Looking Back at SFMOMA, 2008-2013

2012

2010

Later this year the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will reopen after a spectacular expansion project. It will be sumptuous and wonderful. The now-engulfed old building from the eighties will no doubt become (in memory) smaller and more modest than it seemed in its own era. And inevitably it is also already becoming an object of nostalgia. For that reason I have assembled some of my own images of the galleries as they looked in the fairly recent past.

2009

2009

2008

2009

2012

2013

2009

2011

2009

2011

2011

2011

2010

2011

The final view is from an observation balcony on the (former) front of SFMOMA, above the 3rd Street entrance. Yerba Buena Gardens displays its tasteful allurements across the street.

Looming Deco

I was on the rooftop in the sculpture garden of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on Friday afternoon, as bright and warm as any spring day. By preference I would have been at the playground with Mabel Watson Payne, but that could not happen – because she is recovering from a little indisposition right now. There is much sickness around, of course, everyone hears this reported by word of mouth.

The visible sculptures above are by Mark di Suvero. But on this occasion instead of looking at the art I spent most of my time looking at the preparations to revamp the relatively small, stylish, Egyptian-themed, art deco skyscraper behind the museum. A pair of large carved stone eagles perch at sky level atop the central pillars. It seems amazing I never noticed them before. We are looking at the back of it. The formal entrance faces onto New Montgomery.

Radioactivity

Two 1964 Warhol silkscreens had emerged from SFMOMA's vaults again, for a little while, and were hanging side by side on the museum's second floor when I walked through on Friday. Small in scale, they emitted more radioactivity than any of their larger, flashier neighbors. At top, Double Jackie. And below it, Untitled (Silver Electric Chair). Both came to the museum in 1997 as full or partial gifts from the large collection of Pop and post-Pop art assembled by Vicki and Kent Logan.
  

Two other works from the Logan Collection have seldom appeared publicly before. Jeff Koons's Self-Portrait (exuding ironic nobility) was carved from white marble in 1991. Jenny Saville's Hem dates from 1999, the product of insanely dexterous brushwork (something like John Singer Sargent's) on a rather enormous scale, painted when the artist was still in her twenties. Both works echo the Grand Manner traditionally assumed by Great Artists in the past, but turn this lofty posturing upside down with their subversive attitudes toward their subjects.

On the floor in the photo immediately above is a partial view of Damien Hirst's Philip (The Twelve Disciples) – one of twelve similar assemblages (representing the famous New Testament dozen) dating from 1994. Its components are listed on the informative wall card as: steel, glass, formaldehyde solution, and bull's head.  

Vintage Minimalism

All these photos were taken in a single medium-sized gallery at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Donald Judd's structure of stacked steel units (Untitled, 1973) is almost always on display. But the red-orange Donald Judd painting (Untitled, 1962) is a fairly rare sight. This made me feel like a bird watcher glimpsing some almost unknown species. Judd (who died in 1994 at age 65) prepared the painting surface with sand. In 1962 he was still executing his own work with his own hands in the time-consecrated way. By the seventies he had made his breakthrough – he designed numerous series of these open-ended metal boxes, for example, and determined how they should be installed, but had them manufactured by an industrial foundry, thus dispensing with any claim to craftsmanship and resting his entire artistic contribution on conception.  

The turquoise blue construction at top with wires dangling off the painted board was created by Eva Hesse in 1965. Called Top Spot, it is on loan to the Museum from a private collection. Works by Eva Hesse are sadly scarce, her career cut short by mortal illness at the age of 34 in 1970. All the greater, then, the pleasure at this chance to see a completely new (to me) piece from her exiguous body of work. SFMOMA owns and frequently displays two Eva Hesse sculptures (I photographed them here some while back). They were both in the room on Friday afternoon when I was there, along with Top Spot. The one that looks like fishing nets with weights in them is Untitled or Not Yet, 1966.  The rectangular molded chambers of wax is Sans II, 1968. When I first saw these objects several years ago, I was indifferent or thought them gimmicky, but over time their power and authenticity gained my grudging esteem. Like Emma regarding Mr. Knightley, my esteem gradually grew to include warmer emotions also. 

October Instagrams

Recent  Instagrams of Mabel (and her mother). 

Untitled

In the new hanging of the permanent collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the gallery devoted to Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still shows off the work especially well. The painting under scrutiny is Untitled, 1957. The red painting glimpsed at far right is Untitled, 1954.

Land's End, 1963

Fragments of painted stencil-like lettering from one of the longest-lasting contenders on my own top ten list of favorite paintings at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art – Land's End, painted in 1963 by Jasper Johns. If you needed a single painting to represent the unlikely link between Abstract Expressionism and Pop, you could do worse than rely on this one.