Michael Zakian

Last updated

...my primary goal is education. I’m not just showing beautiful things to be admired for their own inherent beauty. I always emphasize that this art was made to convey certain ideas or make a particular point . . . we use our eyes all the time, but often we really don’t see what is in front of us.

Michael Zakian, Pepperdine University, 2015 [2]

In 1995, Zakian became the director of the Frederick R. Weisman Museum at Pepperdine University. He also was an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University's Seaver College. [2]

Later life and legacy

Zakian died in January 2020. [2]

Zakian's papers are held in the collection of Pepperdine University. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Diebenkorn</span> American painter

Richard Diebenkorn was an American painter and printmaker. His early work is associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s he began his extensive series of geometric, lyrical abstract paintings. Known as the Ocean Park paintings, these paintings were instrumental to his achievement of worldwide acclaim.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elmer Bischoff</span> American painter

Elmer Nelson Bischoff was a visual artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bischoff, along with Richard Diebenkorn and David Park, was part of the post-World War II generation of artists who started as abstract painters and found their way back to figurative art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weisman Art Museum</span> Art museum in Minneapolis, MN

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum is an art museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1934 as University Gallery, the museum was originally housed in an upper floor of the university's Northrop Auditorium. In 1993, the museum moved to its current building, designed by the Canadian-born American architect Frank Gehry, and renamed in honor of art collector and philanthropist Frederick R. Weisman. Widely known as a "modern art museum," its 20,000+ acquisitions include large collections of Marsden Hartley, Alfred Maurer, Charles Biederman, Native American Mimbres pottery, and traditional Korean furniture.

The Bay Area Figurative Movement was a mid-20th Century art movement made up of a group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area who abandoned working in the prevailing style of Abstract Expressionism in favor of a return to figuration in painting during the 1950s and onward into the 1960s. Spanning two decades, this art movement is often broken down into three groups, or generations: the First Generation, the Bridge Generation, and the Second Generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Schueler</span> American painter

Jon Schueler was an American painter known for his large-scale, abstract compositions which evoke nature. Recognized first as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist he lived in New York City and in Mallaig, Scotland, inspired by the dramatic skies over the Sound of Sleat. His work is included in international collections such as the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Edinburgh), Whitney Museum of American Art, and the National Gallery of Australia (Canberra).

Charles Arnoldi, also known as Chuck Arnoldi and as Charles Arthur Arnoldi is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born April 10, 1946, in Dayton, Ohio.

Henry Pierre Villierme was an American Californian painter associated with abstract expressionism and the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Villierme was considered one of the "Second Generation" members of the Bay Area Figurative Movement. Villierme first rose to prominence with a series of successful exhibitions in the late 1950s. From the 1960s to the 1980s Villierme continued to paint and sculpt in his studio, and in the late 1980s returned to public exhibitions.

Carolyn Mary Kleefeld is an English-American author, poet, and visual artist. She is the author of twenty-five books, has a line of fine art cards, and has had numerous gallery and museum awards and exhibitions between 1981 and the present, in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other major cities.

William Theophilus Brown was an American artist. He became prominent as a member of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.

The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation is a non-profit arts foundation located on North Carolwood Drive in the Holmby Hills district of Los Angeles, California. Modern and contemporary artwork in the Frederick R. Weisman collection are displayed in a "living with art—house museum" context, with guided public tours by appointment with the foundation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael B. Gallagher</span> American painter

Michael B. Gallagher is an American painter whose work is associated with Abstract Illusionism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">American Figurative Expressionism</span> American art movement

American Figurative Expressionism is a 20th-century visual art style or movement that first took hold in Boston, and later spread throughout the United States. Critics dating back to the origins of Expressionism have often found it hard to define. One description, however, classifies it as a Humanist philosophy, since it's human-centered and rationalist. Its formal approach to the handling of paint and space is often considered a defining feature, too, as is its radical, rather than reactionary, commitment to the figure.

Peter Seitz Adams is an American artist. His body of work focuses on landscapes and seascapes created en plein air in oil or pastel as well as enigmatic figure and still-life paintings. He is noted for his colorful, high-key palette and broad brushwork. Adams has held numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums, including throughout California, the Western United States, and on the East Coast in Philadelphia, Vermont, and New York. Adams is the longest serving President of the California Art Club and has served on its board of directors in Pasadena, California from 1993 to 2018. He is also a writer on subjects relating to historic artists for the California Art Club Newsletter, as well as for a number of the organization's exhibition catalogs.

Walter Kuhlman (1918–2009) was a 20th-century American painter and printmaker. In the late 1940s and 1950s, he was a core member of the San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism. He later worked in a representational style related to American Figurative Expressionism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ezio Martinelli</span> American painter

Ezio Martinelli was an American artist who belonged to the New York School Abstract Expressionist artists, a leading art movement of the post-World War II era.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art (California)</span> Art museum in Malibu, California

The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art is an art gallery on the campus of Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The museum was founded in 1992 with a $1.5 million gift from Frederick R. Weisman, a noted art collector and philanthropist. The museum exhibits art from around the world, but focuses on art from California.

George Stillman was an American abstract expressionist artist and member of the San Francisco Bay Area group known as the "Sausalito Six".

Contemporary-Traditional Art refers to an art produced at the present period of time that reflects the current culture by utilizing classical techniques in drawing, painting, and sculpting. Practicing artists are mainly concerned with the preservation of time-honored skills in creating works of figurative and representational forms of fine art as a means to express human emotions and experiences. Subjects are based on the aesthetics of balancing external reality with the intuitive, internal conscience driven by emotion, philosophical thought, or the spirit. The term is used broadly to encompass all styles and practices of representational art, such as Classicism, Impressionism, Realism, and Plein Air painting. Technical skills are founded in the teachings of the Renaissance, Academic Art, and American Impressionism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Miyasaki</span> American painter

George Joji Miyasaki (1935-2013) was a painter and printmaker active in the abstract expressionist movement. He was born in Kalopa, Hawaii and moved to California in 1953. He received a B.F.A. and a B.A.Ed. from the California College of the Arts in 1957 and an M.F.A. from the same institution in 1958, studying under Richard Diebenkorn and Nathan Oliveira. After teaching at the California College of the Arts and Stanford University, he was appointed a full professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964. In 1960, Willem de Kooning visited Miyasaki's studio to try his hand at lithography. De Kooning, with the help of Miyasaki and Nathan Oliveira, created at least two abstract lithographs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Susan Landauer</span> American art historian and curator (1958–2020)

Susan Landauer (1958–2020) was an American art historian, author, and curator of modern and contemporary art based in California. She worked for three decades, both independently and as chief curator of the San Jose Museum of Art (SJMA) and co-founder of the San Francisco Center for the Book. Landauer was known for championing movements and idioms of California art, overlooked artists of the past, women artists, and artists of color. She organized exhibitions that gained national attention; among the best known are: "The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism", "Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement", and retrospectives of Elmer Bischoff, Roy De Forest, and Franklin Williams. Her work was recognized with awards and grants from the International Association of Art Critics, National Endowment for the Arts and Henry Luce Foundation, among others. Critics, including Roberta Smith and Christopher Knight, praised her scholarship on San Francisco Abstract Expressionism, De Forest, Richard Diebenkorn, and Bernice Bing, among others, as pioneering. In 2021, Art in America editor and curator Michael Duncan said that "no other scholar has contributed as much to the study of California art." Landauer died of lung cancer at age 62 in Oakland on December 19, 2020.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Michael Zakian Papers". Online Archive of California. Pepperdine University. Retrieved 11 July 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Today, Fine Art (21 January 2020). "Honoring the Life of Museum Director Michael Zakian". Fine Art Connoisseur. Retrieved 11 July 2022.
Michael Zakian
Born(1957-04-07)April 7, 1957
DiedJanuary 20, 2020(2020-01-20) (aged 62)
NationalityAmerican
Academic background
Alma mater Columbia University School of the Arts