Art and Eostar

I've been offline for days since my laptop started dying, snapping off at odd moments with increasing frequency. Thankfully I was able to retrieve all my writing and photos before it went completely comatose. Now it's in the shop for a month! Rather than endure four weeks sans machine...well, the decision to pop for a new one was easy. It's the decadent choice but not so much so considering we're an online sort of family. A family of four with only three portals to cyberspace AND we got this one for a really good deal. I guess we all have our indulgences.

So, meanwhile, I've been enjoying this lush Spring and a casual family and friend-oriented pagan Eostar with a focus on damn good food and the burgeoning green. Lots of seedling nurturing going on here with trays of fragile stems continually carried in and out of the sunshine and cold wind. Baby veggies! I managed to raise a small crop of wheatgrass in one of my nicer baskets to compete with the kids' jellybeans and paper grass.

Last Thursday my folks treated me to a day in the City, museum-hopping. I didn't do anything to deserve such a fab day but I enjoyed myself unabashedly. All three of us like soaking up art so we went for full saturation. Three museums in one day. I liked it so much, I will describe it in detail. So beware.

We saw the Masterpieces of French Jewelry at the Legion of Honor in the morning. Mom works in fine jewelry so it was a must see for her. The collection included Art Nouveau pieces from the early 20th century through to contemporary works. Sinuous filigreed exquisiteness (Lalique and Fouquet) to dripping with diamonds (Cartier), whimsical fruit and bugs fashioned from sapphires or emeralds (Van Cleef & Arpels) all the way to glittering marvels encrusted with tiny gems and a plumed zebra head brooch of variegated agate with a diamond bridle (by the exclusive reclusive JAR). There were a few chunkified horrors in the Art Deco style and rare bits, like the gold pin by Picasso. Everything from the usual pins, earrings and necklaces to evening bags, fans, vanity cases and an umbrella handle. Even a little cage fashioned for a tree frog. All of it stunning.

Then we hit the De Young which apparently I've never visited before, at least not in recent memory. Which was fortunate because I was blessedly unencumbered by fond recollections of the old museum structure before it was recently and completely razed and revamped. Now it is quite impressive and supposedly controversial, clad in a textural brown copper siding all embossed and nubbly, sporting a kind of skewed top-heavy tower at one corner (from which there is a panoramic view). Everything about it exudes a feeling both prehistoric and warmly futuristic. Elemental and essential. An Andy Goldsworthy installation marks the entrance with stone slabs split by an artificial fault line (a nod to the forces that damaged the previous building). Close-trimmed palm trees lines the front and slag piles of slate erupt with large fern trees beyond the glass windows of the interior. I liked it. Primitive, spare and textural.

There was a lot to see and much of it we didn't. Some was captivating, some not. Besides an amazing collection of photography, there were a lot of modern pieces including Cornelia Parker's "Anti-Mass" installation of suspended charcoal and wire, revealed to be the remains of a Southern Baptist church destroyed by arson. Also, some recent prints of Deborah Oropallo's computer manipulations of 18th century military men morphing into modern sexy women, including one rendered as a tapestry. Many American pieces of the Hudson River School style with the star being Frederic Edwin Church's Rainy Season in the Tropics. (Wow, there were visionary artists in 1866! The only thing missing is the dolphins!) Aesthetically, my favorite was Ruth Asawa's woven wire forms hanging in the foyer to the tower with small lights angled to cast big shadows of the bulbous and branchy organic shapes. It accentuated the overall feel of the museum beautifully. I was also smitten with the huge collection of New Guinea carved wooden ritual implements: masks, bowls, shields, drums, spirit boards (these last looked like far out surf boards- for riding the cosmic waves, perhaps?) I could've taken in a lot more but we were starving so we headed to the SoMa district.

We ate at Annabelle's Bar and Bistro on 4th near Mission. We three had discovered it when we took in the Chagall exhibit a few years back. It's classic old San Francisco with high ceilings, chicken wire floor tiles, heavy glass fixtures and a great wooden bar stretching back to an open kitchen. Dark wood wainscoting, soft citron walls, big vases of lanky calla lilies and heavy white moldings made it all very atmospheric. A good place to rest, sipping pinot, which we did. Past 3 o' clock, after a perfect lunch, a shared gelato banana split and some good strong java we were ready to plow onward. To SFMOMA!

The whole point of coming to the City was to catch the Picasso and American Art exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Everyone takes it for granted that Picasso is considered great. That's easy. It's written in every comprehensive art book in the world. Maybe not everyone is clear on why. A majority, if pressed, would most likely admit they don't actually like his work. It can be challenging. I happen to think he was great, in the deepest sense of that word. He broke so much new ground that modern art became this burgeoning jungle, a new creature, another planet. This show was about just that.


So, I found myself in front of multiple great works by, among others, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichenstein, Jasper Johns. Each piece was juxtaposed with a relevant work by Picasso. It was striking, the degree of influence. Like the the Picasso piece was a seed that these other works sprung directly from. Ironically, Picasso is quoted as saying," A good artist borrows, a great artist steals." I don't know what that means exactly but he obviously encouraged some folks.

Coincidentally, I began a large painting last month that I built around a shape I was enamored of from his Guernica painting. It's a light shaped like an eye and it features prominently in my composition. Now I don't feel so sheepish having done so. I see it a little like the "borrowing" that happens in folk songwriting. A phrase or bit of melody from an old song will be the central thread of a completely new creation. It's just a jumping off point.

I always seem to be struck by just particular pieces (or even just certain elements within a work) by an artist rather than the body of work as a whole. I always thought that was strange. Now, I feel a renewed alertness to catching onto those threads because that's the "me" of it. That's where my fire, my juice is revealed to me. So, I stand in awe of de Kooning's Event In A Barn when I usually find much of his work a bit misogynistic (his women almost viciously drawn). I am left completely unmoved by Pollock's expanses of dribbles, visual white noise. But #18, 1951 had me riveted. A pure magic spell unfolding visually. His woefully inadequately titled #5 (pictured above), completely floors me. I want to call it She of Grass.

So, yeah, I came away from San Francisco all fired up, inspired and strangely consoled about the track I'm on. I think I'm doing fine.