Art review: Showcasing oft-unseen master Richard Bunkall

The name of the late Richard Bunkall (1953-99) is likely unknown to even the most focused of the art public. The small but potent sampling of the painter’s life’s work currently on view at the Pasadena Museum of California Art should help to change that. It gives us a glimpse of the oeuvre of a master and an unassuming original that thought deeply about cities and their relationships to the people in them.

At its best, Bunkall’s work taps into an American collective memory of place. It’s at once native but with undeniable ties to Europe, in the present yet timeless.

His largely deserted sidewalks in front of once-grand structures could be part of the downtown landscape of any American urban city. Rendered in rich-yet-muted colors, the solemnity is tweaked by foreign elements: the rotor blades of a ship, a swimming whale, a locomotive or the tail of a dirigible. All of them might be discernible from within the shadows of a giant archway or moving glacially somewhere in the picture plane. Bunkall managed to simultaneously embody romanticism, classicism and everyday domestic surrealism.

His large canvases are dominated by cropped views of huge buildings. Columns, arches, porticos, figurines, quotations from literature cut into stone and other classical features abound in them. Whether a civic or commercial building, a cathedral or grand old theater, his structures are discreetly humanized by their stoic decay, Renaissance palette and bas-relief angels. A few people, tiny by comparison, walk blithely through the shadows of these behemoths.

We search the paintings for clues. Bunkall makes us curious about why the Chrysler Building was laid sideways in one piece, how that locomotive got onto the sidewalk, what goes on behind open windows and why the zeppelin flies so low in front of the building. His ability to draw in and hold the viewer with an implied narrative is a good working definition of art.

Bunkall was a painter’s painter, born in Pasadena, raised in San Clemente. He studied at Art Center College of Design when it was in Los Angeles. His sketchbooks, part of a small display of ephemera and studio objects, show his elevated studies of Paris, Italy and New York. Bunkall taught painting at Art Center and had a profound impact on two of the city’s reigning painters: R. Kenton Nelson and Ray Turner.

After fighting a battle for the best part of a decade, Bunkall succumbed to ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. His abiding love of baseball and its history put a darkly ironic spin to his demise. But the Catholicism, clearly discernible in his churches and handcrafted figurines, speaks of a faith that saw him through the hard times. By all accounts, Bunkall faced his end with grace.

Like few art shows, this one celebrates the joys of expertly handled paint. His canvases have to be studied up close for their thick impastos, dimensional color, deft figurative shorthand and layered brush strokes. Then they beg to be seen from a distance, so the eyes can mix the colors, take in the chiaroscuro and understand the logic of Bunkall’s planes, diffuse shadows and placement of color accents.

A sampling of Bunkall’s wood constructions — of cathedral facades and foreshortened building exteriors — nods to the interests of a lifelong scale model builder. Some items from his studio are also revealing: a scuffed old baseball and classic novels among them. A small paint rendering of Bunkall on a wooden square shows the loving regard that Ray Turner, one of our finest portraitists, had for him.

The gorgeous new coffee table book “Richard Bunkall” (Captain of the Stripes Press), published to coincide with the show, indicates the work on display at the PMCA represents a fraction of Bunkall’s output. He is worthy of a major retrospective. In the meantime, the exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art is required viewing.

KIRK SILSBEE writes about jazz and culture for Marquee.

“Richard Bunkall: A Portrait”

Where: Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E. Union St., Pasadena, CA 91101

When: Through April 22. Open noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday. Tickets $7 adults, $5 seniors and students.

Contact: (626) 568-3665, www.pmca.org