Carlos Villa at the Asian and Elsewhere

The Asian Art Museum's new exhibit, Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision, is being trumpeted as "the first major museum retrospective dedicated to the work of a Filipino American artist."

Carlos Villa was also a San Francisco homeboy, born in 1936 and raised in the Tenderloin. There is an utterly fascinating 1995 interview with the artist for the Smithsonian Institution by Paul Karlstrom that runs for 69 pages (click here). I ended up reading the whole thing because it captures a Bay Area art world that is literally disappearing with the closure of the San Francisco Art Institute and possible closure of Mills College in Oakland, the two art schools Villa attended at a wildly vibrant time in the late 50s/early 60s, with teachers like Diebenkorn and Bischoff and fellow students like Joan Brown and Robert Arneson. (Pictured above is Ritual, 1971.)

He lived in poverty with his family in a basement apartment and was restricted by race from most neighborhoods besides Chinatown and the Fillmore District, but he had good grades and was accepted to Lowell High before enlisting in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. With his GI Bill, he enrolled at the California School of Fine Arts on Russian Hill which was renamed the San Francisco Art Institute in 1961, just as he was graduating and going on to Mills College. He followed his beloved cousin and fellow artist Leo Valledor to New York City in 1963, where they both had successful runs in the Minimalist movement. Villa burnt out in Manhattan after six years, and a bad romantic breakup along with substance abuse spurred him into a return to San Francisco. (Pictured above is My Roots, 1971.)

He was offered a teaching post at his alma mater, the SF Art Institute, and dived into Bay Area ethnic social justice movements of the time, while his art veered from minimalism into artistic shamanism. (Pictured above is Maturing, 1980.)

The materials for Maturing, by the way, are acrylic, feathers, mirror fragments, Rhoplex acrylic binder, and blood on unstretched canvas. The blood, he mentions in the Smithsonian interview, was bought in Chinatown and mixed with acrylic.

From all accounts, Villa was an inspiring teacher, organizing legendary performance art happenings and gallery shows for other artists. In a small room, there are a few pieces inspired by him, starting with Chatsilog Revisited, 2010/2022, by the Mail Order Brides (Eliza O. Barrios, Reanne Estrada, Jennifer K. Wofford).

Across the way is the working Karaoke jeepney, TNT Traysickel, 2019-2022, by Michael Acega and Paulo Asuncion.

This exhibit originated earlier this year at the Newark (NJ) Museum of Art and it looks like a great installation (click here for their 360-degree tour). Newark's exhibit is a retrospective of Villa from his 1960s minimalist sculptures through his entire, eclectic career. San Francisco decided to break up this exhibit into three different installations at three different institutions and the result is scattershot. The Asian Art Museum features one confusing room of work from the 70s, and two blocks away the San Francisco Art Commission Main Gallery is displaying a confusing collection of work from the same period.

The SFAC Main Gallery is open for what I think of as Junior League society hours, which means it's open to the public from Wednesday through Saturday, noon to five. In my experience, there are never any visitors because very few people even know the gallery exists.

The final installation of the trio, dedicated to his early work, was scheduled to open at the San Francisco Art Institute in September, but that ancient institution bit the dust last week. Villa deserves better from his hometown.