Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Jaydra Johnson, Brittney Frantece, Blessing Greer Mathurin, and Quintessa Matranga pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Robert Armstrong & Robert Crumb: Elderly Cartoonists Show Their Work
Cushion Works, San Francisco, CA
April 26 – June 14, 2025
I went to the opening of Elderly Cartoonists Show Their Work and it was packed. The selection of works felt like a mish mash, but it didn’t matter. The pieces were all pulled from works that had been traded between the artists over the years: drawings, a colorfully painted banjo, a vitrine with sketchbooks, and other ephemera. This is a nice tradition that artists still keep up and is probably the only way any of them would ever be able to afford their friends’ art. Seeing a Crumb drawing is always extremely pleasurable. There is one woman wading waist deep in a body of water that feels imprinted on my eyelids. It ignites the part of me that just wanted to draw, that regrettable gateway to this nefarious industry called contemporary art. I wasn’t familiar with Robert Armstrong before, but was very tickled to hear that he was being credited for inventing the term “couch potato.” I think that word sums up the energy in the room accurately. Nebbish, lackadaisical, and original.
Reflection: What drawing makes you want to draw?
Rafael Delacruz: Montage
Altman Siegel, San Francisco, CA
April 24 – May 31, 2025
I helped to organize this show so of course I’m biased, but I think Rafael is the best contemporary painter working today and everyone who hasn’t seen the show yet better hurry up. They have an erratic energy, a frantic kind of pulsing, that is barely containable by canvas or stretcher bars. Some of these compositions tilt across the picture plane at a dutch angle, a cinematic term, forcing the viewer to turn the head sideways or crane the neck to take them in. Moments of legibility bounce in and out of focus through the paintings. A bicycle wheel, an apple core, a coffee mug, a bird, all reduced to shape and energy bubble up in a soup of blues, pinks, and chalky white. Blocks of bright color unite disparate areas of the canvas, obstructing the opportunity for a fast read, creating a virtual map. In the back room the video installation includes a 9 minute 3D film, a six foot, three-panel pastel-colored painting on black bean dyed canvas, and various works on paper under glass on a table. The monitor blocks about ⅙ of the total canvas, and is housed on a makeshift wooden surface painted the rust color of the Golden Gate Bridge. The video follows two bikers across San Francisco and Marin, from the headlands to Ocean Beach, a golden, breezy vision of the perfect day.
Reflection: What would you make paint out of?