The early ’70s was such a pivotal moment in the fine arts, with both the radicalism of 1968 and emerging technologies creating tectonic changes in what was considered, and who created, visual arts. Mixed-media artist Bruce Nauman captured the moment well by utilizing the pop art medium of silkscreening to capture the human body in new, playful and humorous ways in his collection “Studies for Holograms.” By framing his own face in ways to deliberately obscure, Nauman sought to recast the artist’s own body as a pliable material for abstract art.

Bruce Nauman
Opens Wed, 11am, Free
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford

Elizabeth Kathleen Mitchell, curator for Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, has put together a decade-spanning collection of pieces from the museum which all use paper as the medium. Prints, drawings, photographs, sketches and more. This new temporary retrospective collection includes more than 100 works from artists all around the world, including American photographer Lee Friedlander, known for his street photography, landmark Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco and Malian photographer Malick Sidibé, who never needed color in his photography to capture all the zest and texture of Bamako’s ‘60s pop culture revolution.

Paper Chase
Wed, 11am, Free
Cantor Arts Center

To celebrate its ever-growing collection, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University is highlighting its extensive Modern and Contemporary art galleries in the last two weeks of the year. The “Modern and Contemporary” art exhibit will feature a plethora of early- to late-20th century art with an emphasis Bay Area artists—as well as featuring objects from the museum’s permanent collection, others on special loan and newer acquisitions that showcase the range and variety of the museum’s collection. The show exhibit will feature local legends like Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Arneson and Henry Moore. It runs through Jan. 23.

Modern and Contemporary
Wed, 11am, Free
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford

This evening, the rarely screened and highly acclaimed documentary on the Rolling Stones, Cocksucker Blues, will be screened at Stanford University, as part of the Cantor Arts Center exhibit, Robert Frank in America. And you can check it out for free.

The documentary, directed and shot by American street photography icon, Robert Frank, was filmed during the Stones’ 1972 tour of the U.S. It is a gritty and unflinching examination of the banality of life on the road, which seems to conclude that sex, drugs and rock & roll can be a real bore.

“The people of Palo Alto are in for a real treat,” says Peter Galassi, curator of the Robert Frank in America exhibition, which secured the precious rights to screen the film. After the completion of the documentary, the Rolling Stones were allegedly displeased with Frank’s final product, and took the photographer to court. As a result, the film may only be legally screened a handful of times each year, according to Galassi.

“Most of these road movies were about glorifying the band,” Galassi explains. “The Stones didn’t like the movie because it wasn’t just a glorification of the Stones—it was also about the cloistered boring life of all the time when they’re not performing.”

And it was also about drugs. Multiple clips of the film on YouTube appear to show the band and their entourage sniffing cocaine. In one scene, Keith Richards nods off—passing out in the lap of a girlfriend backstage, presumably after a particularly potent hit of heroin.

According to Galassi, the Stones felt the film constituted incriminating evidence against them. They had good reason to be paranoid (aside from all the blow they were shoving up their noses at the time), the curator says. At that time, the band were under the perpetual observation of American drug enforcement authorities.

“It’s too bad, because I think it’s a really great movie,” Galassi says.

But the showing of Cocksucker Blues is merely the icing on the cake, according to Galassi, who worked as the chief curator of photography at MOMA from 1991 to 2011. According to Galassi, the main Cantor exhibit, Robert Frank in America, compiles 130 photographs, which until recently had remained hidden away in private collections.

As Galassi tells it, when he first took a look at the photos that Cantor and Stanford had acquired directly from private collectors, he was stunned to find that he was unfamiliar, or only vaguely aware of the pieces he was seeing.

The curator explains that in the late ’70s, the market for art photography really started to take off, and Frank, a hero in the street photography world was suddenly being approached left and right by collectors seeking to buy his work, which he was glad to sell, as it allowed him to finance the pursuit of his new passion—motion pictures.

“The Cantor’s collection was part of this chunk that he sold off in the ’70s,” Galassi says. “Basically it’s been sleeping for the last 40 years.”