Mission School - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Mission School is an art movement

Art movement

An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific common philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a restricted period of time, or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined within a number of years...

of the 1990s and 2000s, centered in the Mission District

Mission District, San Francisco, California

The Mission District, also commonly called "The Mission", is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, USA, originally known as "the Mission lands" meaning the lands belonging to the sixth Alta California mission, Mission San Francisco de Asis...

of San Francisco, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

History and characteristics

This movement is generally considered to have emerged in the early 1990s around a core group of artists who attended (or were associated with) San Francisco Art Institute

San Francisco Art Institute

San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...

. The term "Mission School", however, was not coined until 2002, in a San Francisco Bay Guardian

San Francisco Bay Guardian

The San Francisco Bay Guardian is a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. The paper is owned mostly by its publisher, Bruce B...

article by Glen Helfand.

The Mission School is closely aligned with the larger lowbrow

Lowbrow (art movement)

Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures. It is also...

art movement, and can be considered to be a regional expression of that movement. Artists of the Mission School take their inspiration from the urban, bohemian

Bohemianism

Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...

, "street" culture of the Mission District and are strongly influenced by mural

Mural

A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...

and graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

art, comic and cartoon

Cartoon

A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...

art, and folk art

Folk art

Folk art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring tradespeople. In contrast to fine art, folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic....

forms such as sign painting

Sign painting

Sign painting is the act of taking a specific kind of brush, and with various kinds of paint, and applying it to a 2 or 3 dimensional surfaces creating letters, forms and/or symbols....

and hobo art. These artists are also noted for use of non-traditional artistic materials, such as house paint, spray paint, correction fluid

Correction fluid

A correction fluid is an opaque, white fluid applied to paper to mask errors in text. Once dried, it can be written over. It is typically packaged in small bottles, and the lid has an attached brush which dips into the bottle...

, ballpoint pens, scrapboard, and found objects. Gallery work by these artists is often displayed using the "cluster method", in which a number of individual works (sometimes by different artists) are clustered closely together on a gallery wall, rather than the traditional gallery display method of widely separating individual works.

Street art

Street art

Street art is any art developed in public spaces — that is, "in the streets" — though the term usually refers to unsanctioned art, as opposed to government sponsored initiatives...

has always been an important part of the Mission School aesthetic. Several Mission School artists crossed over into San Francisco's burgeoning graffiti art scene of the 1990s, notably Barry McGee

Barry McGee

Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.-Life and career:McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South...

(who wrote under the name "Twist"), Ruby Neri (a.k.a. "Reminisce

Reminisce (artist)

Reminisce is a sculptor, painter, and former street artist from San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, known for her evocative portrayal of horses.- Biography :...

"), and Margaret Kilgallen

Margaret Kilgallen

Margaret Leisha Kilgallen was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement....

(a.k.a. "Meta").

Artists

Artists considered to be part of the Mission School (past or present) have included:

Barry McGee
Barry McGee
Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.-Life and career:McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South...
Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Kilgallen
Margaret Leisha Kilgallen was a San Francisco Bay Area artist. Though a contemporary artist, her work showed a strong influence from folk art. She was considered a central figure in the Bay Area Mission School art movement....
Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson
Chris Johanson is an American painter and street artist. He is a member of San Francisco's Mission School art movement.- Biography :Johanson was born in suburban San Jose, California in 1968. He has no formal training in art, learning some technique by painting skateboards and houses...
Alicia McCarthy
Ruby Neri
Rigo 23
Rigo 23
Rigo 23 , born Ricardo Gouveia, is a Portuguese muralist, painter, and political artist residing in San Francisco, California...
Aaron Noble
Clare Rojas
Jo Jackson
Scott Williams
Scott Williams (artist)
Scott Williams is an American artist best known for his work with stencils.Williams was born in Los Angeles, California, and grew up in Santa Barbara. He began painting with watercolor in high school, and studied art and anthropology at Santa Barbara City College, Cabrillo College, and Sonoma...
Bill Daniel
Bill Daniel (Filmmaker)
Bill Daniel is an American experimental documentary film artist, photographer, film editor, and cinematographer. He is also an installation artist, curator and former zine publisher...

The profile of these artists was raised considerably by the inclusion of the work of Barry McGee in the 2001 Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

and the works of Chris Johanson and Margaret Kilgallen in the 2002 Whitney Biennial

Whitney Biennial

The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...

New Mission School

In 2003, not long after the term "Mission School" was coined, a panel at the Commonwealth Club of California

Commonwealth Club of California

The Commonwealth Club of California is a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization based in Northern California. Founded in 1903, it is the oldest and largest public affairs forum in the United States...

named several emerging San Francisco artists as constituting a "New Mission School". These artists included Andrew Schoultz, Dave Warnke, Sirron Norris, Neonski, Ricardo, Damon Soule, Misk, and NoMe, though many of these artists do not embrace the "Mission School" label.

Criticism

The term Mission School has been criticized for being too geographically specific (many artists outside of San Francisco share this aesthetic, while others living in the Mission District do not), while at the same time being a vague catch-all, with many artists who are referred to as Mission School having a hard time seeing how they are part of this "school".

Galleries and other venues

Galleries, museums, and sites closely associated with the Mission School include:

Clarion Alley Mural Project
Adobe Books
Southern Exposure Gallery
Southern Exposure (art space)
-About:Southern Exposure is a not-for-profit arts organization and alternative art space founded in 1974 in the Mission District of San Francisco, California....
The Luggage Store
The LAB
New Langton Arts
New Langton Arts
-About:New Langton Arts was a not-for-profit arts organization focusing on contemporary art founded in 1975 in San Francisco, California. Part of the first wave of alternative art spaces in the US, New Langton Arts was a leader in exhibiting new media forms in art, and involving artists in the...
Jack Hanley Gallery
Fecal Face Dot Gallery
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is a multi-disiplinary contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that celebrates local, national, and international artists and the Bay Area's diverse...
Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects
Deitch Projects was a contemporary art gallery in New York City founded by Jeffrey Deitch.-History:Since opening with a performance by Vanessa Beecroft in February 1996, the gallery has presented nearly one hundred and eighteen solo exhibitions and projects, ten thematic exhibitions, and a few...
Collision Art Space
Four Walls

External links

Fecal Face Dot Com – Bay Area arts website focusing on the current generation of Mission School artists
Jackson, Stephanie Lee. "Stories – Opinions", 2001-2005. Includes biographical and anecdotal sketches of Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen, and Alicia McCarthy
"Spray Can Writers Erupt" by Timothy W Drescher, Shaping San Francisco Digital Library.
Bonetti, David. "The young at art", San Francisco Examiner, June 18, 1997.
Smith, Roberta. "Art in Review: 'Widely Unknown'", The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, December 14, 2001.
Drescher, Timothy W. "Clarion Alley and Post-modernism", Shaping San Francisco Digital Library.
Rapoport, Lynn. "Wall space: The Clarion Alley Mural Project uses public art to paint a home", San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 23, 2002.
Pollack, Barbara. "The New Visionaries", ARTnews
ARTnews
ARTnews is an arts magazine based in New York, founded by James Clarence Hyde in 1902 as Hyde’s Weekly Art News. It is published 11 times a year.ARTnews covers all art, from ancient to Post-modernism...

, December 2003.
Chennault, Sam. "Graffiti to Gallery", SF Weekly
SF Weekly
SF Weekly is a free alternative weekly newspaper in San Francisco, California. The newspaper, distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area every Wednesday, is published by Village Voice Media, a 16-paper alt weekly newspaper chain that also includes the New York City Village Voice and the Los...

, September 1, 2004.
transit gallery - gallery of Mission street art