Wednesday, September 23, 2009

SFMOMA 1: The Provoke Era



On the third floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, there is an interesting collection of angry looking black-and-white Japanese photographs from the 1960s...



...along with more contemporary photographs from northeast Asia.



My favorites were all from China...



...with their traces of surrealism, such as the painting vendor above sleeping under his Van Goghs...



...and their relative gentleness.



China in many respects is still a Brave New World to modernity and it's fascinating to see it pictured from the inside.

2 comments:

AlbGlinka said...

Mike: Just saw this show yesterday too... a great one. Those guys sleeping under the Van Goghs are actually painters in a painting factory called Dafen Oil Painting Village-- they paint copies and other stuff for Westerners! (I just know this from reading the museum caption.)

Civic Center said...

Dear AlbGlinka: Thanks for reading those museum captions. I love the name Dafen Oil Painting Village.