At the Palm Springs Art Museum, there is a witty juxtaposition in the permanent collection gallery of Enrique Martin Celaya's 1996 painting Bird which consists of a blank canvas and a tiny bird in the center being flanked by one of sculptor Louise Bourgeois' spider sculptures.
At SFMOMA, on the fifth floor, there is currently an exhibit of close to a dozen of these simultaneously alluring and repelling objects.
The spider was not a figure of fear for the sculptor, but meant to represent her beloved French mother who sheltered her from an autocratic monster of a father.
Still, if you have any trace of arachnophobia, this is not the exhibit for you.
Like virtually every other woman artist in history, Bourgeois had a career that was mostly ignored, except for the fact that she outlived her relative obscurity by surviving so long. She died in 2010 in New York City at the age of 98, a few decades after she had become officially celebrated worldwide.
Part of that fame came from her instantly recognizable series of spider sculptures which she began creating in the 1990s, copies of which seem to exist in every modern art museum in the country if not the world.
While roaming the large gallery of arachnids, I marveled once again at how many people these days go to a museum and spend most of their time looking at their mobile phones. Why bother going to a museum in the first place if all you can focus on is a glowing little screen?
This was most painfully displayed by a young couple with a daughter in a princess costume on Saturday who plopped themselves on the floor in front of the large screen above at The Visitors, and proceeded to whip out their mobiles, making it impossible for people behind them to ignore. After about 10 minutes, I became irritated enough to tell them to shut off their damned devices, and the husband became very belligerent, shoving his face into mine and saying, "This exhibit is not just for YOU!" After telling him to fuck off, I went for a guard and the trio soon stomped out of the dark room noisily, allowing the rest of us to bliss out in peace.
I met Steven Wibben in a Palm Springs gay bar called the Tool Shed six years ago. He was having an afternoon beer after seeing a live Metropolitan Opera broadcast of John Adams' Nixon in China. I told him about being a supernumerary at the San Francisco Opera over the decades, and he said that he used to go to the San Francisco Opera frequently when he worked in Silicon Valley. "I went to a drag bar in the Hayes Valley called Marlena's about 15 or 20 years ago and met a guy who was a supernumerary there, and he invited me over to his apartment a block from the Opera House because he said I had to listen to Nixon in China." After a long pause, I raised my hand and replied, "There's basically only one person in the world that could have been. Me." (Steve is posing above with a painting by the Oakland artist Hung Liu at the Palm Springs Art Museum.)
Though neither of us recognized each other from that afternoon a couple of decades ago, it seemed an obvious sign that we were fated to know each other, and we have been fast friends ever since, joining each other for many amusing adventures. (Steven is crawling like Jesus below a painting by Enrique Chagoya.)
Though Steve is smart about all kinds of things, occasionally even wise, he is also an authentic goofball, as you can see from this photo of his clowning behind my favorite Anselm Kiefer sculpture.
He's also something of an amateur, genius performance artist, and treats Halloween as part of the High Holy Gay Holidays of Palm Springs.
On his way to a doll themed costume party, he showed up last Sunday at my neighbor Sammy's house dressed as Murderous Barbie with Ken's severed head in tow. He later said the real joy of the party was meeting strangers who were loving Palm Springs as much as him over the last 15 years. I am starting to feel similarly about the place.
The Palm Springs Art Museum is hosting an eye-opening, mind blowing exhibit called Kinesthesia: Latin American Kinetic Art 1954-1969.
The cautionary signage is not exaggerating, and the longer you spend in the exhibit, the more likely you will come away feeling fabulously discombobulated.
There were an array of electrically controlled light sculptures by Gregorio Vardanega, an Argentinian who lived in Paris for the second half of his life.
You can walk through one dark room between suspended plastic spaceships facing psychedelic galaxies on the wall which feels as if one has just taken off on a rocket ship in the 1960s from the futuristic new city of Brasilia.
I am uncertain if the other moving light sculptures were also by Gregorio Vardanega...
...but they were all terrific...
...and surprising...
...looking as if Alexander Calder got to play with plastic and electricity.
The kinetic art movement was based in Paris in the 1950s, which is where many South Americans went to study and live after World War Two...
...including the Venezuelan Jesus Rafael Soto who created the two wonderful sculptural paintings pictured above.
The most startling work was the 1965 Chromosaturation, adapted for this exhibit by the 94-year-old Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez.
You have to put on a pair of plastic covers over your shoes in order not to scuff the perfectly white floors, while walking slowly from one color field to another, and the effect is like nothing I have ever experienced.
Signage explained, "The spectator is invited to enter every room and stay there until the colors seem to fade. At this point, one can discover their own capacity to do and undo color with their own perceptive means, as well as their own emotional resonance."
As we were leaving, a young couple entered and started modeling their way through color, in an ineffable moment of beauty.
Friday night the SFO airport was packed with passengers and a few dogs waiting for planes delayed by the smokey air conditions caused by a week of fires in the North Bay.
Like many others, I started to have breathing problems by the end of the week and a coincidental holiday scheduled for Palm Springs turned out to be a salvation.
If you have the luxury of time and/or money, I would suggest a sabbatical away from the crappy Bay Area air as soon as possible. Your lungs will thank you.
