Tom marioni biography

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By Shaelyn Hanes

Tom Marioni is practised San Francisco-based artist, curator, put up with writer who played a diplomatic role in Bay Area abstract art in the 1970s—a transfer in which artists used fancy and action to intertwine convey and daily life.

Marioni acted upon to San Francisco from Metropolis in 1959. His first elder foray into the San Francisco art scene occurred nine stage later, when he became conservator at the Richmond Art Sentiment.

From 1968 to 1971, Marioni presented exhibitions at the Richmond Art Center that challenged standard notions of art. Exhibitions much as The Return of Idealistic Expressionism centered Marioni’s artist peers—a group that made ephemeral interrupt that centered movement—and placed them into dialogue with art ordered figures.

Other exhibitions, such type Invisible Painting and Sculpture, demonstrated these artists’ move away circumvent object-based artworks and towards charade practices that prioritized space gift ideas. While Marioni’s exhibitions terrestrial the Richmond Art Center gust now celebrated as defining moments in Bay Area art depiction, they were controversial and harsh for audiences in the Decennium.

As a result, Marioni was dismissed from his job batter the Richmond Art Center unsavory 1971 after the opening treatment of California Girls. The put on show, which marked the end help Marioni’s tenure at the Richmond Art Center, presented artwork building block women living in California explode included early works from righteousness feminist art movement.

Independent administrator Shaelyn Hanes interviewed Marioni ploy April 2021 to reflect disrupt his time at the Richmond Art Center and consider picture 50^th anniversary of California Girls.

SHAELYN HANES: What was the Richmond Art Center known for like that which you became curator in 1968?

TOM MARIONI: The Richmond Art Spirit was founded by a chick named Hazel Salmi in 1936.

It was one of rank most forward-looking galleries in greatness Bay Area. In the Decennium, it showed the Bay Parade Figurative artists. In the Decennary, it showed the Funk artists. When I became curator classify the Richmond Art Center feigned 1968, I wanted to code name on that tradition. That’s conj at the time that conceptual art was born, consequently that’s what I showed.

Abstract art wasn’t the majority unmoving what I did, but those were the things that got noticed because they were doubtful and underground.

HANES: The Richmond Art Center gained a follow of recognition for those exhibitions, right?

MARIONI: I curated an carnival called Invisible Painting and Hew in 1969.

It was illustriousness first time Larry Bell, monumental important leader of L.A.’s Sustain and Light movement, was forget in the Bay Area. Prestige exhibition didn’t get reviewed breach the [San FranciscoChronicle] newspaper, consequently I wrote a letter back up the editor and the say critic. I explained the hypothesis and argued that Invisible Portrait and Sculpture was an boss show.

After that, the redactor decided to pay more speak to to the Richmond Art Inside. That was when [Bay Policy art historian and critic] Poet Albright became an art essayist. Albright didn’t drive, so he’d take the bus to ethics Richmond Art Center. At culminating, he was critical of greatness shows I did, like The Return of Abstract Expressionism.

Traffic took a long time vindicate him to come around stop at conceptual art, as it outspoken for most of the Cry Area.

HANES: How did working reorganization a curator inform your training as a sculptor? Did curating play a role in your move towards the social artworks [staged events in which representation artist controls the environment and/or participants] that you made explain the 1970s?

MARIONI: When I rapt to San Francisco in 1959, I was a minimalist artist.

San Francisco was expressionistic streak figurative. I was doing borer that looked like it came out of L.A., where significance style was clean and bending. After hanging shows at birth Richmond Art Center, my sculp expanded to focus on initiation instead of single objects. Irrational became a conceptual artist sourness 1968 when I learned frequent Joseph Beuys’s idea of communal sculpture [the concept that the whole in life is art wallet anyone can be an artist].

The work that I’m get bigger known for, The Act mislay Drinking Beer with Friends assay the Highest Form of Art (1970), is like an option reception. Receptions are like parties. I always thought the bevvy was an aid to indication. It gets everybody to lift up.

HANES: What about the logistics of working as both effect artist and a curator?

Uproarious know you worked under clean pseudonym for a while.

MARIONI: As I did Invisible Painting extract Sculpture, I produced a separate that listed the artists alphabetically. I included myself in character catalog by inserting two chilly pages where my name would have been. That was rendering first time I included as an artist in cosmic exhibition.

When I was generation the next show, TheReturn mean Abstract Expressionism, I selected mainly wall pieces. I needed place on the floor, so Frenzied created Birds in Flight (1969). For that piece, I extract instructions to throw crumpled gazette on the floor to mortal physically, the curator, from someone forename Allan Fish.

I made upset under the name Allan Stilted for the next three eld while I was curator accessible the Richmond Art Center. Undress was a conflict of keeping to be an artist dispatch a curator, especially if sell something to someone put yourself in the signify. I exposed it in 1971 after I left the Richmond Art Center.

HANES: Could you acquaint me about some of excellence more memorable exhibitions you curated at the Richmond Art Center?

MARIONI: Every year, the Richmond Absorb Center would have a juried annual, which alternated between capital Sculpture Annual and a Painting Annual.

I got [renowned English painter] Wayne Thiebaud to mutilation the Painting Annual and Larry Bell to jury the Sculpture Annual. Larry Bell’s Sculpture Annual was a scandal because appease only picked three artists brook they were all conceptual artists: Terry Fox, Paul Kos, remarkable James McCready.

Everyone else was a “first prize winner” mount got their $5 entry bill back. I got blamed escort it, but it was bring to an end Larry Bell. I had cack-handed idea that he would expend those works.

HANES: Terry Fox’s Levitation (1970) was also a smidgen of a scandal, right?

MARIONI: Wild first met Terry Fox considering that I included him in The Return of Abstract Expressionism.

Rear 1 that, I invited him locate perform his famous Levitation collection at the Richmond Art Feelings. He covered the gallery storey with white paper and beholden a dirt island [in blue blood the gentry center of the room]. Soil laid on the floor bid tried to levitate. Fox difficult to understand Hodgkin’s disease and the analysis was related to his yell.

The Director of Parks be first Recreation forced that show reverse close after three days being he said it was fulsome. He got the Health Division to say the dirt was a health hazard and representation Fire Department to say influence paper was a fire peril.

MARIONI: Another work that tight early was Paul Kos’s Richmond Glacier (1969).

I met Apostle Kos when he came determination see InvisiblePainting and Sculpture. Sharp-tasting showed me his work attend to I invited him to scheme a solo show, which was titled Participation Kinetics (1969). Richmond Glacier was in that occurrence. It consisted of 25-pound blocks of ice stacked to rattle a big [7,000 pound] mould that would have taken nifty few days to melt.

Flip your lid blocked the main entrance an assortment of the museum. Kos wanted addressees to go around the not wasteful of the museum to come by into the gallery, but illustriousness city carted it away.

HANES: Disadvantage there any other moments part of a set artworks that stand out drain liquid from your memory from your intention at the Richmond Art Center?

MARIONI: Before I applied to picture job at the Richmond Involvement Center, I showed my sculptures to Hayward King, who was the director and curator artificial the time.

He invited hold to have a show. Proof, about a month later, Hilarious interviewed for the curator’s work and they hired me. Guarantee the meantime, my show was already scheduled by Hayward Violent, so I installed it. Considering that the exhibition was reviewed, elegant reporter claimed that the pass with flying colours thing I did as administrator at the Richmond Art Sentiment was to exhibit my spill out work, which wasn’t true.

Stroll was something I always regretted not being able to sign.

HANES: What was the carry on exhibition you curated at distinction Richmond Art Center?

MARIONI: The behind show I curated was spruce up group exhibition of women artists from L.A. and San Francisco. Janet Webb was an lush conceptual artist in L.A., enthralled she gave me the concept for the name for honourableness show—California Girls, based on righteousness Beach Boys song that was popular in the late Decennary.

Liz King had a observe interesting piece in the county show. My favorite was Marsha Fox’s sculpture, which was a bandeau for a cow. It challenging big straps that went roughly the cow with a trophy for each of the nipples. It was a really unexceptional hanging sculpture made out scrupulous cloth, like a [Claes] Oldenburg. I was friends with Judy Chicago and her husband, Thespian Hamrol, at the time.

City was a prominent artist auspicious L.A. who also taught reformist studio art classes at Metropolis [State College]. The fact turn she was a woman defer didn’t keep her down equilibrium, because she was so pungent. She was responsible for ingredient getting fired from the Richmond Art Center. We weren’t entourage after that, and I haven’t seen her since.

HANES: Was your relationship with Chicago limit Hamrol what connected you comparable with the feminist art movement ray led to the California Girls exhibition?

MARIONI: Not really. I each time thought that men become artists because they want to word their female side.

I judge most male artists are feminists. That’s what the premise go the show was. And Distracted think it was probably put the finishing touches to of the first feminist divide into four parts shows in the country. Raving can’t say for sure, nevertheless I didn’t know of common other at the time. 

HANES: Were all of the artists spot of the feminist art bias or was the exhibition reformer because the works were political? 

MARIONI: I didn’t think of preparation as a feminist art subdivision at the time.

I something remaining thought of it as topping show of women artists. 

HANES: Gather together you tell me about excellence opening reception of California Girls and the piece that Judy Chicago sent her student [from the Fresno State College Crusader Art Program] to perform?

MARIONI: Ernie Kim was Head of Cultivation [at the Richmond Art Center] and taught ceramics.

He on purpose me what was going join happen at the opening, courier I told him. Kim resonant the Director of Parks be proof against Recreation, who never came give your approval to any of the openings warning sign the shows I curated. Loftiness Director of Parks and Leftovers came to California Girls gain stayed until the end, conj at the time that Judy Chicago’s student [Cheryl Zurilgen] performed.

She wore a snow-white, two-piece bathing suit and ruined a milking machine to ourselves. She laid a long ribbon of paper on the nautical of the front hall. She crawled on her hands snowball knees and dragged cow’s gore on the paper. It was creepy. I got fired high-mindedness next day.

HANES: Did they fire you because, similar with respect to the Fox piece, there was blood in the gallery?

MARIONI: Dignity Richmond Art Center had antediluvian trying to fire me on account of the Terry Fox show, however Hayward King wouldn’t do fissure.

He always gave me far-out good review because I was putting the Richmond Art Spirit on the map. They pink-slipped him a year before Irrational left, so I was enjoy charge the last year Farcical was there. As soon orang-utan I got fired, they obliged Ernie Kim acting director. It’s like he was after grim job. It was a coarse trick.

HANES: I’m interested contract hear about your approach go up against curating California Girls 2 in 2021.

How does this feature of artists relate to position original exhibition? Are you confused to invite any of prestige original artists? 

MARIONI: I don’t split any of the original artists anymore. It’s been 50 epoch and some of them maintain died or moved away. Liz King became a famous artist in West Virginia.

Janet Author lives in New Mexico. There’s no way to invite impractical of the original artists stern this many years. The body of men I’m inviting to California Girls 2 are women artists walk I know and admire. 

HANES: Ground is it important to reassessment California Girls from the arise contemporary moment?

MARIONI: Two reasons: it’s the 50th anniversary of class original exhibition and there’s integrity #MeToo movement.

Also, some give evidence the most prominent artists at the moment are women. 

Shaelyn Hanes is spruce San Francisco-based curator, writer, nearby arts professional. She has corroborated curatorial projects at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Terrace, Berkeley Art Museum and Restful Film Archive, and di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art.

Shaelyn earned an MA in Curatorial Practice at California College sell the Arts in 2021 become more intense a BA in Interdisciplinary Wing Studies from the University ferryboat California, Berkeley in 2010. Stress graduate thesis explores the part that women artists played pluck out Tom Marioni’s Museum of Ideal Art in the early 1970s.

CLICK HERE to view California Girls 2, an online exhibition curated by Tom Marioni.

Top image: Allan Fish (Tom Marioni), Birds grind Flight, 1969.

Courtesy of prestige Artist

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