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Gordon Cook (1927-1985)
A Retrospective of Real Magic
March 13 - April 25, 2010 / Curated by Barbara Janeff
Gordon Cook’s life was entwined with the Bay Area art scene during the exciting decades from 1951 to his untimely death in 1985. He was a master printmaker, educated at prestigious schools in Illinois and his hometown Chicago, who turned to painting in the 1970s. His deceptively simple paintings are well described as “suspending time” and “transcending conventional meaning’. His landscapes appear muted by Bay Area fog, while his use of light makes ordinary objects vivid against flat backgrounds. Artist, Wayne Thiebaud, said of Cook, “ Gordon focused upon the marvel of extremism. He pushed beyond the ordinary range and depth of thinking and feeling in his opinions, his way of looking, and his work.”
Cook influenced countless students while teaching at California universities. Among his fellow faculty members at the San Francisco Art Institute were Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and Joan Brown to whom he was married for more than a decade. When Cook’s painting faltered under the pressures of making a living, friends and collectors felt so strongly about his art that they banded together to support him for a year so he could just paint. Cook died suddenly in 1985 when he was at the height of his creative output. Today his works are in many major museum collections including the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institute and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Bolinas Museum Director Lucy Van Sands (Vandy) Seeburg had dreamed of doing an exhibition of Gordon Cook’s work when, in conversation, Barbara Janeff suggested the same idea. And so it unfolded. Previously Janeff curated the Bolinas Museum’s exceptional Bay Area. She knew Cook and his collectors from her years of working with legendary gallery owner Charles Campbell. Now, Janeff as curator and Director Seeburg, are presenting a remarkable selection of Cook’s work in West Marin.
