The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 132

ARTISTS' BIOGRAPHIES

Arneson, Robert
American; (b. 1930, Benicia, CA; d. 1992, Benicia, CA)
1958 MFA Mills College, Oakland, CA
1954 BA California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA
1949–1951 College of Marin, Kentfield, CA

Arneson began his influential tenure at the University of California, Davis in 1962 as

SELECTED REFERENCES:

a professor of sculpture after completing his MFA at Mills College where he studied

Fairbanks, Jonathan L., and

under Tony Prieto. Informed by Expressionist and neo-Dada artistic tendencies,

Kenworth W. Moffett. Directions in

Arneson launched his prolific career with irreverent sculptural ceramics—banal
objects formed from clay and often anthropomorphized with body parts—that
positioned him as a central figure in California’s “Funk” movement. The rejection
of traditionally constructed functional objects in favor of ordinary items turned
confrontational was a central tenet of the Funk art movement. Arneson’s work
grew more reflective marked by a period of self-portraits in the 1970s before
taking on a political tenor in the 1980s most notably with his Ground Zero series
that included ten sculptures and ten drawings portending nuclear warfare.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ROBERT ARNESON WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

Doggie Bob

Joint (study for Sarcophagus)

Kangas, Matthew. Craft and

McTwigan, Michael. “A Portrait

Concept: The Rematerialization

of our Time.” American Ceramics

of the Art Object. New York:

5 no. 3 (1987): 35–43.

Midmarch Arts Press, 2006.

“Robert Arneson: Ground Zero.”
Ceramics Monthly 32, no. 9
(November 1984): 36–37.

13 0

Contemporary American Ceramics.
Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1984.
Neff, Terry Ann R., ed. An
Uncommon Vision: The Des
Moines Art Center. Des Moines:
Des Moines Art Center, 1998.
Racz, Imogen. Contemporary Crafts.
Oxford; New York: Berg, 2009.