SFJazz Founder / Director Randall Kline stepping down

It's his baby. Has anyone done more to enhance the cultural life of San Francisco over the past 40 years?

I've had my occasional quibble with some of the programming choices – one could imagine them being a little more adventurous – but one cannot argue with his taste overall: the residencies by many of the unquestioned greats, the openness to global sounds, to women, and to sympathetic jazz fellow travelers like Rosanne Cash. The SF Jazz Collective! And a great, big-hearted space for the music... damned if it's not the place I most often find myself wanting to go to in "the City." Three big cheers to you, Randall.

Early Rubens

Now at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco– a fine little museum in a spectacular setting, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and what must be one of the world's loveliest golf courses (?!). This version of his Raising of the Cross, a later, smaller rendering of an earlier triptych, was my favorite piece. The energy and tension ripple across the painting.

SFMOMA reopening

The considerably expanded SF Museum of Modern Art reopened to members this weekend after three years shuttered. The new wing, in scalloped white, rises up incongruously behind the original brick building. I'm not sure I like the look, but I guess they needed more gallery space, and they definitely got that. The highlight of the new building right now is the Fisher collection of German art since 1960, along with some postwar American galleries that give their excellent collection of Ellsworth Kelly paintings plenty of elbow room.

The German exhibition is dominated by some fine Richter paintings, spanning the wide spectrum of his styles, and some simply gargantuan wall-size works by Anselm Kiefer. The Kiefer paintings, which took up an entire 747 to ship from Europe, grapple with difficult themes of German national identity and historical accountability, and are almost literally overwhelming. I expect I will spend a lot more time looking at them in future visits.

The revelation of this visit for me was a room devoted to the photos of Bernd and Hilla Becher, who traveled the world taking pictures of utilitarian structures like water towers and mine tipples. I've posted an example (cooling towers) below. Sometimes these structures--especially the older ones--were clearly designed with some aesthetic goals in mind, but for the most part form strictly follows function. Yet when placed in grids of photos, their accidental beauty emerges.

Kelly's enormous, brightly saturated color field paintings are also worth a trip. They are given plenty of wall space, allowing the intensity of the light and disarmingly simple shapes to burn right into your brain. I can't articulate what makes them so good, but they are extraordinary. Kelly gave his paintings informative titles: below I pose with aptly named Blue Red.

The museum expansion provided Kelly plenty of space, but the same cannot be said of Richard Serra's enormous and fantastic Sequence, which is caged-up in a ground-floor lobby (see below). Apparently it is here only temporarily, which is good, because the piece deserves an outdoor setting where its canyon-like curves can be appreciated both from a distance and up close and personal in the full range of natural light.

SF Pride

I was marching-standing with the contingent from California College of the Arts (CCA), where Laura works. The parade is a gargantuan thing and moves slowly... agonizingly slowly. Still, needless to say, it was a festive day. Our group was just ahead of the small but enthusiastic contingent from SWANABAQ (Southwest Asian and North African Bay Area Queers). They were carrying a fantastic rainbow quilt of flags from their home countries.

Despite the revealing leather chaps, leashes and tethers, and nipple rings, the overall atmosphere is inclusive and mainstream— at least, mainstream by San Francisco standards. The rainbow dress-up and rave aspects seem to appeal to teenage girls, who were out in numbers, as were the corporate-sponsored floats. The large Yahoo! group was just ahead of a consortium of leather bondage organizations, in their Sunday best. The A-Sexuals were marching just behind the City of Fremont employees. The humanists were appropriately squeezed between the atheists and the Buddhists. The older couples lining the parade route could not have looked happier. This was their day.

[Update 6/29/2015: Photo of our group added... can you identify the blogger?]

Hunters Point...

... is a scruffy industrial and low-income section of rapidly gentrifying San Francisco. The old naval shipyard barracks at the Bay's edge are now home to one of the country's largest artists' communities. We checked out their open studios today. I wasn't quite ready to shell out a couple thousand for one of Jenny Robinson's exquisite, large-scale monotype / drypoint prints, but I was really tempted.

Mt. Davidson

Botanically speaking, San Francisco's Mt. Davidson is kind of a disaster, much of it overgrown with invasive English ivy, thickets of weedy blackberries, privet, and eucalyptus trees. Still, it's a primal place, sticking up from the middle of the city, with the chilly marine mist blowing through the tall trees and across the twisted outcroppings of red Franciscan chert.

When and if the fog clears a little, the views from the top are splendid. And the lichen-lover will not be disappointed...

Mal Sharpe...

... is a true San Francisco original and a very funny person. Coyle and Sharpe's early-mid-60s radio spoofs were indeed ahead of their time, but their humanistic and gently anarchic humor shares more with the beats, hippies, and pranksters of their own decade than with the shock radio, jack-ass movies, and Sacha Baron Cohens of our own.

Degas and Richter

We elbowed our way through the post-impressionist exhibition at the de Young today. I did not bother trying to fight my way to the Starry Night, though it is a lovely painting to be sure. I guess I understand why Gauguin is famous, although his pictures leave me yawning. Cezanne is... well, Cezanne, but the selection was not better than you would find at many good museums around the country. The Pisarros, Bonnards, and Vuillards, very fine to see. But my favorite painting was hiding at the very beginning of the first gallery, for some reason not attracting much attention.

Yes, Degas dancers! For so many years these paintings were just cliches to me, material for posters in dorm rooms (mostly occupied by women, as I recall). But what a painting! Was there another painter who could create the same sense of motion within such a formalized composition, all the while playing with the light, color, and perspective?

Meanwhile... in the main lobby of the museum is an immense out-of-focus Gerhard Richter op-art piece that can give you all the symptoms of a bad hangover just by looking at it. A great one. But the Degas reminded me of another side of Richter, the fuzzy, dynamic beauty of his candles, familiar to lovers of modern art and/or Sonic Youth. The motion, the light, the colors... Richter and Degas can send a chill down your spine. Eat your heart out, Gauguin.