Corina Copp

There’s something inside a human being that no one has thought of putting into a machine.

— Lee Miller, 1945

Thought to mark the occasion of her marriage to Roland Penrose in 1925, the title of a Valentine Penrose mixed-media piece, “À mon Époux, Reconnaissance (Dit-on),” translates as “To my husband, with gratitude (as they say).” Eventually, V. Penrose left R. Penrose (they remained lifelong friends), and R. Penrose fell for and married Surrealist photographer-turned-docujournalist Lee Miller, who had redisc... More

Images have always had as much to do with the hand as with the eye. This photograph is elegant proof of image-making as an inherently physical, haptic act.

Although, is this what we call an image? It’s not the result of someone holding her hand in front of a camera for an exposure. “Digital effluvia” comes from pressing — the hand of the attributed photographer’s relative, in this case — into the toxic gelatin silver of the wet negative paper or plate. “Effluvia” meaning an invisible emanation, a lightless image made rather than... More

Click image for larger view and better detail of the individual photographs.

Faced with the totally administered, a sort of mysticism becomes a last resort, a line of flight from countless mundane tyrannies of the contemporary soul. In Matt Mullican’s Bulletin Boards series, the existence of everyday objects — a lamp, a sewer grate, a telephone, the banister of a staircase — is rendered both generic and numinous. Photographs of interior spaces (windows, doorframes, hallways) redouble the mental experience of looking. There is no whole, ju... More

Our One on One series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding to works in SFMOMA’s collection. You can follow the series here. Today, please welcome media artist and writer Abigail Child.

Postscript:

I write the piece below and am reminded by a friend that Lux’s photographs verge on kitsch... More

On a visit to SFMOMA back in 2007, I turned a corner on the second floor and found myself sharing the gallery space with a heaping blue mountain. I walked the perimeter slowly, curious, tentative, dwarfed. As I came to the front of the blue mass, I saw a wooden table, and seated at this table, a live human figure hunched over a book, hard at work.

I think Julia Margaret Cameron understood that a photograph cannot present a clear distinction between a sleeping child and a dead one. In a photograph there is no motion to indicate breath: no warm arm to touch, no murmur or cry. The connection of an infant to its own life is barely established, and for most of human history, tenuous.

A sleeping i... More

Our “One on One” series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding to works in SFMOMA’s collection. You can follow the series here. Today I’m so pleased to welcome artist, educator, and writer Arnold J. Kemp.

Untitled, 1933

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Here is the statue of queen whats-her-name
she feel fever roof
a real black mother of black equestrian vivacity.

Perhaps you are too.

yes yonder
you you you

But nothing
Blond Negress
but no

other bodies are coming to take her c... More

Our “One on One” series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others from around the country, responding to works in SFMOMA’s collection. You can follow the series here. Today our guest is Jill Dawsey, acting chief curator and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and former SFMOMA assis... More

Our “One on One” series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding to works in SFMOMA’s collection. You can follow the series here. Today, please welcome artist John Davis, who also works for the museum part-time as a film projectionist.

MYTHOLOGY IN FACT

I was initially drawn to t... More

Our “One on One” series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding to works in SFMOMA’s collection. You can follow the series here. Today’s post is more “Two on Several” than “One on One”: Every year since 1974 the photographer Nicholas Nixon has made ... More

[Our "One on One" series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding  to a collection work of their choosing. You can follow the series here. Today, please welcome Cincinnati poet, the marvelous Mr. Dana Ward ... And a happy belated to Art Garfunkel, 69 last Friday.]

When I set out to write about Cory ... More

[Our "One on One" series features artists, writers, poets, curators, and others from around the country, responding however they wish to a collection work of their choosing. You can follow the series here. Today, very pleased to welcome Darrin Alfred, associate curator of architecture, design, and graphics at the Denver Art Museum. ]

Not long after S... More

[For the last couple of years we've been posting “One on One” pieces from SFMOMA curators or staff. Now the column will feature artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding however they wish to a collection work of their choosing. You can follow the series here. Today, we are very pleased to welcome Lindsey ... More

[For almost two years we’ve been running a regular “One on One” series of posts, featuring curators or SFMOMA staff on a single work of art from our collection. Beginning today, the column will feature artists, writers, poets, curators, and others, from around the country, responding in any manner they like on a work of their choosing. It’s a distinct pleasure to begin this new iteration of the series with a post from Patricia Maloney, editor in chief of Art Practical.]

On September 11, 2001, I was walking down 6th Avenue and had reache... More

To Shirley Goldfarb, thanks for everything, David Hockney: On David Hockney’s Shirley Goldfarb & Gregory Masurovsky

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of giving a gallery talk on David Hockney’s double portrait, Shirley Goldfarb & Gregory Masurovsky, currently on view in From Warhol to Calder: Introducing the Fisher Collection. I ap... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits here on the blog. Follow the series here. Today's post is from assistant curator of painting and sculpture, Apsara DiQuinzio. I'm tipping you off now to the 'big reveal' in this piece: never-before-seen pictures of the back of Bruce Conner's LOOKING GLASS, bel... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff. Follow the series here. Today's post is from assistant curator of photography,  Lisa Sutcliffe, who will be talking about Jim Goldberg's  The Orchard this Thursday at 6:30pm. And look for a conversation between Lisa and Jim, upc... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff. Follow the series here. Today's post is from assistant curator of media arts, Tanya Zimbardo, who will be talking about Fried's Inside the Harlequin: Approach Avoidance III and II, this Thursday at 6:30pm.]

From the start of the 1... More

[Part two of a conversation, keyed to our One on One series, between Michelle Barger, deputy head of conservation, and Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design, on Robert Overby's Hall painting, first floor.]

Michelle Barger: How did you come to chose Hall painting, first floor for your One on One talk? Were you familiar with Overby’s work as a commercial designer prior to becoming an artist, and did this play into your decision?

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher: In 2000, I was working at the UCLA Hammer Museum as the curatorial assistant when Robert Overby: Parallel, 1978-1969 was exhibited, so I have been familiar with all the various strains of his work since then, including the graphic design. However, this was before switching from a curatorial interest in contemporary art to architecture. When I was combing through the permanent collection database recently in search of works for an exhibition proposal, I was thrilled to discover that SFMOMA had one of ... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. This week and next, Michelle Barger, SFMOMA deputy head of conservation, & Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, assistant curator of architecture and design, together take on Robert Overby's Hall painting, first floor.]

Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher: I was so excited to learn that Robert Overby’s large latex rubber cast of Hall painting, first floor from 19... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. Today's post is from curator of Media Arts, Rudolf Frieling.]

Do only fans truly understand pop culture? Anyone who has been a fan of one of our glob... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. Today's post is actually a little bit two-on-one: Jill Sterrett, SFMOMA director of conservation and collections, & Sarah Roberts, associate cura... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators & staff on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. Today's post is from assistant curator of painting and sculpture Apsara DiQuinzio.]

I have a growing obsession for the desert; perhaps it is not even... More

My Aunt Gladys once, when she read a thing in a magazine, wrote me a letter, saying she was so proud of me, because she had worked so hard to instill some respect for the American flag in her students, and she was glad the mark had been left on me.

―Jasper Johns to Emile de Antonio.

I’m next up with one of our weekly One-on-One curator talks, ... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators, staff, and public, on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. Today's post is from assistant curator of painting and sculpture Ali Gass. Thanks Ali!]

Kiki Smith’s Lilith crouches and hangs in a precarious position of emotional and physical tension. The sculpture is a life-like figure of a woman. (Indeed, Smith’s mode of making the work heightens this naturalism, as she cast an actual huma... More

[Alongside our weekly in-gallery curator "One on One" talks, we post regular ‘one on one' bits from curators, staff, and public, on a particular work or exhibition they're interested in. Follow the series here. Today's post is from curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop.]

On the 2nd floor right now we have a gallery devoted to the work of She... More