Was lucky enough to make a quick gander through the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, also known as SFMOMA. Lucky because I was going to reserve this for the next day – because I had mistakenly assumed that I had one more day in SF! But then I decided to tire myself out completely on this day and got a bus tour of the city, checked out SFMOMA and even checked out the Museum of Ice Cream! Just before getting a couple of beers and realizing I had thirty minutes to pack before my ride to the airport got to the hotel! Yikes. Quite a whirlwind. Super packed day and lots of photos.
The latter part of the blog post below has photographs of some of my favorite paintings exhibited at the museum. The colors are fabulous and I’ve taken some close-up detail shots of the brush strokes and paint as well.
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They had a viewing of Edvard Munch’s work as well. I’d only ever seen his famous The Scream painting and was pleasantly surprised to see more of his beautiful work, including 2-3 versions of the same painting that he had painted himself. The colors are rich, saturated and completely up my alley.
I wasn’t able to check out the entire museum of course. I was super tired, my legs were killing me and I had the museum store to shop from! I think I spent equal amounts of time in the museum store as I spent in the museum viewing the exhibits. Don’t blame me, there was a lot of colorful stuff to choose from the museum’s shop! I love shopping at museum shops because of the unique items that are usually not available anywhere else. Hopefully, I’ll be able to blog about the items I shopped. Till then, the store is also available online : SFMOMA Store.
Louise Bourgeois’ fierce and fragile spider sculptures were creepy and a no-brainer when it came to taking a picture. Another art work that I wanted to photograph but couldn’t figure out an interesting angle for was the Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing 273. Ended up photographing the two walls at left and right in the room and the picture looks more geometric than like art, which I expect to be more colorful.
Side by Side : Dual Portraits of Artists. This was the section curated with very specific works of art and I photographed most of them, including details. Probably my favorite section from the entire visit. There’s Travis Collinson, Lepidoptery Lesson, 2017, which has Bay Area father/daughter artists Richard and Alice Shaw – it’s the one with the wood table in the background and autumn leaves; David Hockney’s painting Shirley Goldfarb + Gregory Masurovsky (1974) – it’s the one with the little dog; Liu Wei’s Two Drunk Painters – it’s the one with Mao in the back; Alice Neel’s Geoffrey Hendricks and Brian – it’s the one with the two men seated at the table and the most delightful detail I found was the blue outlines on the hand! Marvelous!
Also Roy Lichtenstein. Then there’s Joan Mitchell’s “Bracket” (1989), which greets you at the beginning of “Approaching American Abstraction”. Ellsworth Kelly’s spectrum paintings are very Instagrammable.
Christina Kubisch, Cloud was a fun interactive sound installation. You wear a set of headphones and depending on how close / far you are from the installation, there’s a reverberating hum increasing / decreasing in intensity. O Grivo, Catilena had strange machine-like contraptions made of wood and metal that moved at random time intervals and tinkled with music-like sounds. Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s clinamen v.2 was one of the most beautiful installations I’ve experienced. It’s a set of ceramic bowls floating in water. Water movement is controlled and randomized from whatever I observed. The water flow makes the bowls touch at varying speeds. This touching / clinking produces beautiful audio. This installation is part of the Soundtracks exhibit as well.
For some beautiful views of San Francisco’s skyline, there’s a huge deck in the open and I’d tag that as a “not to be missed” section if you’re looking for photographs!
Of course, it makes no sense to photograph EVERTYHING a museum has to show – there’s a whole lot I left out and most of this is experienced in first-person anyway. Some of the artworks are from temporary exhibition. Do visit the SFMOMA website to figure out which ones are on till what dates.
More photos from San Francisco on the blog under the #EyesForSF tag.
More museum and art gallery related features on the blog under the #Museum tag.
