This is pt. 3 of my meditation on a theme drawn from Elliot Lavine’s typically-inspired grab-bag film series NOT NECESSARILY NOIR, currently in progress at the Roxie Theater (Click on highlighted sections for trailers, etc. Click here for pt.2, the previous entry in this series):

Hardcore (1979), Paul Schrader’s second effort as ... More

Craig Baldwin is a filmmaker, curator, and publisher, and as long-time host of ATA‘s Other Cinema has been premiering experimental, essay, and documentary works for over a quarter century. He’s talking about the legacy of  Wallace Berman and the art/poetry journal Semina (1955-1964). Keep your eye out for Rick Prelinger w/ video camera ... More

Rick Prelinger is a archivist, writer and media-maker, and founder of the Prelinger Archives.  Here he’s talking about Willard E. Worden‘s Observatory in Ruins, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco (1906), imagining the observatory’s contested construction and subsequent collapse by earthquake, as prophecy towards a proposed re... More

Iain Boal is a writer and historian. He’s speculating here (to quite a crowd) about the couple in Elaine Mayes‘s Interracial Couple and Baby, Golden State Park, August, 1968. If you click the thumbnail at left, the image will open larger in a new window; you may find it helpful to be able to be able to click back and forth to the pictu... More

This is pt. 2 of my meditation on a theme drawn from Elliot Lavine’s typically-inspired grab-bag film series NOT NECESSARILY NOIR, currently in progress at the Roxie Theater (Click on highlighted film titles for trailers. Click here for pt.1):

Schrader was back in six months, and immediately engaged by furious bouts of automatic transmissi... More

Inspired by Elliot Lavine’s typically-inspired grab-bag film series NOT NECESSARILY NOIR, currently in progress at the Roxie Theater, I’ve been contemplating a particular theme (from among many possible) dealing with several works in this series, most of which have yet to play:

Nobody has ever talked more cogently about film than Paul S... More

Sometimes during my tenure as blogger, I will go see Hollywood blockbusters with artists and document, in impressionistic fashion, our experience. This is episode five.

I went to go see The Expendables (2010, dir. Sylvester Stallone) with the writer and artist Ariel Goldberg. We met at the Metreon and admired all the vending machines on the way to... More

In an exchange of emails with Peter Fagundo, we discussed our relationship to the “things” in our lives. Peter is an artist living and working in Chicago, we have never met, but share similar sensibilities in our work. I had first emailed a link to Peter, he responded and then I followed up other thoughts. Shortly there after I asked if... More

Chris Gruhl aka Shadowgolem says about the mono-colored painting, “A big solid gray canvas? Really?…Art needs to have more than just intention, it needs execution” and instead of just thinking it, he created his own work of art using Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s poster available in the 2nd floor galleries. He says, “this composition was our attempt to add a bit to it. Still very abstract but not quite so, well, boring.”

Thanks Chris!

We choose the Flickr pictures of the week from anything tagged “SFMOMA̶... More

My last post was on the nature of being an artist’s artist. This month I thought I’d step back and follow up with thoughts about artists more broadly. I’ve been curating since 1979, have worked with literally thousands of artists, so inevitably I have developed certain impressions of the way many artists engage the world. However I take these steps very tentatively, as so much silliness has been foisted along these lines. Most particularly, my friends and I often talk about the way artists have been depicted by Hollywood and tv. These are the predictable and familiar cliches: self-destructive, violent, egomaniacal, effete, cruel, miserable, drug- and alcohol-addicted, childish. The artist Tracey Moffat, in her video Artist, (2000) nails this depiction, with clips from several commercial films and tv.

My idea, then, is to tread very lightly, while making an attempt to offer a few small observations toward the ongoing goal in these posts of understanding the field to wh... More

I just spent a whole month of my life glued to all manner of screens devouring world cup football (or soccer as you call it here in America). There were many things I should have been doing, instead I was watching the beautiful game unfold in South Africa. Now I know that for most of the American public this is a sport that lacks excitement, a game can end with no one scoring any goals; and confuses, the offside rule. FIFA’s refusal to allow instant playback is seen as archaic and nonsensical. But if you grow up anywhere outside the USA, th... More

Martin Venezky is a designer, and the owner of Appetite Engineers. He’s speaking here about a untitled tintype, taken in a portrait studio ca. 1870 by an unknown photographer, of a young man in cowboy attire. “I look at it more as a picture of aspiration rather than occupation.”  (Click the thumbnail for a larger view.) A wonderf... More

Jennifer Sonderby is SFMOMA’s head of graphic design. Jennifer’s talking about Leslie Shows’s painting Two Ways to Organize (2006), and how she decided to put it on the cover of the (massive) anniversary catalogue, 75 Years of Looking Forward. Many thanks to Jen for a fantastic talk, and equanimity in an extremely noisy, crowded g... More

In spring 2009, after working on his feature film C RED BLUE J (screened at SFMOMA Fall election 2008), Chris Sollars returned to his playful street studio practice of intervention. Starting with performances of washing trash Street Clean 1997, kicking soccer balls through San Francisco in Cityscapes 2000 (collection Berkeley Art Museum), and sitting and walking as a Pile of Trash 2002 & 2006. Returning his attention to a sculpture practice and lack of space and materials, Sollars started taking walks and making public sculptures with trash... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Multimedia artist Chris Johanson sat down with me for 5 questions while listening to  members of the band the 17th and Capps rehearsing in the next room.  They were all in town for the museum's Now Playing event in June. Many will know Chris as a San Francisco Mission School artist.  He current... More

Eating without thinking. Well, yeah. The supra-quotidian quality of eating (many people, especially in the West, do it several times a day) has the effect of obscuring the very real fact that every act of eating produces a semiotic universe through which the eater must travel. We forget, whether we’re squirting high fructose corn syrup onto flattened soy or squeezing a lemon from the backyard into a tall glass of gin, that the consumption of nourishment, in every instance, is an aesthetic and political act.

Food for Thought, the show Sabrina ... More

Allison Smith is an artist. During the anniversary weekend, two of her SMITHS projects were running simultaneously on our fifth floor, so we especially appreciated her coming down to give her talk on J. Wilbur Sandison‘s photograph Quilt (ca. 1940s). “I love the idea of an artwork that is as much the conversation as the material ... More

This is the second in a two-part series on a screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s Endless Love, to be presented by the Film on Film Foundation as part of its on-going series Film Maudit/Accursed Films, on Sunday, August 22nd at 4 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive.  Disclosure: this is a presentation in which I’m personally involved.  Co... More

This is the first in a two-part series on a screening of Franco Zeffirelli’s Endless Love to be presented by the Film on Film Foundation on Sunday, August 22nd at 4 p.m. at the Pacific Film Archive.  Disclosure: this is a presentation in which I’m personally involved.  Consider yourself warned and invited! Click here for more informat... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month, I invite a guest to organize a mini-exhibition from our collection works online. Please welcome poet and artist Yedda Morrison. [NB: click images for larger view. Lovely.] Thanks, Yedda!

A biocentric readingof SFMOMA’S permanent collection; or foraging for sub-narratives within the aesthetic ... More

For this Sunday Video Segment – Who are We?

I am returning from The Teton Mountain Range formed six to eight million years ago, young in consideration of the Rocky Mountains being formed one hundred million years ago, and the Appalachian Mountains four hundred and eighty million years ago.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Joseph Campbell

E. H. Gombrich

(more…)

Laura‘s great pic of Dan Graham’s Double Cylinder (The Kiss) just begs for this soundtrack:

Excuse me while I kiss the sky. Thanks Laura!

We choose the Flickr pictures of the week from anything tagged “SFMOMA”. You tag too!

Anne McGuire is an artist whose work plays with conventions of perception.  In her talk on Anne Bremer‘s Sentinels (1920), Anne imagines prairie girl Laura Ingalls Wilder‘s life as compared to the life of the cosmopolitan painter and poet Anne Bremer, born as they were just one year apart. Thank you Anne!

Remember the end of Manhattan,... More

Duane Deterville is an artist and writer (and Open Space blogging alumni). He’s talking here about Picasso‘s 1907 Tête de trois quarts (Head in Three-Quarter View). Welcome back, Duane!

Remember the end of Manhattan, when Woody Allen asks himself what makes life worth living? Last January, during SFMOMA’s three day 75th anniver... More

San Francisco-based writer Rebecca Solnit‘s forthcoming book Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas reimagines traditional map-making in 22 inventive maps, 7 of which SFMOMA is issuing this year in broadside copies linked to a series of Live Art events. The second program of the series is this weekend. Rebecca speaks here about what it meant, e... More

On April 19th 2010, Chris Coy arrived at Hallway Projects for a One-Day Artist Residency. Within five minutes our short introduction continued towards “art” talk. We discussed making vs. NOT making, objects and NONobjects, looking vs. making. Recycling REcycling Baldessari, materials and BROWSERS, preTumblr, Tumblr, Teenage Girl Omnicap... More

There’s something about Charles LeDray’s Come Together that begs you to put on the tiny shirt. In Christine’s words:

“As we made it through the museum Nathan and I had fun with some of the incredible art (more photos on my flickr!). This particular picture was his idea, wanting to make it look like he was wearing the tiny shirt and a fun challenge to get the right angle and distance to accomplish his idea.”

Thanks Christine!

We choose the Flickr pictures of the week from anything tagged “SFMOMA”. You ta... More

Sam Green is a documentary filmmaker living in San Francisco. For a possibly irrelevant anecdote from me on Sam’s selection of this curious untitled photograph by an unknown photographer, see my note on Anne Walsh’s talk, here. Click the thumbnail for a larger view of the picture.

Remember the end of Manhattan, when Woody Allen asks him... More

Anne Walsh is a visual artist. (And former Open Space columnist!) I can’t resist offering a bit of program back-story on her selection of this untitled picture by an unknown photographer: When I asked our speakers to participate, I sent them long lists  of every work expected to be on view during the Anniversary weekend, that is, hundreds a... More

Sometimes during my tenure as blogger, I will go see Hollywood blockbusters with artists and document, in impressionistic fashion, our experience. This is episode four.

I went to go see Inception (2010, dir. Christopher Nolan) with the filmmaker and curator Konrad Steiner. We met after work and went to the 4th Street Bar and Grill across from the Metreon and had a beer. We talked about Konrad’s upcoming performance at the annual cabaret held at The (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand. It was happy hour. I loosened my tie. We saw the film. Afterw... More