Sorting Through Sam Francis' Paintings at the Pasadena Museum of California Art

A A A Comments (0) By Catherine Wagley Thursday, Aug 29 2013

That means there are rooms at PMCA where Francis looks like a good artist, not a great one, and, if you're playing the game, you suspect, correctly, that MOCA doesn't own many or any of what you see. There are the crisscrossed lattices of spilled paint from the '70s, impressively vibrant at times but hard to focus on for that long, or the very-'80s canvases full of purple, red, yellow and green smears and drips.

Other artists, by contrast, have held back. Iconic stories have pre-pop painter Jasper Johns clandestinely burning his early work and pop-conceptualist John Baldessari "cremating" a number of paintings, then putting them in a book-shaped urn.

But such acts don't leave these artist's oeuvre perfectly honed and untarnished. Instead, what's missing becomes key to their narratives: Johns is the careful self-editor, Baldessari the showman whose self-destructive and self-preserving urges coexist.

PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY ART MUSEUM AND PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE

Sam Francis' watercolor Middle Blue #5 (1959-60)

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Pasadena Museum of California Art

490 E. Union St.
Pasadena, CA 91101

Category: Museums

Region: Pasadena and vicinity

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In the case of Francis, that he put so much into the world, and that his oeuvre can feel messily expansive, is his story. This doesn't mean each work should be revered or that MOCA should own any more than the 11 Francis paintings it has.

"We look at the show as a reunion of works that were once part of his dynamic personal history," Burchett-Lere says via email, when asked about the retrospective's scope. "A timeline of images framed by his human condition."

SAM FRANCIS: FIVE DECADES OF ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM FROM CALIFORNIA COLLECTIONS | Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E. Union St., Pasadena | Through Jan. 5 | pmcaonline.org