asian art would be an ongoing source of inspiration for the artist and educator throughout his life. Coastal Landscape demonstrates his engagement with Chinese and Japanese painting styles, here applied to California coastal scenes.

Year acquired: 2021

Landscape

pencil drawing of a rocky hillside with trees below

Jan Stussy, Landscape, 1959, Graphite on paper, 29 x 22 in. UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of Maxine Stussy Frankel

Landscape

Jan Stussy

Landscape (1959)
Gifted by Maxine Stussy Frankel

Jan Stussy (1921 – 1990)
Artist, film producer, and arts educator Jan Stussy took an eclectic, figurative approach to his work that went against the grain of Abstract Expressionism, the dominant style of the post-war period. His idiosyncratic paintings and drawings of contorted figures bring together cubist, surrealist, and expressionist characteristics. Landscape, a graphite work on paper, illustrates the importance of Chinese and Japanese art for Stussy, an interest passed down to him from his mentor, Stanton Macdonald-Wright. It demonstrates Stussy’s commitment to draftsmanship, something he espoused as an educator as a core element of an arts curriculum.

Year acquired: 2021

Untitled (1971)

Ed Moses, Untitled, 1971, Powdered pigment, acrylic and resin on canvas. 88 x 99 in. UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of Ryan Collier

Untitled

Ed Moses

Untitled (1971)
Gifted by Ryan Collier

Around 1970, Ed Moses began experimenting with materials and working on the floor with unstretched canvases. He often produced works, like Untitled, by first aging a canvas in the sun, then affixing masking tape, snapping chalk lines on its surface, and finally applying resin to the back of it which seeped through to the front and preserved the composition.

Ed Moses (1926 – 2018)
Ed Moses was born in Long Beach, CA and lived and worked for most of his life in Southern California. In 1957, while a graduate student at UCLA, Moses had his first solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery where he became a member of the Cool School. Cool School artists—including John Altoon, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Wallace Berman, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Edward Kienholz, Ken Price, and Ed Ruscha—combined pop, abstraction, and minimalism that was often imbued with sarcasm and humor. Throughout his artistic career, Moses explored the limits of painting, experimenting with many styles, materials, and mark-making techniques. He embraced elements of chance and focused on process over product.

“In a career that spanned seven decades, Moses received national and international recognition for his practice, known for its restless intensity and ever-evolving style. Considered one of LA’s most innovative painters and a central figure in the city’s art scene, Moses often referred to himself as a ‘mutator’, driven less by the desire for self-expression than by an insatiable curiosity to explore and discover. Describing his approach, Moses said, ‘The rational mind constantly wants to be in charge. The other parts want to fly. My painting is the encounter between the mind’s necessity for control and its yearning to fly, to be free from our ever-confining skull’ (kohngallery.com/moses).”

From 1968 to 1972, Moses was on faculty in the art department at UC Irvine and the subject of the 2014 exhibition Ed Moses: Cross Section, organized by Juli Carson and Kevin Appel and presented at UCI’s University Art Galleries. The artist’s work is also included in the collections of the Hammer Museum (UCLA, Los Angeles); Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Modern Art (New York), and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York).

Year acquired: 2019

Wild Trac

Ed Moses, Wild Trac, 1975, Acrylic on canvas backed by wood panel, 60 x 48 in. UCI Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art, Gift of Richard C. Smith and Patricia Frobes

Wild Trac

Ed Moses

Wild Trac (1975)
Gifted by Richard C. Smith and Patricia Frobes

Wild Trac is a painting from Ed Moses’ Trac series. The artist applied drips, smudges, and diagonal lines (or “tracs”) of red, black, and white paint in a crisscross fashion generating a tension between the flat surface of the picture plane and its illusionistic depth. Similar to some of his resin works (see Untitled, 1971), Moses’ geometric compositions were often inspired by Navajo blanket designs.

Ed Moses (1926 – 2018)
Ed Moses was born in Long Beach, CA and lived and worked most of his life in Southern California. In 1957, while a graduate student at UCLA, Moses had his first solo exhibition at Ferus Gallery where he became a member of the Cool School. Cool School artists—including John Altoon, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Wallace Berman, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Edward Kienholz, Ken Price, and Ed Ruscha—combined pop, abstraction, and minimalism, often imbued with sarcasm and humor. Throughout his life, Moses explored the limits of painting, experimenting with many styles, materials, and mark-making techniques. He embraced elements of chance and focused on process over product.

From 1968 to 1972 Moses was on faculty in the art department at UC Irvine and the subject of the 2014 exhibition Ed Moses: Cross Section organized by Juli Carson and Kevin Appel and presented at UCI’s University Art Galleries. The artist’s work is also included in the collections of the Hammer Museum (UCLA, Los Angeles); Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Museum of Modern Art (NY), and Whitney Museum of American Art (NY).

Year acquired: 2020