Art Review: Joan Brown Exhibition at Carnegie Museum

Last week I wrote about the spicy Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. I’d never been there, I’m ashamed to say, but we can’t be everywhere, and I made amends with a nice, long visit to this bustling, cultured city and a half dozen of its museums. I was delighted to see the art museum’s Joan Brown exhibition, delighted and electrified.

Brown (1938–1990) is hard to classify, which defines and commends her. She is from San Francisco and has danced to the beat of her own drummer in the best — not worst — Bay Area tradition. No surfeit of Twinkies or toxic Kool-Aid in her world. Her idiosyncratic subjects, bright, snazzy colors, and copious patterns, mostly in paintings but sometimes in sculpture, put her in no school except one for eccentrics such as Wayne Thiebaud, Bob Arneson, and Jay DeFeo. She’s seriously whimsical and whimsically serious.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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Last week I wrote about the spicy Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. I’d never been there, I’m ashamed to say, but we can’t be everywhere, and I made amends with a nice, long visit to this bustling, cultured city and a half dozen of its museums. I was delighted to see the art museum’s Joan Brown exhibition, delighted and electrified.

Brown (1938–1990) is hard to classify, which defines and commends her. She is from San Francisco and has danced to the beat of her own drummer in the best — not worst — Bay Area tradition. No surfeit of Twinkies or toxic Kool-Aid in her world. Her idiosyncratic subjects, bright, snazzy colors, and copious patterns, mostly in paintings but sometimes in sculpture, put her in no school except one for eccentrics such as Wayne Thiebaud, Bob Arneson, and Jay DeFeo. She’s seriously whimsical and whimsically serious.