ATRAVELING EXHIBITION titledBreaking theRules, now at Memphis’ Dixon Museum, presents an enlightening narrative about the groundbreaking work of two remarkable gay artists, Paul Wonner and Theophilus Brown, who ignited an artistic flowering known as the Bay Area Figurative Movement from their Berkeley studio. Wonner and Brown, whose 56-year relationship was forged during the McCarthy era, did break many rules, but they paid a high price for it. Their tendency to focus on the male figure discouraged critical attention and commercial success. Only now, through this retrospective, is their artistic contribution being duly recognized. Paul Wonner (1920–2008) and William “Theophilus” Brown (1919–2012), despite being recognized as Bay Area artists, hailed from Tucson, Arizona, and Moline, Illinois, respectively. They met in 1952 while both were pursuing a master’s degree in art at UC-Berkeley, and the rest is history. And yet, they had very different personalities. Wonner, who was shy and soft-spoken, thought the gregarious Brown was a bit of a snob, and he had a point. Brown graduated from Yale and had mingled with influential cultural figures like Picasso and Stravinsky during the postwar years, when Elaine and Willem de Kooning took him under their wing. It wasn’t love at first sight. It took six weeks for Wonner to invite Brown to his apartment for lunch, a simple gesture that catalyzed a profound personal and artistic partnership that lasted five and a half decades. Living openly as a gay couple during the perilous climate of 1950s America posed significant personal and professional risks. A 1953 executive order barred homosexuals from employment in the federal government, resulting in numerous dismissals and the outing of thousands without legal recourse. These prosecutions had a chilling impact on the art world, forcing most gay artists to abandon homoerotic imagery and figurative art altogether. Queer artists had to adopt strategies of concealment during this period to survive. This is when Abstract Expressionism was the dominant American school, and it provided a convenient outlet. Artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Agnes Martin avoided scrutiny by living discreetly and creating exclusively abstract works. When Bay Area artist Richard Caldwell Brewer dared to create explicit homoerotic imagery, he paid the ultimate critical price: complete erasure of his work. Another San Francisco artist, Bernice Bing (1936–1998), had ESSAY Figures of the Bay Area IGNACIODARNAUDE Ignacio Darnaude, an art scholar, lecturer, and film producer, is currently developing the docuseries Hiding in Plain Sight: Breaking the Queer Code in Art. three strikes against her as a queer Asian woman; only now is she getting the recognition she deserves. Wonner and Brown shared a studio in Berkeley that became the nerve center for an artistic revolt against the repression of the times. It all started the day the artist Richard Diebenkorn, who also had a studio in their building, showed up freezing at Wonner and Brown’s door, asking if they had a heater. Wonner and Brown’s studio was large, and they invited him in. It was around this time (1955) that Diebenkorn and other artists—such as Elmer Bischoff, David Park, James Weeks, and Nathan Oliveira—began to gather for drawing sessions centered on the human figure at Wonner and Brown’s studio. Brown relished these sessions because he experienced a camaraderie very different from the vibe in New York, where he felt only rivalry among the up-and-coming artists. This creative association gave birth to what came to be known as the Bay Area Figurative Movement, which challenged the dominance of Abstract Expressionism and offered an alternative path. David Park was the first to break away when he trashed his abstract canvases at San Francisco’s city dump in 1949. His painting Kids on Bikes (1950), depicting two male figures, set the tone for what was to come: a resurgence of figurative art in place of abstraction. In 1957, The Oakland Museum mounted a groundbreaking show titledContemporary Bay Area Figurative Painting, which put the movement and these painters on themap. The title of the current exhibition, Breaking the Rules, also refers to Wonner and Brown’s frequent depiction of male nudes, despite galleries’ reluctance to “sell anything with a penis.” Brown persisted because “his mission was to bring parity to female and male nudity in galleries and museums.” His male nudes, including his daring self-portraits, are the most overt manifestation of his sexuality, but—perhaps because few of them depicted male-to-male contact—critics sidestepped their homoerotic implications. Joint exhibitions of Wonner and Brown’s work faced rejection until 1999, when Wonner was 79 and Brown was eighty. The reluctance stemmed from fears of alienating potential buyers due to the nature of their relationship. The prudery of the early days compelled them, like numerous contemporary artists, to embed queer themes in their art through creative subterfuges and coded imagery that could be recognized by gay viewers (and a few others) while eluding everyone else. Classical imagery provided an ideal cloak for their homoerotic expressions. Wonner’s depictions of Greek sculptures with harmonious proportions allowed him to show his appreciation of the male form with impunity. Brown’s surreal and ambiguous homoerotic classical imagery, often untitled to Theophilus Brown and Paul Wonner and the Bay Area Figurative Movement challenged the dominance of Abstract Expressionism, offering an alternativepath. 12 TheG&LR
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