Robert Arneson

California Artist, 1982, SFMOMA

Who better to define the California artist than the man who made California Artist? This wacky, cheeky, totally chill ceramic “pot flung in the face of the public” appeared in 1982 in response to a scathing review of Arneson’s work by New York critic Hilton Kramer, who said Arneson showed the "impoverished sensibility of the provincial cultural life of California." Harsh! Arneson responded with this self-portrait in denim jacket (with “Arneson” embroidered on the back, biker club style) on a cracked pillar decorated with marijuana plants, cigarette butts, and empty beer bottles. His empty shades give a view inside his empty head. Airhead! Hippie! A stereotypical California stoner in stoneware.

One of the first artists to move ceramics from utilitarian vessels to art objects, Arneson, dean of Northern California’s Funk artists of the 1970s, was never a stranger to criticism. In 1963, Arneson’s Funk John—a paint-splashed ceramic toilet, in the bowl the word “art” in what looked like excrement—was excluded from an exhibit of California sculpture at the Kaiser Center in Oakland. Arneson found this rebuff an affirmation of his artistic stance. In 1983, when he was selected to sculpt a bust of murdered mayor George Moscone for the new Moscone Center, he courted controversy once again.  His bust, a colorful, funky, friendly update of the traditional civic sculpture, was accepted until he unveiled its pedestal, inscribed with words and images from Moscone’s life, including a revolver and a Twinkie, references to his assassin, Supervisor Dan White. Arneson refused to alter the pedestal and returned his fee.

Arneson was known for using himself as model for crazy inventions in clay. He appears as a dog, a man picking his nose, a chef, with knives, guns, bricks stuck in his head. He and his colleagues in the brand-new Art Department at UC Davis took Pop Art west of the west: with ribald humor, sexual references, satire, and a celebration of “amateurishness.”

Serious concerns were never far away from Arneson, though. He reflected on events in the world—the nuclear arms race, American racism—and in his own life—his divorce, and his battle with cancer. Even the seven outsized Eggheads found on the UC Davis campus--some winking, some smirking, some upside down—suggest a sardonic look at the university where Arneson taught for almost 30 years. The beloved eggheads keep Arneson’s spirit alive three decades after his early death in 1992.  And if you find yourself walking down First Street in Arneson’s hometown, Benicia, you’ll find traces of his presence there, too: look down at the sidewalk in front of his former studio, and you’ll see bricks stamped “Arneson.”