The San Jose Museum of Art Presents a Major Joan Brown Retrospective

Written by Eric Rowland Tuesday, 18 October 2011 21:11

San Jose, California.- The San Jose Museum of Art is pleased to present "This Kind of Bird Flies Backward: Paintings by Joan Brown", on view at the museum until March 11th 2012. This is the first in-depth examination of this beloved Bay Area artist's painting in over a decade. The exhibition is the first to explore Brown's art in the national context of the women's movement: the movement paralleled her career, yet she has been largely excluded from its history. Joan Brown (February 13, 1938 – October 26, 1990) was an American figurative painter who lived and worked in Northern California.

She was a notable member of the "second generation" of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. She was born in San Francisco and studied at the California School of Fine Art (now San Francisco Art Institute), where her teachers included Elmer Bischoff. She achieved prominence with a style of figurative painting that combined bright color, sometimes cartoonish drawing, and personal symbolism. Brown was married to Bay Area Figurative sculptor Manuel Neri from 1962 to 1966, though their relationship and artistic collaboration dated back several years prior to this. Their son, Noel Neri, is also an artist. In the late 1970s, Brown became increasingly interested in spirituality and New Age ideas, eventually becoming an adherent of Sathya Sai Baba. She made a number of trips to his ashram in Puttaparthi, India. In 1990, she died in a construction accident while installing an obelisk at the Sai Baba's Eternal Heritage Museum in Proddatur, India. Brown was also a competitive swimmer.

The deeply introspective paintings of Joan Brown (1938 – 1990) reveal the importance she placed in everyday moments, relationships with family and friends, and her spiritual state. Her art and life were inseparable. Over a career of thirty-five years, Brown was not afraid to go against the latest trends and attitudes in the art world. Although she never wholeheartedly identified with any specific group and, in fact, rejected such categorization,2 her work has been discussed within the context of many movements including Abstract Expressionism, assemblage, Bay Area Figuration, and New Image Painting. Little is written, however, about Brown's work and the rise of second wave feminism, which paralleled her career and had a significant impact on the visual arts. Her apolitical approach to subjects of domesticity, gender, identity, aging, relationships, and motherhood may be the cause of her exclusion; nonetheless, time has shown that her choices as a woman and as an artist were anything but neutral.


The San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) is a distinguished museum of modern and contemporary art and a lively center of arts activity in Silicon Valley. The leading institution in the area dedicated to the art of our time, SJMA is committed to providing access for its extraordinarily diverse populations and to pioneering new approaches to interpretation. Established in 1969, SJMA presents art ranging from modern masterpieces to recent works by young, emerging artists. The Museum’s permanent collection—1,400 varied artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries—has a special focus on West Coast art, seen in an national and international context. SJMA is accredited by the American Association of Museums, a recognition given to just 750 of the nation’s 8,000 museums. SJMA serves 100,000 people a year, including 37,000 school children: SJMA is the largest provider of arts education in Santa Clara County. Initiatives such as the award-winning school program Let’s Look at Art Program and SJMA’s participatory activity stations in the galleries further distinguish the Museum as an innovator in museum education. The SJMA's collection contains approximately 2,000 20th and 21st century artworks including paintings, sculpture, installation, new media, photography, drawings, prints, and artist books. The collection continues to evolve as a set of works reflecting important movements in recent art history, the accomplishments of emerging West Coast artists, acquisitions from our special exhibitions, and other significant works. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.sjmusart.org/

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