Grand scale in art immediately propels the viewer into an exhilarating place in the geography of the imagination. XXL II goes right to that place in an exhibition of selected works from the BAMPFA collections characterized by grandeur and monumentality – defining qualities of the very space in which the works are displayed. The monumental paintings of Hans Hofmann (on view Gallery A) played a leading role in the development of our Mario Ciampi-designed building, which was completed in 1970. Ciampi's design, like Hofmann's work, emphasized expansive volume, defined by an active interplay of forms and shapes set within spaces whose edges are allowed to fluctuate. Around the time of the completion of the building, the museum acquired several large-scale works by artists of Hofmann's generation, among them Clyfford Still's Untitled (1955), a vertical abstract canvas featuring flame-like swaths of color; and Mark Rothko's signature expanse of sublimely colored zones hovering ambiguously over one another in Number 207 (Red over Dark Blue on Dark Gray) (1961). Helen Frankenthaler, who as a young artist studied with Hofmann, developed a distinctive staining process, influenced by Jackson Pollock's energetic drip technique, visible in her monumental Before the Caves (1958). In Voltri (1962), David Smith, one of the foremost sculptors of the Abstract Expressionist era, welded together large steel shapes, creating a lyrical cutout in space. Jay deFeo's enormous painting Origin (1956) displays the all-encompassing scale typical of her creative process. DeFeo was at the center of the San Francisco Beat scene in the 1950s. Soon after completing Origin in her Fillmore Street apartment, she began her famed eleven-foot, one-ton painting The Rose, which consumed the next eight years of her life and energy. Ordinary human scale takes on a huge persona in Jonathan Borofsky's Hammering Man (1968-1983), a silhouetted figure whose moveable arm “hammers” repetitively and endlessly. Borofsky refers to his hammering men (even larger outdoor versions can be seen in Seattle, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, and Japan) as workers who “imply the fate of the mechanistic world. At its heart, society reveres the worker. The Hammering Man is the worker in all of us.” Claes Oldenburg's renowned sculptures of colossal quotidian objects-a baseball bat, a tube of lipstick, a cherry-topped spoon – disrupt ordinary scale and function. BAMPFA's Clothespin (1974) by Oldenburg is a smaller version of the forty-five-foot Clothespin (1976) in downtown Philadelphia. George Segal's life-size Girl Looking Into Mirror (1970) unlocks a quiet monumentality that originates in the happenstance of the everyday, while David Ireland's simple but architecturally-scaled chair speaks with near-Biblical authority as implied by it's title, Ex Cathedra (1998). XXL continues beyond Gallery B to the museum entrance level of the atrium, where Joan Brown's animated painting The Bride (1970), Tom Holland's polychrome sculpture Cedar (1980), and Aristide Maillol's grand bronze figure Grief (1917-1927) preside. Outside the museum, at the Bancroft Street entrance, stands Alexander Calder's landmark sculpture The Hawk for Peace (1968). Calder's huge black stabile was commissioned specifically for the new museum building, in memory of Calder's brother-in-law, Kenneth Aurand Hayes, Class of 1916. Noted at the time of its installation as the most monumental public sculpture in the Bay Area, Calder's provocatively simple steel sculpture of rhythmic forms and lines continues to inspire awe. In addition to the works included in XXL II, visitors to the museum's sculpture garden will find major sculptures by Peter Voulkos and Mia Roosen Westerlund. The museum's recent seismic retrofit construction required several sculptures in the garden to be relocated to other sites on the Berkeley campus. Linda Fleming's pyramidal construction Lumber (1990) is located in front of Wurster Hall; Fletcher Benton's Steel Plate Drawing #14 (1987) is sited on the plaza outside the Free Speech Cafe, at Moffitt Library; and Richard Hunt's Outgrown Pyramid #1 (1973) marks the North Gate of the campus. Soon, Arnoldo Pomodoro's huge bronze globe Rotante Dal Foro Centrale (1971) will be reinstalled at the west entrance to the campus.
