The Government Press Office, Israel/Courtesy

In “To Build & Be Built: Kibbutz History,” the Contemporary Jewish Museum investigates the social movement that redefined Jewish life in the modern era. The exhibit, a simple display on one wall of the CJM, traces the history of the kibbutz movement with photos of kibbutz life and descriptions of the early settlements, communal culture and the kibbutz today. The timeline begins at the very beginning: “Since their exile from the land of Israel almost two thousand years ago, the Jewish people have prayed and worked for a return to the Promised Land.” It goes on to tell the story of the pioneers who came to the land of Israel to realize their utopian dream.

“Kibbutz” literally means “gathering” in Hebrew. In fact, gathering is the central tenet of the movement, which emphasizes “cooperation, determination, and innovation,” as explained in the museum introduction. However, the explanation continues: While those tenets determine the function of kibbutzim, they were not the fundamental reasons for the movement’s existence. Rather, the concept of the kibbutz was founded upon the utopian musings of modern socialist Jews who saw their tradition and people as having been removed from their foundation — the Land of Israel — for too long. These thinkers envisioned a “new” kind of Jewish society that returned to the fundamentals of Jewish existence. The kibbutznik dream was of Jews who were strong and tied to their land not just through their heritage but also through the physical labor they devoted to it.

In fact, these kibbutz ideals find their origins in another movement that existed long before the concept of the kibbutz: Zionism. The very concept of a place where Jews could be festive, productive, proud and free was originally a Zionist thought, and the reality of holidays such as Passover and Shavuot — which had traditionally meant heightened violence against Jews in the Diaspora — coming to be the most celebrated holidays at kibbutzim was the dream of Zionists who sought self-determination and a proud existence for Jewish people. However, because the majority of the first kibbutzim were doctrinally antireligious, the celebrations of these holidays were nationalistic and ideological, with religious aspects of the holidays often replaced with “references to the power of the community, the land, and labor,” as the exhibit points out.

These priorities are clearly expressed in the cultural production that has emerged from kibbutzim. “New” Hebrew folk tunes for community singing events, the hora — a traditional Jewish circle dance — and modest artistic performances in the dining hall were fit for all to enjoy and take part in. These artistic expressions relate directly to the intention of returning to the simple “folk” culture that kibbutzniks felt was lost in the hyperintellectual urban communities from which they came. (You can hear some of the classic songs in headphones as you look at the pictures in the exhibit.)

All in all, this simple experience of photos, historical outline and music gives a surprisingly deep picture of the kibbutz as an entity, social movement, national feature and concept. Seeing a photo of people sorting oranges from 1934 takes on tremendously more meaning when one is listening to the simple tunes of the kibbutz songs and connecting that image of working people to the concepts of Zionism, utopia, self-determination and the return of people to their land and to the fundamentals of their heritage. Moreover, “To Build & Be Built” makes for a fantastic starting point for seeing the rest of the museum, which is also showing “Work in Progress: Considering Utopia.” This exhibition mainly features the work of kibbutz artists who investigate the Jewish concept of utopia and what it means, particularly regarding the kibbutz and the foundation of Jewish utopian thought from which the movement gains its values.

Contact AJ Kantor at akantor@dailycal.org.

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Warehouse 416

Warehouse 416 brings together Oakland artists and entrepreneurs in an open, creative space. At Friday’s opening party for “Town Business,” be on the lookout for photographer Lauren Crew, who specializes in gorgeous, intimate portraits, and Doug Rhodes, whose acrylic and mixed-media surrealist pieces draw inspiration from humanity’s ability to understand Mother Nature. If you get hungry, grab some falafel and boozy cupcakes from LIBA and Bump City Bakery to satisfy your craving. With dj fflood as the backdrop to this mesh of local innovation and creativity, it’s sure to be a good time.

Mercury 20

Jill McLennan trespassed through construction zones and graffiti-plastered urban areas for the sake of art. In her Mercury 20 exhibit, she addresses the relationship between modernity and untamed nature, delving into the tensions of daily life through oil-on-canvas paintings. Some pieces depict cranes in gritty city scenes stripped of natural landscape. As McLennan said of her work on her website, her artwork depicts “human society throughout the development of industry and technology.” The artist will be at the gallery for Saturday Stroll at 4 p.m. to further discuss these two elements of society.

Vessel Gallery

Combining the motions of everyday life with visual imagery of subatomic movement, “Co-Motion,” Vessel Gallery’s newest creative installment, tells a dualistic story that draws a parallel between daily activities and the invisible world of physics. Artists Cheryl Calleri and Thekla Hammond have collaborated with musician Armando Mafufo for the installation to bring a moving video production to the gallery. Images reflected onto moving plexiglass panels evoke a kaleidoscope-in-an-urban-jungle effect. Though the tandem installation showcases the collaboration process, the individual artists also have singular shows that range from expressions on the nervous system to memory snapshots.

Aggregate Space Gallery

Just as the French philosopher Voltaire viewed the ideal man as a “noble savage,” artist Brynda Glazier understands that man lives agreeably with nature, science and poetry. Her Star-Wars-meets-Pokemon sculptures at Aggregate Space Gallery are full-sized ceramic figures that illustrate human intimacy. Glazier, who earned her Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010, believes her work “bridges the uncertainties related to utopian ideals and the dystopian qualm by challenging the societal standards of beauty and the sublime,” as she expressed on her website.

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Melanie Chan/Staff

The combined works of photographer Richard Misrach and landscape architect Kate Orff in The David Brower Center’s exhibition of “Petrochemical America” portray a haunting reflection on the destruction caused by industrial growth in America. Focusing on the polluted stretch of the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the two highlight the harmful potential our “Petrochemical American” identity has to spread throughout the nation and, in turn, the world. Misrach’s collection of 12 photographs mirrors the evocative scenes found in Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild”: rising water lines, shacks dispersed on marshes and government abandonment in favor of chemical industries.

In this 1998 series of photographs, Misrach reveals abandoned towns, homes and schools that lie within feet of the noxious plants and concealed barrels of toxic waste and extensive pipes that cut across the marshes, destroying ecological systems to compensate for a growing oil market. The pipes and canals that run across the wetlands are only the most apparent signs that the Delta ecosystem is being destroyed due to human petrochemical endeavors.

Misrach holds that the communities of this region will continue to receive the brunt of the pollution if the United States continues its preoccupation with the oil industry. A place once rich with culture has been reduced to an area in which industries feel comfortable abandoning their waste and turning a blind eye.

While each of these photographs captures a specific moment in time, within these frames lie remnants of the past, a vivid description of the present and a terrifying image of a possible future in which “Petrochemical America” extends past the banks of the Mississippi.

Rather than simply dwelling on the corruption that literally lies beneath the surface of Louisiana’s waters, the artists speak of their visions for the river’s banks and the towns that have been overtaken by chemical plants. In an interview with Aperture in 2012, Misrach envisions re-establishing the integrity the river demands by establishing it as a “cultural corridor with a vast array of regional museums linked by solar-powered monorails and repurposed river barges. The river could be used for recreation, fishing, and light industry; there would be jazz — and motel — and outdoor-theatre barges …”

Misrach and Orff want to inject life back into this stretch of the Mississippi by combining ecological and community-based thinking to create an environment that will thrive for generations.

Misrach, however, does not suggest a removal of the vital industry itself to accomplish this but instead acknowledges the necessity for companies to assume responsibility for the destruction they have created. Misrach captures this destruction in his colossal prints of toxic waste and dilapidated homes that invade viewers’ space, forcing them to address the issue at hand.

Although Richard advocates change, he recognizes that the complete removal of this thriving source of oil is impossible because, realistically, oil has too great of a hold in this area.

Misrach and Orff said to Aperture that “another way to change this region is to change the American pattern of consumption, to try to close the loops: less plastic junk, less waste, less chemicals; less can be more.” The destruction of this area, which became known as Cancer Alley, is no longer a matter solely based in digging for oil but rather one of Americans’ over-reliance on chemicals and and encouragement to consume.

While it remains vital for the future of our country to re-evaluate our practices, it also must be acknowledged that the United States may simply export this practice abroad, allowing for a facade of environmental consciousness. In her map “Cancer Alleys Around the World,” Orff recognizes the reality that some of the heaviest-polluting corporations simply have closed their doors in America, moving overseas to more impoverished and disenfranchised countries around the globe. Therefore, like the Cancer Alley found in this exhibit, the problem becomes isolated in an area but is never really dealt with.

Combining powerful photographs of the area with diagrams and drawings of the effects the oil industry has on the area and the world at large ultimately allows viewers to reflect on the power our nation’s practices have on the environment.

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Walter Yetman/Courtesy

San Francisco’s Tenderloin is known for its bouts of insane creativity, its street art and its generally seedy drug scene. The district itself, an oasis for artists, especially those who partake in graffiti culture, is home to work by Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Barry McGee. Reflecting this gritty, eerie and perfectly grimy subculture of the Tenderloin is SF-based Art Primo’s latest exhibit, “Tunnel Vision: The Graffiti Tunnels of Eastbay.” Featuring works by Walter Yetman, the photography show documents the Bay’s underground artwork.

The gallery takes unabashed street scenes and places them within the four white walls of an art gallery, causing viewers to question our traditional definition of “art.” Yetman’s photographs explore the underground realm we don’t see on a daily basis, introducing a new setting to art lovers. The haunting photographs, which feature not only graffiti work on public walls and tunnels but also the graffiti artists themselves, evoke a sense of both danger and hope through heavily contrasted lighting.

Yetman, who began to take photography seriously as a teenager, dabbled in the documentation of the Bay Area’s punk scene but later transitioned into shooting graffiti art. In an interview with The Citrus Report, Yetman spoke about his interest in photography.

“I would try to do graffiti, and I was pretty sucky at it,” he said. “I always had an interest in photography, so I decided to start documenting what I saw around town instead of trying to paint it.”

He describes his subjects as “mostly graffiti, some urban exploring and live music.” As simple as he makes his job sound, he does admit to the trust graffiti artists have in him and the dangers of photographing illegalities at night.

“I’ve been chased, yelled at … cut myself up climbing fences, falling off a roof one time,” he said. “Basically, I live the lifestyle of a graffiti artist without actually painting.”

He cites Steven Rotman, the innovative Bay Area photographer and Flickr king, as one of his biggest sources of inspiration. Rotman, who published “Bay Area Graffiti,” was one of the first to make the contemporary street-art scene of San Francisco well known. He blended the region’s exquisite landscapes with the grungy, albeit artsy, urbanscapes of the city.

Yetman’s approach is similar. He pushes the documentation of the graffiti scene to a new level, including the artists themselves in his photographs, which gives his shots an active voice.

Art Primo’s second gallery room features small, framed works of graffiti and is peppered with subtle elements from the shady city. These elements include boarded-up windows, actual spray-paint cans, a lonely piano stool and heavy-duty rubber boots, which artists use while adventuring through canals and water runoffs. In terms of actual artwork, the gallery houses a series titled “Tough as Nails” by the women of Few & Far, a global group of all-female creative thinkers. The team of self-described “open-minded, everyday females” previously has worked on an animal rights mural in Sacramento and a mural based on the societal importance of bees in Miami.

Women in aerosol art culture aren’t given much thought, but they face obstacles that many men do not. Going out late at night to desolate locations is dangerous for female artists, and they also endure harassment in the male-dominated field. Art Primo’s push to feature and respect the efforts of female artists in a traditionally harsh environment is inclusive and promotes a sense of community in graffiti culture.
Though Art Primo’s two shows analyze street culture through different approaches, both tell stories about the creative world literally underneath the ground we walk on.

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Yang Fudong/Courtesy

“Estranged Paradise” features the work of Yang Fudong, one of the pioneers of contemporary art and the independent cinema movement in China. The acclaimed artist co-curated the exhibition, which incorporates his still photography, short films and multichannel video installations created from 1993 to the present.

The cavernous back rooms and stark concrete walls of the Berkeley Art Museum are utilized perfectly for the exhibition — large dark rooms allow for an immersive and powerful experience with the multichannel video pieces, and the photographs are graciously and artfully presented in the outer spaces. Small viewing stations set up on the gallery floor present Yang’s short films in a distinctive manner, blurring the line between how the museum visitor is presented film and still photography. This display style allows the short films, each around five to 10 minutes, to be regarded as one would appreciate a fine painting: by patiently standing in front of it as its message slowly unfolds.

Although each of the pieces has a different focus, the exhibition is arranged and tied together by theme rather than by chronology. The artist’s investigation of the young Chinese experience is what makes the exhibition cohesive — the motifs of opulence, confusion, aimlessness and ambition all exemplify Yang’s main focus on the tension in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese society as it tries to define itself in an “opening” world.

The museum introduction identifies this tension as a confrontation of “an emerging culture that celebrates consumerism, rampant growth, and individual enterprise, in contrast to the traditional values of productivity, restraint, and the collective.” Yang Fudong’s artwork, however, does not tackle this theme from a macro perspective. The pieces are all personally engaged.

Many pieces specifically identify the subjects they depict, either through titles that identify particular people (such as “Ms. Huang and M Last Night”) or images that focus on individuals’ faces as they interact with the larger world. In some of the moving art pieces, it is the individual viewer’s experience that Fudong integrates into the otherwise impersonal subject matter, such as an empty street or a pack of wild dogs.

Yang Fudong manages to qualify the major questions and uncertainties Chinese society faces today through his more personal approach. It is the human experiences he depicts in his art that exemplify a people unsure of their relationship with the government, youth conflicted about which culture applies to them most and the awkwardness of China’s adoption of a new kind of life that has taken on some Western characteristics.

The museum’s assistant curator Dena Beard, however, mentioned that the focus of the exhibition is not on the Eastern-Western divide but rather is on China’s “embracing the new capitalism” and questioning what cultural production is in that context.

Context also defines her answer to the uniqueness of Yang Fudong in the Chinese avant-garde and contemporary art world, as she asked, “Did our historical context produce Andy Warhol?

“The context of (the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, where Yang studied art,) being completely unlike the Beijing academy, was based upon a cultural shift that was happening when (Chinese artists) were innately reacting to the scenarios they were given. These artists, who include such figures as Ai Weiwei, were all part of a zeitgeist” that originated from their social and historical context.

It is exactly this that makes Yang Fudong such an outstanding artist and this exhibition so exemplary: He is able to express the overarching questions of a whole society, a whole historical moment — his context — in a personal and understandable way.

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Rosel Mandel Archive/Courtesy

“I am the flower, but I am also the thorn,” said 20th-century nature photographer Rose Mandel. This dualistic and prolific statement is just one of the many insights into the complex mind of the Polish-born Mandel (1910-2002), whose series of photographs titled “The Errand of the Eye” is currently being featured at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco.

Mandel, who grew up Jewish in World War II Poland, fled to the United States in 1942. Though she immigrated to New York at first, she relocated to the Bay Area where she befriended Ansel Adams, Minor White and Richard Diebenkorn. There, she refined her artistic style and developed her own understanding of photography through her previous experience with psychology and art, both of which she had studied in Europe.

Mandel uses these various sources of inspiration to create work that is both perceptive and challenging. Though she may be well-known for her experience with mostly nature shots, her de Young exhibit also features gritty urban scenes, haunting portraits and seemingly futuristic photographs of modern machinery.

Though all-encompassing in terms of subject matter, Mandel’s photographs do have a common style that weaves the individual works together — a style that can be defined as lonesome, delicate and still. A sense of darkness pervades her prints, as if a strange force is lurking within the shots.

One such photograph is a small black-and-white still of dying aloe branches. The crisscrossing lines are dramatically disorienting, which is made clear because Mandel saw the composition as a “visualization of human slaughter and the Holocaust.”

An equally eerie photograph is an untitled piece taken in 1946. It reveals an isolated, white bassinet in the center of the photo, but no signs of life emanate from the carriage. This photograph is proof that Mandel’s background in psychology influenced her artistic career. The darkness and stillness reflect Mandel’s personal losses such as people she knew during the Holocaust and her lack of children.

Though Mandel’s photographs penetrate her own psyche most often, they also reveal more about a person than is readily available with a single glance. The artist’s skilled portrait work delves beneath the superficial and does not rely on setting to attract the viewer’s attention. Instead, the portraits are honest and organic, odd and almost accidental, reaching into the souls of the subjects.

It should be noted that the exhibition’s title, “The Errand of the Eye,” refers to a series of nature photographs that Mandel took in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This eponymous collection, which was first exhibited at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor about 59 years ago, is a sequence of tiny gelatin silver prints illustrating the most subtle of nature’s wonders: a small thorn, petite seeds, bare tree branches. These reflections of nature meditate on feelings of stillness and space that are inherent even in denser pieces that feature entangled vegetation or ambiguous water scenes.

The title itself pays homage to a line in the Emily Dickinson poem “Whether my bark went down at sea,” a mystical poem that tells the story of a ghostly boat sailing the ocean. Mandel’s series of photos invokes a similar mood to the one conjured here by Dickinson — one of an evocative, imaginary presence.

The spatial ambiguity and discord of Mandel’s works, especially her multiple exposures, fit perfectly with the haunting elements of Dickinson’s poem. Like the poem’s enchanted ship, Rose Mandel’s photographs — whether they be urbanscapes, natural shots or portraits — are mystic, moving and perfectly uncertain.

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Graham Haught/Staff

In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic led to extreme sex negativity, during which medical advice became mixed up with issues of morality, resulting in hostility toward sexual activity of any kind in the LGBT community.

The queer community in San Francisco found ways to escape from this sex negativity and the devastation of the AIDS crisis at street fairs (such as the Castro and Folsom street fairs), festivals and nightclubs. Real Bad is the name of the queer dance party that takes place annually after the fetish event Folsom Street Fair. It is also a fundraising event that seeks to benefit LGBT charities that create local impact in San Francisco. Over the past 25 years, the event has raised nearly $1.7 million and fueled community activism with its message of “partying with a purpose.” Real Bad is currently the focus of a new multimedia exhibition at the GLBT History Museum, “Be Bad … Do Good: Activism with a Beat.”

The GLBT History Museum’s Corner Gallery holds a series of small, focused exhibits on display for one to four months that aim to offer new perspectives on queer history in the Bay Area. The exhibition, while small, offers a powerful insight into a distinctly San Franciscan organization. Gina Gatta, who curated the show along with Suzan Revah, has been involved with Real Bad for 21 years. Gatta considers Real Bad to be a reflection of the gay culture that is distinct to San Francisco: “The fact of the matter is that San Francisco is a gay city first and foremost. We don’t have the need that a small town does, to have a couple of nightclubs for gatherings, to connect to each other … The gay community in San Francisco is overwhelming. It doesn’t compare to any other city in the world.”

However, the gay clubbing culture has changed significantly since the early Real Bad parties. Gatta attributes this change to social media. “There’s just no need for bars like there were in the past, straight or gay,” she explained. “The opportunity for chance meeting is reduced.” New social media sites and dating apps like Grindr, Manhunt, Tinder, GayRomeo, Bender and OkCupid have transformed the way people date and socialize, virtually eliminating the need to go to bars whether you’re looking for a relationship or one-night stand.

One of the features of the exhibition is a documentary about the history of Real Bad, about which Gatta said, “We really showcase the fact that back in 1991, organizations like Stop AIDS were just starting, and we needed to raise money to help them to get going because the organizations that were being created didn’t have any funding. We thought, ‘Let’s get together and throw a fundraiser, a dance party, and give all the funds to these emergency services to help our friends deal with this AIDS crisis.’”

25 years later, there is still an emphasis on a sense of community at Real Bad. Despite the event being heavily marketed to gay men, Gatta believes Real Bad is still welcoming to those who identify as female, trans* and straight. “If you’ve ever been to a gay bar, you know that the best time you’re ever gonna have — straight, gay, lesbian, boy gay, girl gay — is at a gay boys’ club,” she said. “It’s the best music; it’s the sexiest people. That’s why the majority of the crowd is 2,000 hot sexy guys.

“Over the past 25 years, it’s become quite a reunion of a party. It happens during Folsom (Street Fair) weekend, so a lot of people travel from around the world to come, friends you don’t see all year long. Many times, I would go there just to see old friends and to reconnect with people, because everybody was dying back then, so we came together like, ‘Oh, you’re still alive, that’s great!’”

“Be Bad…Do Good” runs through Oct. 27, 2013. Admission to the museum is $5.00 (general); $3.00 (California students); free for members of the GLBT Historical Society. For more information, visit www.glbthistorymuseum.org.

Meadhbh McGrath is the arts editor. Contact her at mmcgrath@dailycal.org. Check her out on Twitter at @MeadhbhMcGrath.

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Sibila Savage/Courtesy

Peter Seeger and Lee Hays wrote “If I Had a Hammer (The Hammer Song)” in 1949 as a simple folk song backing the U.S. progressive movement. However, the song’s political message was considered so threatening that Seeger was assaulted for playing the song at a concert. Over the years, it has been chosen as a representative song for the Civil Rights Movement and, more recently, WikiLeaks.

For the opening of “Matrix 249” at the Berkeley Art Museum, the song has also become an important source of reflection for Oakland-based artist Zarouhie Abdalian. Her work, “Ad libitum (If I Had a Hammer),” is a lengthy brass wire fixed on the museum’s wall with demarcations along the string showing the pitches in Seeger’s and Hays’ seminal song. The sounds that come from a single piece of brass wire, barely noticeable from a distance, evoke fragments of the influential song if one can fill in the lyrical and melodic gaps. The piece introduces the delicate relationship between sight of the object and the sound it makes as well as the subjectivity of sound based on the listener’s ability to contextualize it.

The sculpture “Each envelope as before” is a glossy black vitrine with a concealed hammer hitting the inner box, which creates a distinct and rhythmic tapping noise. One of the museum’s curators, Apsara DiQuinzio, commented that the acoustics of the museum helped the sound ring through the third floor, creating an ominous atmosphere as a listener might have trouble determining the source of the tick-tock sound. This piece plays with the idea of something that is heard but cannot be seen, which evokes the transcending influence of the Civil Rights Movement, when minorities who were neglected and considered invisible by the law and the media collectively generated a voice that could be heard around the world. This piece allows one to ponder the relationship between visibility and audibility.

The last sculpture, “As a demonstration,” is the reverse concept of “Each envelope as before” as it shows an electronic bell inside a vacuum container. Although you can see the rod continuously hit the bell, you can’t hear the ring, because the sound doesn’t have air to travel through. In light of the recent controversy surrounding whistleblower Edward Snowden, during which the government tried to extradite him, “As a demonstration” feels even more meaningful. DiQuinzio suggested that the sculptures “Each envelope as before” and “As a demonstration” work together to show the ebb and flow of the suppression and revelation of voices.

Later this year, Abdalian will be exhibiting her SECA Art Award project, commissioned by SFMOMA. The piece will be on display from Sept. 14 to Nov. 17 in downtown Oakland around the Frank Ogawa Plaza, a historic square for public gatherings and the Occupy Oakland protests. The public artwork will consist of five brass bells on the rooftops of public and private buildings that will ring together daily at random times. Similar to “Each envelope as before,” the bells are out of sight, creating an ephemeral and perplexing experience for passers-by. The public location of this piece, like her previous publicly displayed artwork, “Flutter,” helps create discourse among the locals about the jurisdiction and restriction of sound and information by individuals or the state. In her quartet of artworks, Abdalian conceptualizes the hammer and bell in internal and external spaces to metaphorize the interaction between sight and sound.

Contact Fan Huang at fhuang@dailycal.org.

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Oakland Museum of California/Courtesy

At first, the construction workers would reflexively pose as photojournalist Peter Stackpole would raise his camera to capture photographs of them at work. Eventually, Stackpole bonded with the crew, and he became just another one of the boys on The Bridge, at which point the workers wouldn’t even notice the camera when Stackpole aimed it. This relationship was conducive to very candid photographs of their lives over the course of two years as they built the Bay Bridge.

While there are many photographs documenting the construction of the bridge, “Stackpole’s were different because he has the eye of the artist,” said Drew Johnson, curator of photography and visual culture and the curator of the exhibition. “Peter Stackpole: Bridging the Bay” at The Oakland Museum of California is currently displaying the photographs, which bridge the chill-inducing views from the top with the everyday lives of the construction workers from 1934 to 1936.

It all started with an informal invitation from one of the workers; without official authorization (and with the aid of the bridge builders), Stackpole boarded a boat that would give him access to the bridge. Stackpole was one of the first photographers to get his hands on the compact 35-millimeter camera, which was more mobile than prior models. Because of this technological advance, Stackpole was able to get incredible shots of the city as well as the Bay.

The shots eventually captured the attention of the people at Time Magazine, who were in the beginning stages of publishing a photo journal called Life Magazine. “At the time, it was where you went to see what was going on around the world,” Johnson noted.

Stackpole’s work became so well respected that it was featured in publications like Vanity Fair, and he went on to photograph Hollywood events and celebrities. In one overhead shot on display, Errol Flynn is smiling gleefully while hanging from a mast on a boat.

During his two years documenting the bridge’s construction, Stackpole became incredibly close to many of the workers, including bridge builder Joe Walton. One photograph features Walton and a caption that mentions Walton’s generosity — he showed Stackpole how to climb the ladder without “blacking out.” The workers would often pass out because of the altitude, and workers would coach Stackpole on how to maneuver the bridge safely.

Stackpole’s parents, Ralph Stackpole (who was friends with the muralist Diego Rivera) and Adele Barnes, were both Bay Area artists. In 1991, the Oakland Museum of California was exhibiting Stackpole’s work when Stackpole’s home in the Oakland Hills sucummbed to a fire. Stackpole lost much of his work, as well as works by his parents and some Rivera pieces. The works displayed here were saved from the same fate.

Twenty-eight people lost their lives during the construction of the Bay Bridge. The aftermath of one of these deaths is documented in the photograph entitled “Quitting Time” (1935). It was custom for the workers to head home early when there was a death, and the photograph portrays a sullen group of men on a boat on their way back to land.

One of the photographs, entitled “Cable Saddle” (1935), gives the viewer a glimpse of the San Francisco skyscrapers from the bridge. This shot was made possible by one of the bridge workers, who loosened up some hanging safety rope to clear the view. These workers constantly risked their lives not only for the sake of Stackpole’s photographs but also to provide an alternative form of transportation that would have a lasting effect on the lives and the culture of Bay Area residents.

“Peter Stackpole: Bridging the Bay“ is on display at the Oakland Museum of California through January 26, 2014.

Contact Rene Hernandez at rhernandez@dailycal.org.

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Herman Miller, Inc./Courtesy

“Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller” at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design manages to make one of the most fundamental aspects in our domestic lives — furniture — an expression of modern company culture and consumerism. “Good Design” emphasizes the story behind the design of the furniture by providing extensive written information on Herman Miller Inc.’s company history and the sales campaigns that led to the success of modern design in the furniture market.

To set the foundation, the exhibition begins with a discussion of Herman Miller Inc.’s founding figures and the company values they established in the 1930s. One of them, Gilbert Rohde, was the operative force moving the company from period reproductions into modern furniture. During the heart of the Great Depression, he understood that design had to take on a new focus, namely “Design for Living,” which was Herman Miller Inc.’s exposition house at the 1933 to 1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.

Company leadership tied its Midwestern straightforwardness in with Rohde’s cosmopolitan regard for style; Herman Miller Inc. furniture was meant first to optimize its function — as with the company’s most famous design, the ergonomic Aeron chair — and then to be beautifully designed. George Nelson, a founding figure of the company, explained to Fortune magazine in August 1946, “Enclose space as if it were precious … for the sake of … the life that goes on within it.” This fundamental attitude toward design being “little to do with conscious style” and “a lot to do with human scale — and human need” informed everything that the company did in later years.

This modern way of “doing design” expanded into the realm of marketing and merchandising as well. Rohde, who had worked in journalism and advertising before joining Herman Miller Inc., recognized that people’s antiquated conception of furniture would have to change if they were ever to be convinced of the modern aesthetic. However, he also noticed that Americans were ready for new ideas as the nation recovered from the Great Depression.

In order to do this, Herman Miller Inc. pursued some of the most inventive sales methods the furniture industry had seen, setting up complete home miniature displays in department stores, even staffing some of the displays with designers who could help customers plan their own homes. While scale models were a typical sales device, the concept of putting them in full apartments and allowing people to rearrange the furniture meant that they could really come to see how Herman Miller Inc. furniture could fit into their lives and living spaces. Also featuring in as many design publications as possible, Herman Miller Inc. was out to get noticed and ready to convince the world of their furniture concept.

Design feats in their own rights, many of the advertising campaigns that Herman Miller Inc. has run through the years were also defined by the same company values that informed their furniture design. For example, advertisements for Chadwick Modular Seating were bold black-and-white presentations with a dynamic image of the modular sofa and the simple phrase, “It turns, circles, winds, and zigzags.” The rest of the text in the ad refers to the functional benefits of modular seating, in a humorous description of all the various issues that traditional couches present in life (“keep your people from catching the dreaded ‘stuck-in-the-corner’ disease”).

The ad exemplified exactly what Herman Miller Inc.’s founding figures aimed to achieve with their furniture — unfussy style and optimum functionality for a modern life. As Marc D’Estout, curator of the museum, has explained: “The company culture is exactly why Herman Miller has been able to work with and embrace forward thinking design … This is important contextual information that enriches an exhibit of displayed objects, and speaks to the importance of design philosophies in the creation of products.”

“Good Design: Stories from Herman Miller” is on show at the Museum of Craft and Design through Oct. 6.

Contact AJ Kantor at akantor@dailycal.org.

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