SFMOMA

I just scanned Anna Conti's Site and was reminded that there is new stuff at SFMOMA. It looks like I need to make a trip. I missed the members' preview, because those things are not fun with a toddler. We need to go in the morning on a Tuesday or the paintings are lost in a sea of big people (imagine the view from a two-year old's perspective).

We did make a quick trip this afternoon to the Oakland Museum of California, where Amalia has a piece on display (a tile, to be precise. She was there with Melanie on a family craft day, and this was our first time to see it after firing. Lots of purple with some interesting sgraffito, all of which is symbolic in Amalia's highly personalized language: a squiggle for Mamma, a squiggle for Babbo, a squiggle for Nonna, a squiggle for Granddad, a squiggle that was created for Lorenzo (neighbor), but Amalia now denies. Mamma was there and heard it all, though. Let's not tell Lorenzo that Amalia changed her mind).

After viewing the tile, Amalia wanted to talk to the deer in the natural history section, so they went off there, and I went up to the art section. Got to spend some quality time in front of Diebenkorn's Ocean Park #107. I like just about all of the Ocean Park paintings, but this is one of my all time favorites, probably because I know it better than all the others, but also because it really is a superb painting.

I also spent some time looking at William Keith's middle period and the Society of Six. There was a contemporary art show and some of the pieces were moderately interesting, but only a few, and none were that interesting.

The Oakland Museum still has horrid lighting. If you have millions of dollars sitting around looking for a good home, they could use an updated lighting system (not to mention a whole bunch of other things - the history section could use a dusting off and updating, too).

The last big show I went to and did not blog about was the Art Deco show at the California Legion of Honor. It was good, although terrible crowded, and did not go into art deco architecture enough. It was a good reminder that the ideas of art deco were great in design but fairly lame in easel painting. If I felt more like writing about a design period that I am not too excited about, I would post a full review, but I don't, so I won't (I did mention being up until 3am, didn't I?).

So, if you are interested, go read Anna Conti's review of SFMOMA (she also links to the insipid Ken Baker, who I stopped reading years ago, but might be worth checking out for this one). I have read neither review so far, because I want to see it first, but I will read them and will review the thing myself after I see what they have done.

I have also resolved to make the rounds at the commercial galleries this summer. I have not done that for a long time, but it is worth doing. It at least gives me something to rant about.