SAM FRANCIS THE MENTOR

Jeff Perkins

I first met Sam Francis in 1963, when I was serving in the United States Air Force in Tokyo. I had known of him since about 1960, when, as an art student in New York City, I saw his painting Big Red hanging in the stairway leading up to the main galleries at the Museum of Modern Art, which made a strong impression on me. During basic training in San Antonio, Texas, I had a weekend pass and had read in a local paper that Sam Francis was having a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in Houston, Texas, so I took the long bus ride and saw that wonderful exhibition. Eventually I was stationed in Japan and by happenstance I encountered him at an opening in Tokyo. I had also seen his Tokyo Mural at the Sogetsu Kai-Kan Hall in Tokyo, when I was participating in Yoko Ono’s “Farewell to Tokyo” concert.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1967 after my service obligation was completed, I was invited to a dinner party for Toshi Ichiyanagi, Yoko’s first husband, and Sam was there with his wife, Mako Idemitsu. It was not long after that when I met him again on the projection platform at the Shrine Hall, where I was working with the light show Single Wing Turquoise Bird, which was later to come under Sam’s generous sponsorship. Sam was attracted to what we were doing in this new medium, supported our work financially, and also facilitated several events and exhibitions for us, which introduced our work to the Los Angeles art community.

It was during this period that Sam received a commission for the largest painting of his career, Berlin Red. When he told me of this, I asked if I could film him making the painting. He said that he had never allowed anyone to film him painting before, but he agreed to let me to begin filming him at the Ashland Street studio. My first rolls were shot when he was just finishing up the series called the Edge Paintings. I followed him through the steps in preparation for the painting of Berlin Red, which included filming him at work in his first Litho Shop in Santa Monica and then painting Berlin Red.

In 1974 I asked Sam if he would agree to a filmed interview with me and, after a certain reluctance, he agreed to do it, once again saying that he didn’t very much like interviews about his painting and had never been filmed in such a circumstance. We filmed the interview in his garden at home, which was for me an extraordinary experience. Sam was not an easy interview, but because of my persistence he proved to be generous in unexpected ways. One of Sam’s favorite qualities was his elusive wit in certain personal encounters—this was demonstrated (with great challenge to myself) during my interview with him. In 1977 I approached him again, saying that there were certain things that he said during the interview that I wanted him to explain or elaborate upon. He refused to do another interview, but he invited me to film him painting again at the Ashland Street studio, where he was working on two large Matrix Paintings, Easter and Joyous Lake. Those were the last rolls of film that I shot of Sam.

I always considered my relationship with Sam to be a creative one, an artist-to-artist relationship, and it always remained so. However, because of the nature of our growing friendship, and his influence on me, I began to realize that Sam had become a mentor to me. It was then that I felt that our relationship took on a more formal quality. Sam was a very free person in that he never seemed to express any boundaries either creatively or in personal matters, as was evident in his expansive painting works, or in his ebullient and seductive personality. However, his fierce and compelling devotion to his painting inspired me to have a serious and high regard for the responsibilities that an artist must have in order to produce good works. This also can be considered the responsibility that a mentoring artist must have. Sam was never one to tell another artist what to do; he would simply say if he liked something or not and go on to encourage one to continue the work. Sam was a hardworking artist in the first degree; he was undoubtedly a highly productive artist, as is demonstrated by the vast body of works that he has left for us.

In our personal relationship he influenced me to follow the dictates of my intuition, my soul, and the better part of my nature, and because of his wide and all-encompassing intellect and deep, driving hunger for personal pursuit and excellence, I feel that I could not have found a better influence on my artistic and personal life. I shall never forget him.

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