LOS ANGELES—Visitors came to smell the ‘nosebushes’ this summer and enjoy other conceptional artworks at Parker Gallery’s multi-disciplinary Nut Art exhibition (May 28 – August 5, 2017). The group exhibition included ebullient new works alongside original pieces from Clayton Bailey‘s 1972 exhibition, such as former cartoonist Robert Arneson‘s severed head cookie jar and Bailey’s submerged swimmers, some of which had not been publicly exhibited since.
Despite its breadth, the show manages to come off as a unified thought. Each of the gallery’s separate spaces vibrate with common purpose, of big bangs and primordial ooze.
Franklin Williams, Baby Girl #5, 1970, acrylic, fabric, yarn on canvas, 36 × 42 inches
Clayton Bailey, Underwater Chase, 1970, low fire ceramic and underglaze, 30 × 72 × 12 inches
Nut Art exhibition view
Nut Art is a movement founded in Northern California that flourished primarily in the late 60s and early 70s. Hyperallergic writes, frustrated with being erroneously labeled Funk, the term was coined (you can read another origin story here) by artist Roy De Forest along with other practitioners Clayton Bailey, David Gilhooly, Maija Peeples-Bright (then Maija Zack, aka Maija Woof) in conversation with writer David Zack to describe an approach to art making which embraced humor and the phantasmic.
At the time, Journalists and art critics were especially fond of describing any difficult-to-categorize artist as “funky,” particularly if that artist resided in the Bay Area. A solution occurred to Bailey, De Forest, and Schlotzhauer: They could start a new art movement and, perhaps, reinvent the way others saw and communicated about their art.
Nut Art exhibition view
Calvin Marcus, Untitled, 2017, ceramic, soil, San Pedro cactus, dimensions variable
Chris Unterseher, Rincon Bay, 1968, earthenware and glaze, 31 × 9 × 5 1/2 inches
Robert Arneson, How About a Little Cookie?, 1971/2001, edition of 10, plus 2 AP (AP 2), painted bronze, 15 × 13 1/2 × 13 1/2 inches. Courtesy of Brian Gross Fine Art
A few Nut Art exhibitions shortly followed, including one organized by 1972 exhibiton at California State University Hayward. For that exhibition’s staple-bound catalog, De Forest included an exegeses of the new movement, the so-called Nut Art manifesto:
THE WORK OF A PECULIAR AND ECCENTRIC NUT CAN TRULY BE CALLED “NUT ART” … THE NUT ARTIFICER TRAVELS IN A PHANTASMAGORIC MICRO-WORLD, SMALL AND EXTREMELY COMPACT, AS IS THE LIGHT OF A DWARF STAR IMPLODING INWARD AND IN PASSAGE COLLAPSING PARADISE AND HELL TO ONE AS IT VANISHES FOREVER WITH OUR JOYS, SORROWS AND UNREQUITED LOVE.
Hannah Greely, J-o-B, 2017, cardboard, aquaresin, fiberglass, hydrostone, tempera, charcoal, 75 × 43 1/2 × 34 inches
Clayton Bailey, Demented Pinhead (Portrait of Dr. Gladstone), 1971, slip-cast low fire ceramic, underglaze, glass eyes, hair, electric lightbulb fixture, 27 1/2 × 13 inches diameter
Artists featured include Robert Arneson, Betty Bailey, Clayton Bailey, Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, Hannah Greely, Calvin Marcus, Maija Peeples-Bright, Benjamin Reiss, Peter Saul, Sally Saul, Harold Schlotzhauer, Richard Shaw, Irvin Tepper, Chris Unterseher and Franklin Williams.
Center: Richard Shaw, Lightning Well, 1970, porcelain, acrylic, glaze, 29 × 28 × 24 inches
David Gilhooly, The End of the World, 1970, ceramic and glaze, 19 × 14 inches
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