“Transmission” – SDMA – 1450 El Prado, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA 92101 – 619.232.7931

Runs through Nov. 12: Tues. – Sun. , 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Like most forms of high culture, the appreciation of art grows exponentially over time — that is to say, art is often better understood in hindsight. So artists like Marcel Duchamp, Andrea Breton, Le Corbusier, Renee Magritte and Salvador Dali owe a lot to the passage of time, which has footnoted their works with photography, Freudian theory and studies of phenomenology to better its understanding.

And as art matures, it reproduces, bearing more movements as it ages. The manipulation of picture on the canvas (surrealism) led to the abstraction of the picture itself (expressionism), which in turn produced the detraction of the canvas and space around the canvas (minimalism).

The San Diego Museum of Art’s exhibition “Transmission” explores this evolution of art through the works of Roberto Matta and Gordon Matta-Clark, father and son artists whose works typify the shared legacy between art movements.

The exhibition examines the relationship between the surrealist father and post-pop son, examining Matta’s futurist paintings and its later influence on Matta-Clark’s photographs, as well as both artists’ exploration of architectural space within their works.