July 15–September 17, 2017 \ Legion of Honor

“A muse isn’t necessarily a particular person, the model. It can also be an outlook on life (musing). Art and life are not separate. In Rodin’s case that meant the model or models coming to sit for him and he was the boss, the big ego. I’m a bit more egalitarian.” – Sarah Lucas

SAN FRANCISCO—The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are proud to host Sarah Lucas: Good Muse, the artist’s first major museum exhibition in the United States. The Legion of Honor presents two new works by Lucas (b. 1962), as well as a selection of recent sculptures in dialogue with the museum’s acclaimed collection of works by Auguste Rodin (1840−1917) on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his death. By confronting Rodin’s nudes with Lucas’s naked truths, Good Muse draws attention to the palpable eroticism in much of Rodin’s work, and simultaneously emphasizes the dramatic shift in the cultural understanding and representation of sexuality and gender that has taken place over the course of the 20th century.

“Good Muse gives American audiences an opportunity to discover Lucas’s pointedly female perspective in the too often male-dominated canon of art history”, says Max Hollein, Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums. “Her works offer important and necessary commentary on the frequent objectification of the female form and will provide a loud cry in the collection galleries at the Legion of Honor.”

Lucas came to prominence in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a member of the Young British Artists (YBAs). She has gained notoriety for creating confrontational and often humorous work, which mediates between the absurd and the abject, the ribald and the poetic. Many sculptures showcase the crudeness of stereotypical conceptions of gender and sexuality. In Good Muse, Lucas presents sculptures in her signature range of materials—pantyhose, cigarettes, furniture, concrete, and plaster—charged with sexual and psychological power and a disruptive ambivalence.

“Lucas’s bold sculptures confront the patriarchal representation of the sexualized female body with a feminist stance that is firmly grounded in experience,” says Claudia Schmuckli, curator-in-charge, contemporary art and programming, at the Fine Arts Museums. “Her suggestive combination of objects and materials counters Rodin’s sensuous eroticism with the raw and vulnerable realities of a sexual being.”

Good Muse is on view from July 15 through September 17, 2017 in the Legion of Honor’s permanent collection galleries. The exhibition is curated by Schmuckli, the museums’ inaugural curator-in-charge of contemporary art and programming. It is the second exhibition in a contemporary art initiative launched by the Fine Arts Museums in 2017 that presents the work of living artists in dialogue with the collections, unique histories and identities of the de Young and Legion of Honor.

In Detail
From the outset, Lucas has been adopting and subverting stances associated with male behavior; aiming to debunk traditional notions of femininity. Her early penchant for androgyny – reflected in her groundbreaking self-portraits of the 1990s – has filtered into her current sculptural work. Many of her furniture-bound headless bodies fashioned from stuffed tights flaunt both male and female attributes and attitudes. Recognizable body parts such as legs and breasts multiply and merge to create surreal hybrids: bodies are recomposed out of suggestive fragments. Titti Doris (2017), a work from this series, finds its home among Rodin’s studies and models in plaster, in particular the eroticized entanglement of Christ and the Magdalene (ca. 1894).

Made for the occasion is My Disease (2017). The dramatic new mixed-media work evoking the pierced flesh of Saint Sebastian is placed among Rodin’s bronzes anchored in religion and mythology, such as Faun and Nymph (1886) and The Fallen Angel (ca. 1890). Using rods of light pushed through a mattress, Lucas’s piece foregoes a literal interpretation of the biblical figure, but the added tits make the impact less gender specific.

As a pièce de résistance, Jubilee (2017), another new sculpture, of six-foot-tall concrete high-heeled boots, defiantly faces Rodin’s apocalyptic vision of the Gates of Hell (1880–1888). Rodin’s masterpiece, housing an unfinished throng of cast bodies, is mirrored by the stark symmetry of Lucas’s concrete casts. While iterating the age-old association of sex and death, the monumental presence of Jubilee anchors Lucas’s concerns firmly in the here and now of a life lived with unbridled passion and a bawdy sense of humor.

In the rotunda of the Legion of Honor and two adjacent galleries are Lucas’s Muses; Michele, Margot, and Pauline (all 2015). Modeled and named after real women, the waist-to-toe plaster casts of the artist’s friends draped atop and around domestic furniture exude intimacy and candor. Reclined or sitting with legs splayed, the figures have cigarettes incongruously and suggestively projecting out of private regions. Betraying a confidence and cockiness that defy ingrained views of femininity, the Muses commune with and highlight the sensuous eroticism of The Age of Bronze (1877, cast ca. 1014), one of Rodin’s most famous and explicit nudes.

www.famsf.org \ @legionofhonor \ #GoodMuse

About the Artist
Born in London in 1962, Sarah Lucas studied at the Working Men’s College (1982–83), London College of Printing (1983–84), and Goldsmith’s College (1984–87). Her career was launched through exhibitions such as Freeze (1988), Penis Nailed to a Board (1992) and Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Gallery (1997). Over the last two decades she has exhibited extensively at institutions throughout the world, with solo shows at Whitechapel Gallery, the Henry Moore Institute, and Tate Liverpool (UK), the Museum of Cycladic Art (Greece), the Frans Hals Museum (the Netherlands), Kunsthalle Zurich (Switzerland) and Hamburger Kunsthalle (Germany) among others, and as the British Representative at the 2015 Venice Biennale. Good Muse is Lucas’s first major solo exhibition at a U.S. museum. The artist lives and works in the UK.

Upcoming Exhibition \ Lynn Hershman Leeson: VertiGhost
Opening December 16, 2017 \ de Young and Legion of Honor

Lynn Hershman Leeson is recognized for her pioneering contributions to media, performance, photography and film. Since the 1960s, her art has continuously signaled concerns, ranging from the politics of privacy, surveillance, voyeurism, and identity.

VertiGhost will premiere a work, newly commissioned by the Fine Arts Museums, inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, key scenes of which were filmed at the Legion of Honor. The installation will employ capture systems, live web transmission, fictive identities and film in a multi-location work, which will span across both the de Young and Legion of Honor. Restaged scenes from the actual film will be intercut with the suspense-filled history of an Amedeo Modigliani painting in the museum’s collection. Born in 1941 in Cleveland, Ohio, Hershman Leeson is currently based in San Francisco and New York.

Visiting \ Legion of Honor
Lincoln Park, 100 34th Avenue, San Francisco. Open 9:30 am–5:15 pm. Tuesdays–Sundays. Open select holidays; closed most Mondays.

Tickets
Entrance to Sarah Lucas: Good Muse is included in general admission. For adults, tickets are $15; discounts are available for seniors and students. Members and children 17 and under are free. Prices are subject to change. More information can be found at legionofhonor.org.

Free Public Opening Reception
Thursday July 13, 7:30−9 pm \ Legion of Honor
To celebrate the opening of Sarah Lucas: Good Muse, the public is invited to a late-night viewing of the exhibition with refreshments provided at a cash bar and organ tunes in the air by Lucas’s friend and keyboardist Andrew Hale of legendary UK band Sade. RSVP required via sarahlucas.eventbrite.com.

Exhibition Organization
Sarah Lucas: Good Muse is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Major support is provided by Nion McEvoy and Leslie Berriman, The Paul L. Wattis Foundation, Sadie Coles HQ, Frances F. Bowes, Kate Harbin Clammer and Adam Clammer, and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels. Additional support is provided by Robert and Daphne Bransten, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, and the Contemporary Support Council of the Fine Arts Museums.

About the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco oversee the de Young, located in Golden Gate Park, and the Legion of Honor, in Lincoln Park. It is the largest public arts institution in San Francisco, and one of the most visited arts institutions in the United States.

The Legion of Honor was inspired by the French pavilion at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 and, like that structure, was modeled after the neoclassical Palais de la Légion d’Honneur, in Paris. The museum, designed by George Applegarth, opened in 1924 on a bluff in Lincoln Park overlooking the Golden Gate. Its holdings span 4,000 years and include European painting, sculpture, and decorative arts; ancient art from the Mediterranean basin; and the largest collection of works on paper in the American West.

Media Contacts
Helena Nordstrom, International Public Relations Manager \ hnordstrom@famsf.org \ 415.750.7608

Miriam Newcomer, Director of Public Relations \ mnewcomer@famsf.org \ 415.750.3554