Exhibition remembers how SWC arts faculty sparked a revolution

For a brief, shining moment in the early 1960s, nascent and tiny Southwestern College was the focal point of a flourishing art scene that would eventually be felt around the world and produce a global superstar.

In the 1960s, though, only the artists seemed to think that was a good thing. Administrators, faculty and community members often expressed outrage. Complaints were rampant. Controversies were inevitable.

Today, memories of those turbulent times are gone but not quite forgotten. Oceanside’s Museum of Art has given aficionados an opportunity to finally appreciate these rebels with its exhibition, “Spitting in the Wind: Art From the End of the Line.” It features former SWC art instructors Bob Matheny, John Baldessari and Russell Baldwin, as well as local artist Richard Allen Morris. Matheny and Baldwin became regional art names, Morris an international star, Baldessari a global phenomenon – which he remains to this day.

Curator Dave Hampton said the quartet produced artwork that fueled the major contemporary art of the 1960s and shaped today’s San Diego art community.

Hampton said his motivation to curate the exhibition grew out of his friendships with Matheny, Morris and Baldwin. He said learning about the artists created a picture of a complicated and compelling scene.

“Their stories were really fascinating,” he said. “I felt like I had never heard any of this. People weren’t talking about this really interesting history.”

In late 1950s the creative lives of these artists overlapped. They were regularly exhibited at the same galleries, together and in one-person shows. They formed friendships and taught at the same institutions. From 1965-66 each was profiled in San Diego and Point Magazine and had a solo exhibition at the La Jolla Museum of Art (now the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego).

Matheny was hired to teach art at SWC in 1961. Later that year he established the Art Gallery at Chula Vista High School when SWC still shared its facilities. In 1964 he helped an architect design SWC’s gallery.

“I asked for certain things,” he said. “Moveable walls, electrical outlets on the floor and that ceiling, where you can move panels around. Then I made sure there was a storeroom, a place to store art in the back of the gallery, in the same building.”

Matheny was gallery director for more than 15 years, taught at SWC for 30 and built SWC’s art collection.

Baldessari taught at SWC from 1966-68, was the first to be shown at the gallery and went on to become a reluctant, world-famous art superstar.

“We had the liberty of putting on events that we thought would be fun for everybody,” he said.

Baldwin and Morris were also shown at the SWC gallery in its formative years. Baldwin taught at SWC for one semester in the spring of 1965 before moving to Palomar College, where he established its art gallery and collection. He said in interviews he had hoped to parallel in North County what Matheny had done at SWC. When Palomar’s gallery opened in 1965, Matheny was the first artist shown there.

Morris taught art classes for children at the La Jolla Museum of Art, along with Baldessari, but never taught at the college level. Matheny said Morris was a full-time artist, who worked mostly at bookstores, just scraping by. Matheny said Morris never married or learned to drive.

“He would live in his studios and was like a starving artist, a bohemian in that sense of commitment,” Matheny said. “You might say he married art.”

Over the past 10 years Morris has found acclaim in Europe, particularly in Germany.

Baldwin died in 2008, but the other artists — all in their 80s —still create. Matheny recently said he has been busier as an artist in retirement than when he was teaching.

Baldessari continues his reign as an influential art superstar who currently has an exhibit in New York at the Marian Goodman Gallery.

On display at the Oceanside Museum are abstract paintings, sculptures, assemblage and collages, as well as promotional posters for their exhibitions. There is also a video of Baldessari’s now infamous “Cremation Project,” where in 1970 he burned all the paintings he made from 1953 to 1966.

Hampton said their contributions to San Diego’s contemporary art community have grown foggy over time and cannot be overemphasized.

“What I would love people to come away with is more of an awareness of our own amazing and rich art history,” he said, “because it has sort of been buried under the rug.”

“Spitting in the Wind” references a 1994 article published in the San Diego Union Tribune, titled, “Tiny Southwestern had huge impact on ‘60s San Diego.” In it, Baldessari is quoted, saying: “But in retrospect, Southwestern College was very important, even though a lot we did was just spitting into the wind.”

Hampton said Matheny and the early art faculty at SWC had something very special going on.

“It’s interesting to learn about this history that took place in the very rooms, streets, campuses and museums that we kind of take for granted,” he said.