Highlights from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's recently acquired Fisher Collection have gone back into storage for the next five-plus years, or Gap corporate headquarters which amounts to the same thing, until a new wing can be built for the entire collection.
So my friend Patrick Vaz took me on a lunchtime visit last week for a final glimpse. We glided quickly through the dull room with non-moving exhibits of Calder mobiles, and the simplistic Ellsworth Kelly room above, while pausing to admire the colorful Richters in the photo below.
"These Anselm Kiefers (below) sort of make you want to commit suicide," I said to Patrick, and his raised eyebrow in response was hilarious.
"And that's supposed to be a bad thing aesthetically?" he asked. "To me?"
Patrick didn't feel strongly one way or the other about the Philip Guston room.
Though he understands what Chuck Close is about, it strikes him as very much one-trick pony that gets tiresome fast.
Agnes Martin (above) is an altogether different story. Though I don't get her minimalist stuff at all, watching Patrick look at an Agnes painting, which he is doing above, is pure joy. His aura literally gets happier.
The Cy Twombly room was pleasing too.
The museum has been blanketing the city with borderline offensive would-be hipster advertising lately, including the above featuring a Project Runway designer manque supposedly looking at a Warhol with the text, "MUSEUM, people die. Personas live forever." Patrick objected to the slogan: "Personas by their nature are dated. That doesn't make any sense."
2 comments:
I fell in love with the Agnes Martin paintings in that show. I don't think any reproduction could capture their subtleties in contrast to so much of the other work.
Mmmmmmm... Guston. One of my favorite painters. That's a nice one.
Those are beautiful Richters.
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