cineSOURCE magazine

SF Art Institute: Remembrance and Legacy
by Doniphan Blair

Penelope Houston, of the famous local indie band The Avengers, studied at the Institute and remains a working artist as well as musician. photo: D. Blair

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IT WAS A BITTERSWEET EVENT AT THE
Minnesota Project in San Francisco on March 26th: the coming together of almost 1000 students, teachers, administrators and supporters of the recently deceased San Francisco Art Institute. They hugged and chatted, enjoyed the food and drink and musical stylings of Penelope Houston and Mike Henderson—both longtime Institute associates—and supported the new legacy association.

Mostly, however, they came to commiserate the closing of a massive artistic power in the Bay Area since its humble origins in a Chinatown storefront, back in the 1860s when San Francisco was still the Barbary Coast. What that means is, between the drinking, fucking and gambling, many of the city’s residents were turning toward aesthetics.

A memorial to Fred Martin (1927-2022), a working artist who helped run the Institute for half a century. photo: D. Blair

Although they were loath to leave Chinatown, where they could stomp out smokes on the floor and there was plenty of good eating, their fine art society had almost 1000 paying members by 1874. So they made their way to various mansions, finally settling on Russian Hill, at 800 Chestnut Street, in 1926.

Within five years, Diego Rivera, the world-famous Mexican muralist (see cS story), was doing a massive piece there, now worth tens of millions. Within a couple of decades, a coterie of avant-garde painters had arrived, including Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko from New York, David Park and Elmer Bischoff from Oakland, and the photographer Ansel Adams. By the time I showed up, in 1974, the film department was a who’s who of alternative cinema: Larry Jordan, Bruce Connor, George Kuchar, Gunvor Nelson and more.

Scene from a film by George Kuchar, one of the Institute's most revered film teachers, next to the REsearch publication table, manned by V. Vale. photo: D. Blair

Although we assumed 800 Chestnut Street was an 18th century Spanish monastery replete with haunted Hitchcockian tower, it was actually built for the school. According to the San Francisco Planning Department: the “Spanish Colonial Revival style original building [was] designed by Bakewell & Brown and the 1969 Brutalist addition [was] designed by Paffard Keatinge-Clay.” The latter provided an angular, raw-concrete back building with plenty of skylights and fantastic views of the Bay.

I fell in love with SFAI intellectually as soon as I heard about it in 1971, and physically when I first visited in 1974. I visited again a month ago. The big green door was devoid of information but unlocked even though it was midnight. Though a bit sepulchral, I enjoyed the arched courtyard and mosaic pool until a guard ejected me.

Linda Conner (rt), an Institute photography teacher, cuts a rug to the sounds of Mike Henderson (bck), a long time Institute associate. photo: D. Blair

Indeed, I loved SFAI so much, I stayed for 16 years. Often taking only one course a semester, I would use the film equipment, learn from the aesthetic arguments—especially in the 1980s, when the Marxists and multiculturalists began decrying most art as “rich,” “racist” or “colonialist”—and enjoy the teachers. It was often me and the teacher against the class.

At the Minnesota Project event, it remained incomprehensible to most of us how such an incredible physical plant with such an avant-garde pedigree could be abandoned by one of the world’s richest cities, which has long prided itself on art. Indeed, the city just rebuilt its Museum of Modern Art, which only opened in 1995, with a complete makeover in 2016, to the tune of millions of dollars.

A William T. Wiley print, part of the auction to support the Institute's legacy association. photo: D. Blair

Despite some prodigious efforts to negotiate a resurrection of SFAI under the auspices of the University of San Francisco or other institutions—the University of California owns the fabulous building—nothing, nada, zilch.

To be sure, the meeting of money and art has long been a fraught fiesta, and the Institute’s party was a particularly wild one. It seems that Fred Martin (June 13, 1927- October 10, 2022), who was a working artist and devoted almost half his life to the Institute, was one of the few deans able to find that balance. Martin signed off on my graduation, when I finally decided to leave, after negotiating the acceptance of my late term paper with Raymond Mondini, the legendary art history teacher.

Jack Fulton, another one of SFAI's great photo teachers, contributed this piece to the silent auction. photo: D. Blair

In the 1990s, the Institute tried to play catch up by finally installing a computer lab—oddly late, given Silicon Valley’s presence 30 miles south—and bringing in an art star from the East Coast to run the joint.

Elle King Torre was a handsome, dynamic woman with a lot of energy and ideas. But she expanded the graduate school, signing an expensive lease at the height of the dot com boom, and removed the basketball hoop, which seemed a bit controlling. Eventually losing control, she embezzled money, picked up a coke habit and, tragically, killed herself.

From then on it was a series of grabbing one straw after another, from bringing in an African-English critic as dean or the many children of Asian wealth—lovely people in their own right but not that able to deal with the Institute’s issues. Sadly, the gentrification of San Francisco also drove up rents so far no other students could afford housing, while tuition itself skyrocketed.

Barbara Lu, a performance artist who fashioned an SFAI-branded bra from two masks. photo: D. Blair

Nevertheless, everyone I talked to who studied there, even in the naughts and teens, loved the place and felt they got a great education. To quote my Oakland neighbor, renown filmmaker Frazier Bradshaw, "I didn't learn a damn thing about how to make a movie at SFAI. But I learned a tremendous amount about what I had to say as an artist" (see cS article).

Indeed, the Minnesota Project event was full of happy, creative people, drinking, dancing, bidding on art—including a William T. Wiley print that went for $1,500—and talking about their next projects, one of which could easily be resurrecting the Institute, if a local billionaire only realized its value.

Posted on Mar 31, 2023 - 12:53 AM