These ladies were enthralled just as I was this afternoon by a recent addition to the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Its creator, Tacita Dean, blatantly calls the work Beauty, a gelatin silver photograph blown up and printed across several sheets, the background painted over with chalky white gouache, and the whole mounted on stiff paper and suspended loosely from the wall with no hint of mount or frame.
It evokes, we are told, the trees of the artist's childhood encountered in the English countryside. Such a pastoral explanation does not, however, account for the way this work effortlessly annihilates everything else hanging in the vast gallery it shares.
Elsewhere in the museum I observed several effective video installations (and only found out after the fact that I wasn't supposed to photograph them).
Judith Scott (1943-2005) created the untitled yarn work on its pedestal below. It came to the Museum through the generosity of the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland.
It is good to see the curators properly appreciating the allure of shocking pink, a color that can never be displayed too frequently for my taste.
Finally, a large 2010 piece called Agave by Elliott Hundley. The materials include "soundboard, wood, inkjet print on kitikata paper, photographs, plastic, glue, and pins."
