Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism*, and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—
Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #23 & 24 on space and experience.
See all Positive Signs to date.

Last weekend, a friend offered me a ticket to see The Gurs Zyklus, a fully staged opera by Seattle-based, German-born, MacArthur-winning, musically inclined installation artist Trimpin. I accepted but had few expectations, though perhaps taste-based trepidations: I’d seen his sound-based installations in the past, just wasn’t sure it would be m... More

On the occasion of Open Engagement, a conference hosted by the Social Practice Department of Portland State University, Christian Nagler and I presented our research under the title “The Aging of Social Practice, or How to Get to Know Your Parents through Political Economy.” As the final gesture of the presentation, we offered a direct address to the subject of our research, the Baby Boom Generation, those born between 1946 and 1964. This address was an attempt to translate some of the basic tenets of socially engaged art practice by rewriting a text by Charles Baudelaire entitled “To the Bourgeois,” the preface to his text about the Salon of 1846. It was written two years before the French revolution, and was a respectful challenge to the bourgeois majority to consider the new prerevolutionary currents of Parisian art practice. Thanks to the wonderful Brandon Brown for pointing us to this text.

As 40% of the adult population, you are a majority — in number ... More

For about two years now I have been living away from San Francisco, and I am constantly being confronted by the stereotypes people have of the art scene in the Bay Area. Apparently there are a lot of people who are quick to dismiss the art and artists in SF as being maybe not as serious as they are out here in New York. But by serious they mean hard work. Politics. Professionalism. Attitude. Getting Paid. Stuff like that. So I find myself wanting to tell the people I meet it’s not so simple, that it’s an apples & oranges comparison and that artists in San Francisco are not the crude stereotypes they make them out to be.

Still, it’s hard to fight a stereotype — especially one that has grains of truth in it. For better or worse, the San Francisco brand was writ large by the 1960s counterculture movement. Consider how, in 1967 during the Summer of Love at the first “Human Be-In,” Timothy Leary told a crowd of 30,000 people in Golden Gate Park to “Tune in, turn o... More

“Palimpsest, i.e., a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.”H.D.

Painter Philip Guston & poet Clark Coolidge are major collaborators in the tradition of poets and painters working together. In case you haven’t seen it, there’s a delicious new book from the University of California Press, Philip Guston... More

The Cannes Film Festival announced on Monday that Iranian directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof will be screening two films that were smuggled outside the country in recent days. Both directors have appealed their sentences of six years in prison and a 20-year ban on filmmaking.

Jafar Panahi wrote to the Cannes Film Festival Festival on May 5th: “Our problems are also all of our assets. Understanding this promising paradox helped us not to lose hope, and to be able to go on since we believe wherever in the world that we li... More

Spring, at art school, isn’t exactly about sunny days and waiting for the first heirloom tomatoes to show up at farmers’ market. It’s a frantic season of creative pushes, buffing edges, and occasional artistic breakthroughs. More often, it’s a season of anxiety levels spiking along with pollen counts. I’m in deep — thesis advising,... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism*, and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—
Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #22 & 23 on explanatory style examples for artists.
See all Positive Signs to date.

Five hundred people showed up on April 30 to hear Matthew Barney receive a film-related award, talk, and screen the 30-minute Drawing Restraint 17 during the San Francisco International Film Festival. The show was sold out.

I got the gig, at Barney’s request, to conduct the onstage interview. I was honored, though I knew through experience that ... More

This is the latest in a series of observations from the 10th Sharjah International Biennial, Plot for a Biennial.

Adel Abidin‘s Their Dreams is based on drawings from and interviews with children from various locales, including Iraq, Palestine, Switzerland, Jordan, and Finland, who were asked to illustrate their dreams and what they hope to ... More

It’s been all hands on deck for many, many months as the museum has been getting ready for the landmark exhibition The Steins Collect, opening May 21. American expatriates in Paris when the 20th century was young, the Steins — writer Gertrude, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael’s wife, Sarah — were responsible in many ways fo... More

“Palimpsest, i.e., a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

Saâdane Afif

Born in Vendôme, France, in 1970; lives and works in Berlin

Untitled (More More, 2003 / Neon light, pile of photocopies / Dimensions variable), 2008; Installation view, Technical Specifications. Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. Photo: Bob Goedewaagen

“My work today does not rely on the object: It is developed through the accumulation or interweaving of elements that can be more or less visible. One of t... More

In “I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac,” Kathy Acker somewhat wryly describes the art world as “the bohemia of finances.” Still, questions of money and capital in the art world continue to transpire. Occasionally I will post discussions with artists and curators about the economics of their practice. This sixth installment is an e-mail conversation with the editor of local arts publication Art Practical, Patricia Maloney.

BB: Could you describe your practice for SFMOMA blog readers in broad terms?

PM: These days, my primary calling card bear... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism*, and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—
Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #19 & 20 on when to use optimism, and creative individuals’ relationships to pain and enjoyment.
See all Positive Signs to date.

The San Francisco International Film Festival and Pacific Film Archive’s film series became one of the most awaited events of the year for the Iranian American community in the Bay Area in the ’90s. Having lived through the absence of reports from Iran except for the state-controlled, sanctioned news, we were eager to find ways of rec... More

With the death of perhaps the greatest conspirator of our era, Osama bin Laden, and all the discussion surrounding him, it struck me that America has always been haunted by conspiracy theories and by conspirators. Coincidentally, two nights ago I went to see the film about the so-called Lincoln Assassination Conspirators aptly titled The Conspirato... More

Max Weber famously distinguished, in Theory of Social and Economic Organization, between “charismatic” and “institutional” forms of authority. Navigating these tendencies is among the salient challenges of working as a curator in a large museum. One’s own inspiration and convictions come to bear, alongside those of collaborators and colle... More

“Palimpsest, i.e., a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

“The practice of painting is much more a habit, rather than being something exquisite.”

Luc Tuymans

ODE TO L.T.

blank spots and

areas of color

where details are erased, left out—

particular areas of bold, deep color, [Orchid]

more quiet faded-looking color

or grays and

black but areas are filled

up with color

salient is the

puzzle-like quality

translations

of photographs,

drawings, translated

from reality

from somewhere else?

laterality, aqua or

cerulean, ultramarine

or navy

roses in a yellow sky

like a hangover from

witless seeing

darklit sun

from the awareness

of windows

areas like objects

Spring, at art school, is an emotionally schizophrenic season. The weather tends to be glorious (and pollen-filled), as it was today, and campuses pulse with alternating currents of stress, anxiety, hope, exhaustion, and celebration as everyone lurches to the finish line. That was definitely the mix at SFAI this evening, when the campus was buzzing... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism*, and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—
Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #16, 17, & 18 on pervasiveness, permanence, and personalization.
See all Positive Signs to date.

[On Thursday, April 14, Open Space and Art Practical hosted the second of three conversations organized loosely around issues and themes raised by Stephanie Syjuco's multiartist project Shadowshop, on view now. Today we present three responses to that evening. Do join us for the last evening of discussion, on Thursday, May 12. Please welcome critical theorist Clark Buckner.]

Would the Real Artist Please Stand Up?

The second round of Shop Talk was framed by the central question posed by organizers Suzanne Stein and Patricia Maloney: “What is the perceived value of the artist’s production, or practice, and how does it change as art or artist traffic in different environments? The question developed out of the issues raised during the first gathering of Shop Talk, concerning whether Stephanie Syjuco’s project for the museum, Shadowshop, was beneficial for or ultimately at the expense of the artists who participated in it. Originally these issues were posed primarily in terms o... More

[On Thursday, April 14, Open Space and Art Practical hosted the second of three conversations organized loosely around issues and themes raised by Stephanie Syjuco's multiartist project Shadowshop, on view now. Today we present three responses to that evening. Do join us for the last evening of discussion on Thursday, May 12. Please welcome poet and critic Jasper Bernes.]

The second Shoptalk seemed to run aground, rather quickly, on the question of whether Shadowshop “devalued” art and artists by asking them to submit to various mercantile (and mercenary) constraints. People in the room espoused what seemed to me a surprisingly expansive sense of the artist’s vocation, and were quick to produce hoary notions about the specialness or freedom of art. Which is fine, I guess. Except that this freedom turned out to mean not freedom from mercenary concerns but participation in a very special market — the gallery system — whose chief distinguishing feature is that it allows everyone ... More

[On Thursday, April 14, Open Space and Art Practical hosted the second of three conversations organized loosely around issues and themes raised by Stephanie Syjuco's multiartist project Shadowshop, on view now. Today we present three responses to that evening. Do join us for the last evening of discussion on Thursday, May 12. Please welcome poet Erika Staiti.]

Suzanne Stein, community producer at SFMOMA, and Patricia Maloney, editor of Art Practical, begin the second Shop Talk conversation with opening remarks and a useful framework. They pose two questions [What is the perceived value of the artist’s production, or practice, and how does it change as art or artist traffic in different environments? and What are the economic realities for artists?]; identify six overarching categories [sustainability, autonomy, transparency, authorship/anonymity, valuation, and motivation]; and use quotes from the respondents to the first conversation to provide context for the group.

Amanda Hughen, Sh... More

As previously stated on this blog, arts institutions and concerned citizens are calling for the release of artist Ai Weiwei, who was detained by Chinese authorities.

Ai’s whereabouts are still unknown. According to FreeAiWeiwei.org, today marks the 22nd day since Ai disappeared.

Readers seeking additional perspectives might see “Release... More

Because April 2008 was when Open Space first appeared, I thought it might be nice to mark its third anniversary with an interview with the poet Jack Spicer from June 17th, 1965. It is published by Jacket magazine online. Click HERE to read it.

And to get a sense of the impact he has had on the San Francisco creative community click HERE to read a s... More

“Palimpsest i.e. a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

Speaking of rhyming and dreaming,

“That one image may recall another, finding depth in the resounding, is the secret of rhyme and measure. The time of the poem is felt as a recognition of return in vowel tone and consonant formations, of pattern in the sequence of syllables, in stress and in pitch of a melody, of images and meanings. It resembles the time of a dream, for it is highly organized along lines of association and impulses of contrast toward the structure of the whole. The impulse of dream or poem is to provide a ground for some form beyond what we know, for feeling ‘greater than reality’.”

Robert Duncan, The HD Book, p.99

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6pOXjQLh7Y

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism* and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—

Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #14: Explanatory Style & 15: Learned Optimism.
See all Positive Signs to date.

The 10th Sharjah International Biennial — cocurated by Suzanne Cotter, curator at Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, and Rasha Salti, creative director at ArteEast, with associate curator Haig Aivazian — is titled The Plot for a Biennial. The exhibition draws on the idea of “a treatment for film, replete with a plot, characters and motives,”... More

I went to go to see The Adjustment Bureau (2011, dir. George Nolfi) with the artist Kenneth Lo. We saw it at the mall. I got there a little early, and after buying our tickets I paced around this massive paper hammer advertisement for the movie Thor. I wanted it.

Ken arrived with a bottle of Laphroaig. We found seats and poured the whisky into waxed paper cups they had given us free water in. The whisky tasted like a slow-burning campfire. It melted the cups. We drank it and watched the movie.

Afterwards, we walked to Otis Lounge in Maiden Lan... More

The exhibition The More Things Change samples SFMOMA’s collection to present a range of works made since 2000, offering a selective survey of the art of the last 10 years and a thematic and psychological portrait of the decade. The exhibition is also an unusual collaboration among all five curatorial departments at the museum, and over the... More

After noticing, on Facebook, natch, that Jerry and Roberta were out demonstrating in New York, I cruised down Geary on Sunday afternoon looking for the chair-themed Ai Weiwei protest to witness the determination of SF art folks. I ran late — though not that late — and by the time I got there, the only crowds I saw nearby seemed to have taken their seating to the Cherry Blossom Festival across the road. Perhaps the the concurrent events were ill-timed, there being crowd control officials already in the neighborhood who chased them away beca... More

“Palimpsest i.e. a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

Thinking “these clouds work well together,” I’m on a plane leaving Charles De Gaulle Airport coming home to San Francisco. In an idle moment over the Atlantic, just past Ireland, almost at Iceland, with 7282 km to go, I open Magazine Air France, and on the front page a snow scene. Moscou ( Moscow). Turning the page, I’m looking at a spread, a few sentences with the title “Moscou en hiver” [Moscow in Winter] on the left hand page, ... More

Looking down Woodward Avenue on a February morning, 2011

It was easier to tweet when I was in Detroit than it’s been to blog after returning home. It’s quite a stretch to fly from warm, wet and crowded San Francisco to cold, dry and quiet Detroit, and the minute you land in snowy Romulus and drive into town you are reminded of the Thre... More

FROM THE GUGGENHEIM:

In response to the recent arrest and detainment of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in Beijing, the Guggenheim has launched an online petition to express concern for Ai’s freedom and call for his release.

In response to the recent arrest and detainment of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in Beijing, the Guggenheim has launched an online petition to express concern for Ai’s freedom and call for his release. Leading museums around the world have joined and launched the online petition through their Web sites, Twitter, and Facebook sites,... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism* and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—
Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #11, 12 & 13 on optimists and pessimists.
See all Positive Signs to date.

On April 12th, 1861, Fort Sumter, a Union fort, was attacked, marking the start of the Civil War. The War would went on to claim over 600,000 lives and pit brother against brother, as they say.

In 1863, after centuries of institutionalized slavery, President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation created the legal framework for the freei... More

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month or so I invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome SFMOMA trustee David Mahoney.

Busted Flush

I was thrilled to be asked to create one of these collection rotations, as I have had the opportunity over the past fifteen years to watch... More

Any artist that points out injustices or asks hard questions about society is going to make enemies sooner or later. That’s because nobody likes a critic — especially repressive governments. All critics ever seem to do is complain, and artists are sometimes the worst offenders. Their views take the form of paintings, photographs, writing... More

In “I Dreamt I Was A Nymphomaniac,” Kathy Acker somewhat wryly describes the art world as “the bohemia of finances.” Still, questions of money and capital in the art world continue to transpire. Occasionally I will post discussions with artists and curators about the economics of their practice. This fifth installment is an e-mail conversation with local artist Stephanie Syjuco.

BB: Could you describe your practice for SFMOMA blog readers in broad terms? Here it would be great to have an introduction to Shadowshop of course; but what other kinds of works have made up your practice over the last few years? How have these pursuits interpenetrated with the necessity of “making a living?” (say as much as you feel comfortable)

Stephanie Syjuco: My recent projects have been interested in how people relate to objects, with a focus on how things are crafted, traded, valued, and exchanged. I actually come from a fairly traditional sculpture background and feel strongly that... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism* and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—

Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #9 & 10 on distractions and the ambitiousness of tasks.
See all Positive Signs to date.

Artist and human rights activist Ai Wei Wei was detained at Beijing Airport as he attempted to board a plane to Hong Kong. China’s best-known artist, he is an outspoken critic of the government. The international community seeks more information on the detainment and disappearance of Ai Wei Wei, and calls for his release.

[On Thursday March 24 Open Space and Art Practical hosted the first of three conversations organized loosely around issues and themes raised by Stephanie Syjuco's multiartist project Shadowshop, on view now. Today we present four responses to that first evening. Do join us for Shop Talk round two, on Thursday, April 14. Please welcome artist Helena Keefe.]

Out from Behind the Shadow
It was obvious from the discussion Thursday night that Shadowshop is many things to many people. Artists who have contributed seem to have mixed feelings about their... More

[On Thursday March 24 Open Space and Art Practical hosted the first of three conversations organized loosely around issues and themes raised by Stephanie Syjuco's multiartist project Shadowshop, on view now. Today we present four responses to that first evening. Do join us for Shop Talk round two, on Thursday, April 14. Please welcome poet and critic Jasper Bernes.]

I think I’ve been invited to comment on last Thursday’s panel on Shadowshop in part because I spend a lot of time thinking about value and money, labor and exploitation, and maybe also because I have a longstanding interest in works of art that put their own value — economic or otherwise — into question, artworks that attempt to either overcome their own bewitchment by economic value or demonstrate its utter contingency. There is, as many readers will know, a long history of this kind of thing, whether it’s Marcel Duchamp issuing bond notes to finance his own roulette excursions, or Maria Eichhorn incorporating h... More

[On Thursday March 24 Open Space and Art Practical hosted the first of three conversations organized loosely around issues and themes raised by Stephanie Syjuco's multiartist project Shadowshop, on view now. Today we present four responses to that first evening. Do join us for Shop Talk round two, on Thursday, April 14. Please welcome poet Erika Staiti.]

The first Shop Talk conversation took place on March 24. I took lots of notes. My notes look like a skeleton of the conversation. I’m sort of fascinated by this skeleton because it is totally not useful.

What I have gathered from scanning my skeleton and my memory of the event is that the best use of my space here will be to organize the conversation thematically rather than episodically. This method leaves many large holes in my account. My intention is mainly to distill certain items from the first conversation for possible elaboration and rumination during the second conversation on April 14. I am inserting some of my own questions... More

[On Thursday March 24 Open Space and Art Practical hosted the first of three conversations organized loosely around issues and themes raised by Stephanie Syjuco's multiartist project Shadowshop, on view now. Today we present four responses to that first evening. Do join us for Shop Talk round two, on Thursday, April 14. Please welcome critical theorist Clark Buckner.]

Where is the Shadow in the Shop?

As we gathered in the soft lounge of the Museum’s education department, I was introduced to one of my fellow respondents, Jasper Bernes, who expl... More

The steady, Saturday night precipitation on March 19 did little to deter droves of SF art lovers — myself included — from hitting the coordinated gallery openings in an increasingly vital zone east of Harrison Street. Dubbed Lunar Mission in honor of the moon’s uncharacteristically close proximity to the earth that evening, perhaps the audie... More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Today I talked with Jefre Cantu, an operations technician at the museum. You may remember his Collection Rotation here on Open Space. After nine years at SFMOMA Jefre is leaving to move to Berlin!  Along with being one of the most charming and dependable people at SFMOMA, he's also been our resid... More

Following a weekend when nearly 500,000 protestors were reported on the streets of London to voice their opposition to the UK government’s massive budget cuts, Arts Council England (ACE) has announced this year’s funding recipients.

The UK Guardian offers extensive coverage, including a table comparing last year’s to this year’s funding per organization and a map of arts organizations who completely lost funding. You can even download the raw data, if you’re skeptical about the spin inherent to information graphics, or you’d like to create your own. (This is a historic year for UK budgets, but this amount of coverage in non-arts news outlets would be welcome every year, I think, in the UK, as well as here regarding the NEA.)

I’ve been very lucky to have exhibited and produced artwork with organizations who received funds from ACE. In my travels in the UK, I was absolutely astounded with the vibrance of contemporary art across the country, from ... More

“Palimpsest i.e. a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

In Memoriam
Akilah Oliver 1961–2011

go

often now when i imagine life i think of what should

be finite, the guise of limitability, the desire for stop

are there greeters there [are you one] when we

former ghosts arrive

is this sea deceptive, as if alive or an

actor, the world masked

in my own way there was a time when i stumbled

over a tense: says/said

now, bereft, in anticipation of how night collapses

into its own effluence i conjugate o... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism*, and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—

Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #7 & 8 on the relationship between flow and happiness.
See all Positive Signs to date.

Airports are, potentially, an ideal venue for art. There are captive, often repeat audiences with plenty of time on their hands (especially when planes are socked in by fog). But of course, there’s also the fact that public spaces, particularly airports, have certain conditions attached that may not always foster the most adventurous creative end... More

This may seem like a facetious question, but I’m really quite serious. Naturally, I’m not talking about the plastic soda bottle you’re kicking down the sidewalk or the paper cup you should be composting, but about physical items that are part of the cultural and historical record. The way we think about preserving cultural record... More

Media and genres collide and merge in the work of Russian artist Anna Parkina, and her works on paper — on view now — reflect on the changes in Moscow since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today, assistant curator John Zarobell on working with Anna on her current New Work exhibition.

On February 25 SFMOMA opened New Work: Anna Parkina, an exh... More

Regular readers of Open Space will surely have stumbled over one of my Maclaine posts — and if not, for shame! There are seventeen already, fer gawdsakes…  Now, after over a year of intensive research (preceded by 25 of contemplation) the semi-full story is about to be presented in a theatrical setting. Asked by S.F. Cinematheque‘s a... More

I don’t drink coffee, so let’s have a beer … My posts are always collaborations and are presented in two parts. Part 1 is a summary of a shared experience with my collaborator(s). Part 2 is a response, often in the form of a project created specifically for this blog.

A few weeks ago I sat down with my good friend, local fashion designer Jude Gabbard. We had a great conversation that ended with a promise to do a collaborative project engaging SFMOMA’s collection. The first step was for me to choose five works from the co... More

“Palimpsest i.e. a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

“In Iraq the new moon’s position in the sky is horizontal. In Sumer this appearance of the Moon resembled the crown or horns of Inanna. Correspondingly the shape of the ubiquitous boats, called in Sumerian mà-gur, the primary mode of transportation through the marshes of the delta, still copy the crescent shape of the new moon. Nanna was thought to ride the crescent moon-boat of heaven on its monthly course.”

Betty De Shong Meador, Ina... More

Designed in collaboration with renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the exhibition How Wine Became Modern explores the visual culture of wine. It includes historical artifacts, architectural models, design objects, artworks and installations, including a “smell wall,” to probe many aspects of wine culture. Today, welcome Erin H... More

Go to art shows in San Francisco and you’ll hear people brag drunkenly about how much sex they’re having. You’ll hear all about who’s dating who, who cheated on who and so forth. But what you won’t hear is people bragging about how much money they’re making from their art. The ugly truth is that most artists in San Francisco carry an outrageous amount of student loan debt yet nobody wants to talk about it because, well, it’s unpleasant.

So people talk about other things instead – Sex. Parties. Drugs. Music. Shitty jobs. Survival. Art. Facebook. In fact there’s an endless amount of things to discuss and almost anything is more interesting than debt. Besides, in ... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism* and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

Text, from bottom of pyramid to top: Training, expectations, resources, recognition, hope, opportunity, reward.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—
Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #6: The Nine Elements of Flow. See all Positive Signs to date.

The exhibition The More Things Change samples SFMOMA’s collection to present a range of works made since 2000, offering a selective survey of the art of the last 10 years and a thematic and psychological portrait of the decade. The exhibition is also an unusual collaboration among all five curatorial departments at the museum, and over the course of the year, Open Space will present texts from each of the 10 curators.

In the news recently, many of us learned a surprising thing: there is a 13th zodiac sign, known as Ophiuchus, or the ... More

This is the seventeenth in a multipart series unofficially conjoined to the publication of Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–2000, and the accompanying film series currently being presented by the Pacific Film Archive and San Francisco Cinematheque (in partnership with SFMOMA).

With my frie... More

Yes, that’s right – the F-22 Raptor can literally fly faster than a speeding bullet! Think about that. While an average bullet flies between 500 and 1,000 mph, the Raptor is capable of flying at speeds between 1,200 and 1,500 mph. Since the F-22 is one of the fastest aircraft flying today, it is also one of the most expensive. According to the the Government Accountability Office the F-22 costs $361 million per per jet. All those millions in tax dollars translate into an airplane that is super stealthy, supersonic and almost invisib... More

Please consider donating to any of a number of organizations supporting earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster relief efforts in Japan.

The developmentally disabled artists at Creativity Explored have been drawing their own renditions of SFMOMA artworks for years, and the organization’s current exhibition The Masters features thought provoking interpretations of beloved and well-known works from SFMOMA’s permanent collection. We’re excited about the exhibition and... More

“Palimpsest i.e. a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

this is not a poem

only a day to remember

I say the war is over…

the war is over…

H.D., “May 1943,” Collected Poems: 1912-1944

*

Window, National Lawyers Guild [photo: NC]

More

[Five questions to SFMOMA artists, staff, or guests. Today we hear from Douglas McGray. Douglas is editor-in-chief  of Pop-Up Magazine,  a writer (The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, This American Life),  a senior fellow at The New America Foundation, and adviser for The Atavist. Tomorrow night Pop-Up Magazine presents Sidebar: Wine! ... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism* and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

—
Next Wednesday: Positive Sign #5: Seven Elements of the Social Milieu Necessary for Creative Contributions. See all Positive Signs to date.

Our regular feature, Collection Rotation. Every month or so I invite someone to organize a mini-“exhibition” from our collection works online. Today, please welcome writer, curator, and former Open Space columnist ADRIENNE SKYE ROBERTS. ]

Each day my father conducts conversations in anticipation of death. In August of last year he began working... More

Daniel G. Marchand caught Robert Arneson’s No Pain (1991) spying on a museum visitor.

“We were visiting the museum and having a coffee in the [rooftop garden] when I noticed this woman reading her newspaper, being watched by the “head”. I just had to get to ground level and capture the moment.”

Thanks Daniel!

We choose... More

I’m an archivist of what I call ephemeral films — films made for specific purposes at specific times, not intended for posterity. These include industrial and advertising films, home movies, and the occasional educational film. A few weeks ago, I drove down to Hollywood to move some film into our cold storage vault. Since we don’t ha... More

On rare occasions an event—a talk, a blog post, an exhibition—raises an issue that had been slowly making the local water hotter, but gone unremarked. Suddenly with this event the pot is boiling and everyone has something to say. It makes for a lot of fun; such is the case with Stephanie Syjuco’s Shadowshop, a “temporary, alternative store ... More

“Palimpsest i.e. a parchment from which one writing has been erased to make room for another.” H.D.

“Romantic as it is, I still believe it’s the role of the artist — to question and redefine.” Aaron Levy

I first met Aaron Levy because of Marjorie Welish. The Slought Foundation in Philadelphia was organizing an event around her work as ... More

I don’t drink coffee, so let’s have a beer … My posts are always collaborations and are presented in two parts. Part 1 is a summary of a shared experience with my collaborator(s). Part 2 is a response, often in the form of a project created specifically for this blog.

My collaborator for the next two posts is San Francisco based f... More

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism* and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

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Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #3 & 4 on inspiration and what makes life full. See all Positive Signs to date.

The second I got my turn at the box office for a Sunday night Sundance Kabuki screening of Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Thai director Apicatpong Weerasethakul’s latest, Palme d’Or winning film sold out. It’s heartening to see that the work of an uncompromisingly peculiar filmmaker and artist filling the art house in the same m... More

In “I Dreamt I Was A Nymphomaniac,” Kathy Acker somewhat wryly describes the art world as “the bohemia of finances.” Still, questions of money and capital in the art world continue to transpire. Occasionally I will post discussions with artists and curators about the economics of their practice, today an e-mail conversation with the amazing American writer Eileen Myles.

BB: Thanks, Eileen, for having this discussion about money, art, and writing! I’m first of all interested in how you’re “making a living” these days.
EM: I wa... More