ABOUT BEATRICE BING
Overlooked Abstract Expressionist Bernice Bing Searched for Identity through Painting
Bernice Bing, or “Bingo,” was, in many ways, an artist’s artist. She was a well-respected figure in the San Francisco arts community during the 1950s and ’60s, but her Abstract Expressionist paintings have largely been left out of the movement’s subsequent history. It is, of course, unsurprising that the works of a Chinese-American and lesbian artist would fall through the cracks of art history—and in her painting Blue Light (1961), she grappled with this very issue. The red ideogram meaning “humanity” in Chinese and the heart symbolism show Bing’s attempt to find a place in American society through abstract, spiritual imagery. “Both symbols—humanity and heart—reflect Bing,” Flo Wong, an artist and close friend of Bing’s, once said.
The exhibition“Bingo: The Life and Art of Bernice Bing,” on view at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art until January 5, 2020, details Bing’s well-respected place in the arts community during her active years. The curator, Linda Keaton, writes in the exhibition catalogue that Bing’s life detailed “early heartbreak, trying obstacles, and ultimately the triumph of a modern woman.”
Born in San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1936, Bing’s early life was filled with tragedy. Orphaned at an early age—her father died in prison and her mother of heart failure—she and her sister occasionally lived with their traditional and strict grandmother, but spent most of their childhood in foster homes with Caucasian families, as well as in the abusive Ming Quong orphanage. It was this early feeling of alienation in America that led Bing on a lifelong search for community and the true essence of selfhood.
Bing was a rebellious child who struggled academically but excelled at art, earning herself a full scholarship to attend the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1957. This short stint proved transformative. She was instructed by abstract painter Saburo Hasegawa, who first introduced her to Zen calligraphy, as well as Taoism and Buddhist philosophy. The ability “to see without seeing” ignited in Bing a lifelong devotion to spirituality. In 1958, she decided to study painting rather than art and advertising. She transferred to the California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute), where she graduated with an MFA and met the figurative painter Joan Brown, the sculptor Manuel Neri, and the founding fathers of funk art, Robert Hudson and William T. Wiley.
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