Bay Area museums provide escape in tough times
By Virginia Wageman
Advertiser Art Critic
In a time when "anarchy is loosed upon the world," returning to normal lives of work, travel, family and friends reassures us that there is stability and continuity available. Nine days after the world as we had known it ended, and despite some trepidation, my husband and I cashed in frequent-flier miles and headed out on Hawaiian Airlines for a long weekend in San Francisco.
Never would I have thought that a five-hour plane ride would provide such great relief to one's fears as well as give a fresh perspective on all that is happening in the world. In San Francisco, museums seem to be where many are going to seek a brief respite from the ceaseless barrage of news. Though there are fewer tourists out and about, there seemed to be a steady stream of visitors to every museum we visited.
I suspect that the experiences of many may have mirrored my own, namely that viewing the art of the ages — whether ancient art from myriad countries and cultures or works created just yesterday in our own back yard — serves as a reminder that life goes on, that ours is just one among many cultures, and one that exists in a single moment in time.
San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) is a good place to start, with exhibitions that could easily take a couple of days to fully take in. The museum's collections include 20th century masterpieces from early modernists such as Matisse, Picasso and Braque, to the abstractions of Still, Reinhardt, and Rothko, and later work by the likes of Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol. Even a garish, bizarre sculpture of Michael Jackson with pet monkey by Jeff Koons seems an appropriate icon of our times, a brash statement of who we are.
The major exhibition is "Ansel Adams at 100," celebrating the centennial of the great photographer's birth. Included are 114 photographs, many of them familiar images that gain new dimensions in the context of the retrospective show.
Especially informative are sections that place Adams in the context of his times. Works by Dove, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz, among others from the early part of the 20th century, demonstrate the artistic milieu in which Adams began his photographic career—influences that are evident in the early photographs.
At the end of the exhibition are photographs by several of the many who have been influenced by Adams, among them Harry Callahan and Lee Friedlander. Also unique to this show is a comparison of early and later prints by Adams, many of them made from the same negatives.
These early prints reflect the abstract nature of work by Adams' peers of the time, particularly in painting. Later prints from the same negatives move toward a heightened realism, bringing to light details not evident in the earlier prints, proof that this master of technique manipulated his images in the darkroom to achieve ends that changed as the artist's own tastes and artistic strategies changed.
In "Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake," for instance, the wooded area around the lake is a mass of black in a 1949 print, but details of landscape emerge in the 1978 version of the same image.
The Adams exhibition continues at the San Francisco museum until Jan. 13, after which it travels to Chicago, London, Berlin, Los Angeles and New York.
In stark contrast to the formalism of Adams' work is a show of vibrant work by 16 contemporary Latin American artists, on view until Dec. 31. The artists explore what the curators define as "ultrabaroque" (the title of the show). This "style" is derived from the complex styles of the baroque—a fitting definition for the exuberant trends of current Latin American art.
Particularly noteworthy are crosscultural influences, especially the interaction with U.S. culture. Just as Koons explores the borders between high and low culture in his Michael Jackson image, artists in "Ultrabaroque" explore relationships between their own cultures and that of North America and Europe.
Ruben Ortiz Torres, for example, depicts Bart Simpson as Bart Sanchez, in sombrero and serape, and Miguel Calderon photographs Mexican workers re-enacting compositions of well-known European masters such as Michelangelo and Velazquez.
An exhibition of California pottery, which closes Oct. 14, contains 180 pieces from commercial potteries that stretched from Stockton to San Diego, spanning from the 1900s to the 1990s. Most striking are the magnificent glazes, with warm, Mediterranean colors evocative of their Golden State origins.
California potters developed a glazing process in which reds, yellows, oranges, even blacks have a density previously unattainable in large-scale production. In both color and style, California pottery made a huge impact on American design, a legacy seen today in mass-produced household items sold at Pottery Barn and the like.
If you miss the show, the book "California Pottery: From Missions to Modernism" (Chronicle Books, $22.95) by exhibition curator Bill Stern provides a good overview, with excellent color photographs.
Around the corner from SFMoMA, the Ansel Adams Center, a museum run by the Friends of Photography, is showcasing a group of his cloudscapes until Dec. 9. These photos offer a counterview to the landscapes at SFMoMA and demonstrate just how important qualities of light were to Adams, whose photos are more about light than about individual landscape features.
A day trip to the country north of San Francisco brings you quickly to the wine country, with its many charming towns and galleries featuring local artists. Healdsburg, for instance, just off Highway 101, is a center for unique handcrafted jewelry and blown glass. Also here (surprise!) are paintings of Maui artist Ed Lane, at the nearby Chateau Souverain vineyards, a pleasant spot to stop for lunch.
The landscape of Sonoma and Marin counties, especially along the coast, was the subject of many of Adams' photographs, making a drive to this area a happily suitable conclusion to a tour of Bay Area art.
Virginia Wageman can be reached at VWageman@aol.com.
