Bill Kane (American, b. 1951). Mixed media - photo, neon, paint and canvas, ca. 1980s. A large-scale Bill Kane mixed media work that features the artist's black and white photograph of an urban wall in the Bay Area plastered with posters for concerts and political events, marked with passages of grafitti, superimposed with a striking zigzag of neon tubing on the left side, and hand-painted with a red square on the right that is overlapped by a section of canvas that is quadrilateral in shape and painted a bold yellow with red drips and black dots. Kane's inclusion of neon tubing provides a dramatic contrast with his black and white photography. Mark Levy compared the malleable neon tubing to "a kind of Abstract Expressionist calligraphy, an expressive tool that charges and makes visible the energy locked within the wall." Kane's painted square and canvas provide additional visual layers that conjure homages to modernist innovations such as Mondrian's grids, Picasso's Synthetic Cubist collages, and Pollock's drip paintings. Size: 48.5" L x 83" W (123.2 cm x 210.8 cm)

Among the countless intriguing elements captured in the photograph of this piece are: a drawing of a skull peering out from the zigzags of the neon tube; three posters for reggae artist Gregory Isaacs with the Roots Radics Band from Jamaica; handwritten advertisements for "L.A. ARTIST MICHAEL LE DONNE-BHENNET SOUNDHOUSE - A SOUND PERFORMANCE INSTALLATION" and "OAKLAND ARTIST AL PAYNE EAST BAY BONERS A PERFORMANCE"; and posters for a band called Permanent Waves.

In 1977, Bill Kane began photographing the city walls of San Francisco. According to Mark Levy, "For the artist, the walls of San Francisco were windows which recorded the raw sensation of city life. Kane's stark black and white photographs with their close up viewpoint and large scale format captured the markings of the weather, age and the rough denizens of the artist's gritty neighborhood." Kane continued to develop his artistic expression by introducing neon tubing in 1978 which Levy described as a "cathartic act by which Kane began to release the inherent energy he felt within the wall surface" and also layering his works with various artistic gestures, hence his painting of a red square and superimposing a drip-painted canvas in this example.

Among the many colorful descriptions of Bill Kane's work, art historian Andrea Liss encapsulates his significance in the opening of her catalogue essay for "Bill Kane: Selected Photography and Neon Works" (1983), "It can be said that Bill Kane is a neon artist, a photographer, and a collagist who works in three dimensions. These descriptions are accurate, but they only touch the surface of what his artmaking is about. The heart of the matter is that Kane sets out to chronicle, metaphorically, through visual language, the structure of the physical world and the mysteries hidden within it."

Museum collections for Bill Kane works include: Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA; Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, and Museum of Neon Art, Los Angeles, CA.

Provenance: ex-William and Jane Frazer, Aspen, Colorado, USA, acquired 1980s

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#167653

The photograph is in very good condition save a few minor scuffs. Painted square and canvas section are in excellent condition. Wiring is old, and while it does function and the neon does currently light casting a golden yellow glow, we would recommend rewiring the piece to bring it up to code.