Art! Masako Miki, Paul McCartney, French Moderns, Carson Ellis, Leah Rosenberg

the start-of-the-month post

I saw art shows this past month in both San Francisco and Portland, Oregon, and they really ran the gamut across a number of different eras and mediums. It was quite a delight, I must say, and I hope to pass a little bit of that delight on to you, right here, right now —

Masako Miki

I’m a huge fan of Masako Miki’s work, so was excited to see her piece Hyakki Yagyo, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons — Beginning of Another Life with Ruby Red Fox Deity anchoring the new show in the Paul Klee gallery at SFMOMA, (Super)Natural: Paul Klee and Masako Miki. Here’s a great quote from the artist about part of what informs here work around yokai, demons, and the spirts of household objects: “In Shinto animism, everything in the universe is sacred because spirituality exists within materiality. There is no hierarchy in this world: we only project our superiority over nature through fictions that we create.” And here is an image of the full piece, along with some details (that’s also another one up above):

Paul McCartney

At the Portland Art Museum there’s a show currently up (through mid-January) of the photographs Paul McCartney took in 1963 and 1964 while on the road with the youthful Beatles. The room after room of black-and-white images are certainly interesting and evocative. But it was the single gallery of color photos that really stopped me in my tracks — dreamy sun-drenched blue-and-white shots taken beach-and-poolside while the band was on tour in Florida.

French Moderns

Also at the Portland Art Museum was the show (now closed) Monet to Matisse: French Moderns. Though I’m including a goodly handful on images here — my favorite things — this is only a tiny fraction of what was on view. Interestingly, and perhaps tellingly (about my own personal taste if nothing else) the stuff I liked, and fought the closing-weekend crowds to photograph, was never the stuff everyone else was vying to see. So, I give you: the pictures everyone else was ignoring — but which I swear to god are fantastic:

Pierre Bonnard

Henri Matisse

Augustus John

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Jean Helion

Jozsef Rippl Ronai

Gustave Courbet

Raoul Dufy

Paul Cezanne

Andre Derain

Carson Ellis

I was in Portland to attend the show opening and book launch for Carson Ellis’s One Week in January at Nationale gallery. After working hard on this book last year (you can read more about that here) it was so exciting to get to see these paintings in person. The detail! The brushstrokes! Nationale is a beautiful space with big front windows, so the framed artwork was a bit tricky to photograph because of glare and reflections. But I did my best!

Leah Rosenberg

Back here in San Francisco, Leah Rosenberg’s show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, When One Sees a Rainbow is a remarkable installation inside the giant modernist polygon that sticks up off the end of museum’s more traditional façade (if you’re unfamiliar with the building, you can see it here). The artist has altered each of the room’s skylights to a be a different color, placed benches and chairs of those colors around the room, and built a station for writing notes, prayers, and meditations. Though joyful, as Rosenberg’s work always is, this room also creates an environment that invites deep reflection and contemplation.