ABSTRACT
The art scene in San Francisco has rarely, if ever, been characterized by a sense of aesthetic abundance. There is certainly no shortage of artists here, and the museums are impressive in their number, if not always in their quality. The more ambitious works, such as "How to Chart a Course" and "Random Remarks and Digs," include, in addition to the central tableau, suites of color drawings that are designed to explicate the basic scenario, and "How to Chart a Course" even contains as part of the tableau construction a large hard-cover ledger filled with the artist's writings. Frank Lobdell is one of the senior painters on the Bay Area scene, an influential artist whose sense of vocation—a sense of art conceived primarily as a moral enterprise—still reflects the atmosphere and ambition of the period when Clyfford Still was the reigning deity of the California School.
