The concurrent exhibitions, “Jean Conner: Collage” at the San Jose Museum of Art and “Jean Conner: Inner Garden” at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, mark the first solo museum outings in the artist’s six-decade career.
Though the painter and collage artist Jean Conner worked alongside such seminal Bay Area artists as her husband Bruce, Joan Brown and Jay DeFeo, she’s seldom mentioned in the same breath. That’s changing. The concurrent exhibitions, “Jean Conner: Collage” at the San Jose Museum of Art and “Jean Conner: Inner Garden” at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, mark the first solo museum outings in the artist’s six-decade career, promising much-belated recognition.
Collage allows artists to create photographic fictions — a paradox Conner clearly delights in and excels at. Some of Conner’s collages are densely layered, others sparse, but all possess the joyful quality of an artist poking at the boundaries of her medium. Conner does so best in a controlled format, combining a few elements exactingly, and the pieces that suffer do so when they become overwhelmed by the inclusion of too many elements.
“Blue Pyramid,” 1970, is another standout, though the titular landmark is hardly the center of attention. This piece, reminiscent of a vintage movie poster, exemplifies Conner’s eye for composition. Two photographs of women — a large, floating head in the background and a reclining figure in the foreground — intertwine, the folds of their garments making it difficult to distinguish where one begins and the other ends.
The big, bright watercolor, “Aztec Warrior,” 1990, which verges on total abstraction, conveys more of a feeling than an image of the titular subject, in a deluge of feathery red and orange brush strokes. “Red Gladiolas,” c. 1968, which is more representational, maintains a dreamy haze in its wet depiction of bright red flowers against a dark background, also evoking a mood, this one somber and quiet.
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