Floor 4: 4th Floor City Gallery: North entrance from elevators
Overview
Interpretive Text
Objects
6 objects in the order you'll encounter them from this entrance. Select an object to view details.
Label Text
1994
Acrylic enamel paint, fiberglass, polyester compound, glass eyes, hair, clothing, ladder, and extension cord
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1995
At first glance, this man with plaster-spattered clothes holding a ladder and an extension cord appears to be a museum worker pausing mid-task. In fact, he is a hyperrealistic sculpture finished with real clothing, hair, and tools. From the late 1960s until his passing, Hanson created more than fifty lifelike portrayals of working people and familiar character types, including construction workers, police officers, tourists, and more. Hanson’s sculptures reflect a deep respect for individuals he described as “heroes in society . . . people we take for granted that really hold the fabric of the country together.”
Visual Description
A nearly life-size, hyperrealistic sculptural figure—about 5.5 ft tall, with the full installation spanning roughly 5 ft wide and 2.5 ft deep—depicts a workman posed beside an open wooden A-frame step ladder, holding a bright yellow extension cord. The man has light skin, curly light-brown hair peeking out from under a blue baseball cap worn backward, and a thick brown mustache. His expression is neutral. He wears a red plaid button-up work shirt spattered with white paint, faded blue jeans with paint marks, and worn gray sneakers. One foot is on the floor while the other rests on a lower ladder step, and his left forearm drapes over a ladder rung. The extension cord hangs in several loose loops from his right hand, the vivid yellow contrasting with the muted work clothes and wood tones. The ladder is natural wood with visible grain, metal hinge hardware at the top, and a yellow safety label reading “CAUTION” on the upper section; a small white label with red text is also attached along a side rail.
Label Text
1983
Painted and chromium-plated steel and marker
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2004
After a period in the late 1960s exploring other materials—including foam, paper, plexiglass, and aluminum foil—Chamberlain returned to found car parts in the mid-1970s. In later works such as this, he operated at an increasingly large scale and often added color or texture to the metal. Here, he sandblasted a calligraphic pattern into part of the vertical form. The title refers to Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908), a US scholar of Asian art whose book The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry(1919) influenced Chamberlain’s thinking about language and visual form.
Visual Description
A roughly 10.5 ft-tall sculptural bundle (10.5 × 4.5 × 4 ft) made from painted and chromium-plated steel with marker stands upright. The structure gathers multiple sheet-like metal planes that buckle, crease, and curl inward, creating a crumpled silhouette that widens at the base and tightens toward the top. Near the top, large and glossy black folds with a chromium sheen bunch together with sharp creases, catching highlights and producing deep, mirrorlike shadows. Along the left side, a tall cream-colored panel rises vertically, its surface distressed with smudges, scratches, and faint linear marks. Intertwined nearer the center, a translucent-looking green-toned strip runs upward in a curved, blade-like arc. At the lower center, a rounded turquoise form peeks out from behind overlapping panels, adding a color accent amid the angular metal folds. Across the front and lower right, a bright yellow sheet curls outward and then back in, covered with dark, branching marker lines. The pattern continues across creased edges, emphasizing the sculpture’s folds. The base consists of bent cream panels that splay and kink outward with scuffed surfaces and dark, seam-like lines, supporting the dense central cluster of black and colored elements.
Label Text
1969
Painted and chromium-plated steel
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1995
Here, crushed metal from an old washing machine—which the artist found during a visit to a collector’s home in Chicago—is thoughtfully fitted together to create a form that twists around itself. Although scrap car parts were Chamberlain’s primary material, he sometimes used other discarded consumer items. The title is a word in the Havasupai language (belonging to the Indigenous peoples of the Grand Canyon area) that means “little water,” referring slyly to the material’s former life.
Visual Description
An abstract sculpture (about 5 ft tall, 6 ft wide, and 4.5 ft deep) made of painted and chromium-plated steel forms a compact tangle of folded metal planes and sharp, jutting fins, resting on a low circular white plinth. The work is built from overlapping panels that buckle, crease, and curl inward to create deep cavities and pockets of shadow. Several bright chromium-plated elements rise from the top and upper right area, their polished surfaces catching highlights and contrasting with the matte, weathered paint elsewhere. Large sections are painted a dark charcoal to black, with scuffs, scratches, and rusty brown streaks along edges and seams; other major panels are painted an aged off-white with marbling and chipped areas exposing darker underlayers and oxidized metal. The silhouette is irregular and asymmetrical: a heavy, dark mass projects on one side while off-white folds bulge and curl near the base on the other, including a rounded, crushed corner that looks compressed. There are numerous seams, rivet-like points, and torn-looking edges with some thin metal flanges flaring outward while thicker folded plates stack into a dense core. Reflective chrome accents punctuate the battered black and off-white body.
Label Text
1967
Galvanized steel
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 1992
Visual Description
Measuring about 1.5 × 1.4 × 1 ft, this galvanized-steel sculpture is built from a mass of heavily crumpled sheet metal, stacked into a squat, irregular block. The surface is a mottled, speckled gray that shifts from pale silver to darker graphite tones where planes tilt into shadow and where the metal is more deeply creased. Large, flattened panels fold over one another; several edges curl outward into lip-like rims, while other sections buckle inward to form angular hollows and compressed cavities.
The two main tiers are an upper cap and a denser lower body. The top portion is a slumped, boxy hood with a broad face and a vertical ridge or seam line, while the lower portion is compacted, with deep pleats and sharp, faceted dents that create triangular and trapezoidal planes. On the right side, a narrow flap projects outward, and on the left and front edges, there are bent hems and folded corners.
Label Text
1978
Painted and chromium-plated steel, aluminum, and plastic
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2006
Visual Description
A roughly 3 × 4 × 1 ft relief-like sculpture made from painted and chromium-plated steel, aluminum, and plastic spreads outward, with glossy, crumpled panels radiating from a central vertical chrome element. Dominating the center is a tall, reflective silver section—creased and dented—with holes and fastener points visible; its mirrorlike surface catches highlights and distorted reflections. A bright red, folded sheet of metal projects to the right, flaring into two bent planes; beneath it, a rectangular orange panel juts out, scuffed and scratched with scattered dark marks and scraped areas where the paint has worn thin. On the left, a large black panel curves forward, heavily dented and creased, splattered with irregular drips and patches of pale gray, blue, and tan paint; a smaller greenish piece overlaps near the bottom left, also scratched and chipped. A strip of shiny chrome trim arcs horizontally across the middle, bridging left and right and adding a linear accent amid the crushed forms.
Label Text
1961
Painted and chromium-plated steel
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Acquired by the Fisher family, 2007
Besides freestanding sculptures, Chamberlain also produced wall-mounted sculptures, such as this one and the nearby Fiddler’s Foot. In the wall-based works especially, one can see the influence of older abstract painters such as Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, both of whom Chamberlain befriended in New York in the late 1950s. Commentators of the day often described Chamberlain as having translated the painters’ bold, expressive brushstrokes into three dimensions.
Visual Description
Spanning about 8.5 ft wide and 3 ft tall, this painted and chromium-plated steel sculpture is a long, shallow, wall-mounted relief made from violently compressed metal elements. The overall silhouette is horizontally stretched and slightly tapered, with the densest, most compacted mass toward the right end and broader, layered folds toward the left. Interlocking sheets and bent components create a topography of ridges, dents, and overlapping planes, with glossy highlights from chrome-like surfaces cutting through matte and scuffed paint.