New Year's Eve was my last work day off - I had a rare opportunity to take the week between Christmas & New Years off this year, quite a treat - and I decided I had done enough holiday preparation, enough deep cleaning and general stuff you take care of when you have the time. So I went on a little day-trip "staycation": I decided to treat San Francisco like the European city it feel like. I've been in many of the biggies: Paris, London, Amsterdam, Rome. Vienna, Geneva, Budapest even. I know what it's like to be free to wander for a day in a great city: you get up, get dressed for the weather and spaces you're in for (dress a bit nicer when going to museums, or a play), pack the bag with your journal, your camera, a book to read while dining out solo, and head out, with a map, a transit pass and a rough plan. I didn't need a map for San Francisco, naturally, but I had some possible movie times, and a flexible itinerary - the one "must see" being MOMA.
Getting on the MUNI or BART kind of always feels a bit European - in the American mind, public transit pretty much always triggers a cosmopolitan mood. It was a grey, cold day as well - not rainy, really, but gloomy enough to keep most tourists inside - and perfect for wandering; I like to travel in shoulder or off seasons, so gloom, like trains, = Europe. I headed to lunch first, but the cafe I liked was being remodeled, so I settled on someplace near enough by that I liked, and then went to MOMA.
Now, I like MOMA. Generally, I like modern and contemporary art. When I was younger, I thought it was stupid (like many, I thought: I could do that! It's just a blue canvas!), but as I've aged, I have been exposed to more of it, and learned to understand it, and like it (No, it's an Yves Klein, painted International Klein Blue, and it's very special, in fact). I also like MOMA's - here, in New York, anywhere. They are usually very good. San Francisco tends to have lousy museums - I mean, New York has the Met, the Guggenheim and MOMA. Chicago has the Institute of Art. Washington has the Smithsonian. Hell, even Los Angeles has the Getty, and a bunch more smaller but high caliber ones. What do we have? The de Young! Even the new one is kind of "meh" - I can't stand that word but it's so accurate.
But our MOMA is pretty good. I mean, it's not quite top of the line, it's not a Hollywood blockbuster or anything, but it isn't no B movie either. It's like a well-financed gritty indie film that, every once in a while, gets a shot at an Oscar. I like it. I don't go often enough, but every time I do go, it's great. The permanent collection is nothing to write home about, but the exhibits can be positively revelatory. I remember "Take Your Time," by Olafur Eliasson, a couple of years ago - lovely, transforming, simple, beautiful.
Of course, it's very hard to describe art. It's really just as lame to try and write about art as it is to write about music or dance. I've always been suspect of critics, and their reviews. Sometimes they seem to be dead-on (I do read the New Yorker regularly, so I see these reviews), and sometimes they are very silly. When they are positive (i.e. in favor of the artist, musician, architect), they can be delightful to read - a few people do have the skill to describe art well, and these articles make dry and elusive subjects so easy to read, and like. (I once mentioned this to a friend at a dinner party, "I was reading about this new building shaped like a swan, and it was really interesting. The New Yorker can make something boring interesting." His response? "Well, that is kind of the New Yorker's job - to write about art and make it accessible and make you feel good about it being accessible. Look, now I know about architecture!). I don't write for the New Yorker, but I will do my best to properly describe some art.
There was the 45-min "Ballad of Sexual Dependency" by Nan Goldin, a slide show with musical soundtrack (cooler than it sounds - it went from Velvet Underground to, I think, John Lee Hooker), which was arresting and moving and very interesting. Google some of the photos - they are unusually, almost unbearably, intimate.
There was also Peter Wegner's "The United States of Nothing" (again, Google some images so you know what I am talking about), better described by someone else (the William Griffin Gallery, in fact):
The exhibition’s centerpiece, THE UNITED STATES OF NOTHING, is a vast field of darkness punctuated here and there by real American placenames like “Nix,” “Nada,” and “Nameless.” Rendered in white neon and installed on a single blue painted wall, the eighteen placenames and their exact geographical coordinates will be strewn across 400 square feet of the main gallery. Wegner's vision of America is both disconsolate and deadpan, its darkness leavened by the absurdity of names conjured out of nothing.
It's chilling, and very beautiful. Quite compelling. I also saw some amazing photographs, canvases, and space-specific interactive sculptures, I guess one could call them. Like the gold curtain of beads you had to walk through to exit one exhibit. I like that type of art. I don't know what it's called, but I like it. Sometimes my definition of art reminds me of Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography: "I know when I see it." I saw "How Wine Became Modern," advertised all over the city in banners on main streets, but rather dull except for a trippy floor projection of winery soils in infrared. I was a film about how the original survivors of WWII in Krakow, who were subsequently cast as extras in the Speilbery film "Schindler's List" became a tourist attraction of sorts. They told, in subtitles, about how the Americans and the Japanese and the British came, and wanted to see the places and people from the film. The poor survivors try and give some historial facts about Krakow and the Jews and WWII, but in the end, all they see is the reality of the film. Scary stuff.
There are, of course, many wonderful things about art, one of which is the temporary community it makes. In the space together, we share something - especially in those interactive site-specific pieces where the other people, like you, become PART of of the art; Christo & Jean-Claudes "The Gates" was like that. But the community then becomes part of history, and sometimes you can meet people that saw the same exhibit, years ago, at that place. Or caught the same performance of Jesus Christ Superstar. Or, whatever, even saw the same Peter Gabriel concert. I have a friend who, years before we met, was at the same Mermaid Parade at Coney Island.
Even a good work of art can bring people closer together, in a certain way. I wouldn't say I'd want to be best friends with every person who has ever seen, say, the Sistine Chapel, but I do feel like we have something in common that feels a little personal. I really enjoy this type of shared community, no matter where it appears. I've been the person who knocked on the window of a Peet's Coffee to give the guy reading "Ender's Game" inside a little "I love that book, too" thumbs up. Like quoting, shared love of art is a fun way to get to know each other.
A nice part of the visit - besides the indescribable art - was just the whole downtown city experience. If I squint, or the sky is overcast, I can wander around SF and kind of convincingly pretend I am in Europe. For some reason, this is super fun for me to do. If possible, any visit to any big city includes a trip to the biggest museum they have there. I was in Vienna for less than 24 hours but made it to the Kunsthaus. I had a famous day in Chicago, once, the winner of the all-time Quick Travel Award when, there for a series of visits to the retail outlets of the company I work for, the visits ended early. Everyone else took an early flight back, but I decided to stay - never having been in Chicago before. It was 6pm by the time I was free from the group, but I managed to have dinner, see a David Mamet Play, go to a duelling piano bar, sleep, eat brunch, walk in Millennium Park, hit the Art Institute and still make my 3:00pm flight home.
My point is, like singing and dancing, art is this wonderful way of understanding each other, of widening one's gaze, of finding partners in contemplating the mystery and majesty of life. We really do like people who like the same things we do, especially when they are broad concepts, like creativity, love, kindness, compassion. Usually, if some speaks actively of being kind, I am going to like them. If they can sing and dance a little, and talk with some passion and general knowledge about the main Big Great Things that have been or are now - well, that's usually when I start to move past like into love, but that's a whole other subject.
To finish my idea - my prescription, really - for making one's home city feel like a foreign vacation, it helps to do a little eating out and/or shopping. My favorite kind of shopping to do in cities that are gloomy is, counter intuitively, outdoor shopping. Overcast flea markets. Street vendors braving the wind that's kicking up. The carnival in a very, very light rain. On New Year's Eve - dry but cold and grey - I did some classic big city browsing of the small craft street vendors, and, since it was cold, got attracted to these crocheted hats. An Asian lady, bundled up, was making them - they were obviously hand made. They weren't normally the type of hat I look good in, but I felt compelled to try on first the sheep, and then the tiger. The monkey and bunny seemed stupid, the dog and cat really trite. So I went for the bear - the Asian lady had pre-made different sizes, she picked the hats out for me to try, each gaged to fit perfectly. And the bear looked instantly cute. It was perfect! I loved it!
"I'll take it," I said, right as the lady was nodding and said, "Bear one look best." It was so warm and perfect, before and after the museum. I felt like some old time movie star - or Scarlett O'Hara saying all of the business figures just went right out of her head when she had on a new hat. I have worn that hat a lot since and it reminds me of my day in Paris, London, Amsterdam that I had right here in SF.
Even better, I discovered a few days ago that the bear hat makes an adorable shadow if the sun is out....it's like a little bear friend is following you everywhere. What a bargain! I got a hat and a new imaginary friend. At my age, that's pretty exciting. A little character just for an audience of one.
Well, the part three series is over. Don't forgot to Google some stuff and enjoy!
I now feel like I MUST see the bear hat...and a picture of your shadow while wearing it!
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