Leah Garchik Feb. 24, 2016 Updated: Feb. 25, 2016 9:17 a.m.
Prowling through the art department at a preview of the Oakland Museum's White Elephant Sale, I was struck by a weird but confidently painted portrait of twin girls eating ice cream sundaes. It was propped up on a shelf, leaning against a wall, and next to the painting organizers had hung a photograph of the Brown twins, Marian and Vivian.
When I asked about the painting, in which the twins were regarded with a kind of Diane Arbus-like loving-but-ogling distance, Ina Pavey, Anne Chan and other volunteers told me a story and showed me more works.
Last fall, WES organizers were contacted by Mary Smartt, an East Bay real estate agent who had a listing for a house in Richmond. Its owner was Raul Ruiz, who had been first a social worker, then a builder of houses. He was suffering from Parkinson's disease and he was going to move into assisted living. And in preparation for the move, he wanted to donate his paintings — never shown, never sold — to the sale. A truck was dispatched; it turned out there were at least 200 works.
Some paintings were on stretched canvas, others on canvas boards, many of those with images painted on both sides. The paintings depicted nudes, animals, scenes with classical and historic themes. Stacks of Ruiz's works were crammed into the art department's storage area. They were all signed with his name and the date 9.15. Obviously, Ruiz had done that just before the truck arrived to take the paintings away.
In December, before he made the move, Ruiz ended his life. I couldn't find any online obituary; a family member said they hadn't talked in years.
The paintings, however, remain his mark in this world. I walked around the sale for a bit and went back, contemplating buying the portrait of the twins. It was already sold.
The sale will be March 5 and 6. More information: www.whiteelephantsale.org.
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The Curators' Circle of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art welcomed artist Ed Ruscha to the Herbst Theatre on Feb. 17 for an onstage conversation with museum director Neal Benezra. That theater, of course, is in the renovated Veterans War Memorial Building; the space four stories above was the site of SFMOMA upon its founding in 1935, and the site, in 1982, of one of Ruscha's first major shows.
SFMOMA owns 40 works by Ruscha, who is a member of the museum's Board of Trustees. Benezra and Ruscha know each other well, and the artist isn't fond of looking "into the rear-view mirror rather than into the future," said Benezra. So after showing images of work made over the years, the two talked about the future, specifically Ruscha's plans to create "a body of work simultaneously," to work on many pieces at once.
"Ed Ruscha and the Great American West" opens at the de Young Museum on July 16.
P.S.: The reception after the conversation was in the just-renovated and restored Green Room. On a tour of the building a few months ago, I'd learned that great care had been taken to paint the room in just the shade of green that it had been originally. But for this occasion, it was bathed in purple light; you couldn't tell that it had been green at all. I think that's artistic license.