Rockin’ The Modern Art

This morning, my friend Joichi, who share my love for art and architecture, picked me up to start our day off at the Ferry Building downtown. Being that it was the weekend, there was the farmers market by the water. We grabbed a quick lunch of white corn & potato croquette, kaki-age and shishito pepper tempura skewers from Delica, a Japanese delicatessen and found ourselves a bench in the warm sun.

The weather was perfect. Everything was comfortable with the heat wave breaking yesterday and the fog that rolled in last night, having burned off.

First stop was San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Now I have to give SFMoMA props here. Besides a couple of pieces, I usually don’t find much fascination at modern art museums (including New York’s MoMA and Tate Modern), but I really liked SF MoMA. In part due to the exhibition called Half-life of a Dream: Contemporary Chinese Art.

(photo by chinkerfly)

Sui Jianguo’s room-size installation, The Sleep of Reason depicts Chairman Mao, covered in a peasant blanket, sleeping above an undulating landscape of twenty thousand plastic toy dinosaurs that from a distance resemble the continent of Asia.

Gu Wenda’s United Nations: Babel of the Millenium is made up of human hair glued onto a sheer curtain in pseudo-English, Chinese, Hindi and Arabic characters. Although it’s to reference different languages around the world, the hair symbolizes our shared physical humanity.

Another equally stunning exhibition featured model, muse, protege of Man Ray, photographer, artist and war correspondent Lee Miller. Not just a pretty face, during World War II, she was there to take pictures of the liberation of Paris, the horrors of concentration camps and Hitler’s house after he died. This woman lived such a remarkable life.

After the MoMA, we drove over to de Young Museum to catch the Chihuly exhibit. Dale Chihuly is such an amazing artist. Every time I see his work, in New York, London and now here, I’m blown away. This exhibit was the best I’ve seen and by far the most extensive, showcasing his abstract range in blown coloured glass. I love Chihuly for the intense colours and incorporation in outdoor surroundings. Exquisite beyond belief.

One of the exhibit guards told me that after the exhibit closes, the pieces will be put up for auction and will most likely never tour again. If that is the case, I feel incredibly lucky to have caught what’s sure to be an unforgettable collection. And if it’s to make way for new Chihuly creations, I’ll wait eagerly to see where the next masterpieces show up.