'Project Mah Jongg' at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

Leisure-class ladies playing a floating game of mah jongg, 1924. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Project Mah Jongg. The On view July 13–October 28, 2014. Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco.

Dorothy S. Meyerson teaching mah jongg on television, 1951. Courtesy Marjorie Meyerson Troum. Project Mah Jongg. On view July 13–October 28, 2014. The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. 

My knowledge of the Jews in China came through the novels of Pearl Buck, particularly through her novel, "Peony." "Peony" is set in the 1850s in the city of K'aifeng, in the province of Hunan, which was historically a center for Chinese Jews. The novel follows Peony, a Chinese bondmaid of the prominent Jewish family of Ezra ben Israel, and shows through her eyes how the Jewish community was regarded in K'aifeng at a time when Jews had started to become assimilated into the Chinese community. The story shows the mutual tolerance between Jews and Chinese, an interracial love story and yes - lots of upper class Chinese women playing Mah Jongg.

It had many of the elements present in the current exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, "Project Mah Jongg," ...

http://www.examiner.com/article/project-mah-jongg-at-the-contemporary-jewish-museum

Bay Area art events for the week of July 7th

In July, while the rest of the country is enduring three-digit temperatures, San Franciscans are reaching for their sweaters. The fog, affectionately known on Twitter by his handle @KarltheFog, is hanging around the Golden Gate Bridge and keeping the city cool. But there are plenty of art happenings to heat things up.

http://www.examiner.com/article/bay-area-art-events-for-the-week-of-july-7th

'Gorgeous' at the Asian Art Museum

 Summer gatherings in mountain villas, 1738, by Hua Yan (Chinese, 1682–1756). Set of twelve hanging scrolls; ink on gold-surfaced paper. 

 

SFMOMA is closed for renovation but continues to be present in the Bay Area's art world. Last week, they, in collaboration with the Asian Art Museum opened "Gorgeous," the museum equivalent of a summer movie. "Gorgeous" works like an arranged marriage, which is to say, sort of, kind of and not at all. More at:

http://www.examiner.com/article/gorgeous-at-the-asian-art-museum

Redefining the Multiple, Works on Paper, Gary Francis Fine Art Gallery, Alameda,July 10 to August 3, 2014

The upcoming Redefining the Multiple show, July 10 to August 3, 2014 at Gary Francis Fine Art Gallery in Alameda, features 2-D and 3-D works on paper, including  printmaking, woodcuts, stone lithographs, etchings, screen prints, book art and letterpress, by 32 Bay Area artists.  Opening Night Reception: 6-9pm, Friday, July 11 .
The 32 Bay Area artists included are:   Peter Baczek, Andrew Carney, Macy Chadwick, James Claussen, Gary Comoglio, Holly Downing, Jessica Dunne, Barry Ebner, Barbara Foster, John Gruenwald, Debra Jewell, Mike Kimball, Luz Marina Ruiz, HJ Mooij, Gustavo Mora Perez, Diego Marcial Rios, Michelle Murillo, Sarah Newton, Lian Ng, Rajit Phiosuwan, AV Pike, Carrie Ann Plank, Mandie Rider, Robyn Smith, Sylvia Solochek Walters, Herlinde Spahr, Jack Stone, Toru Sugita,  Sandy Walker, Shane Weare, Mark Welschmeyer, Linda Yoshizawa. 

Gary Francis Fine Art Gallery
1419 Park Street, Ste E
Alameda, CA 94501

http://www.garyfrancisfineart.com/  



Posted by Phil Gravitt










   

Chicago has scooped the George Lucas Museum

Sorry San Francisco. The force is not with you this time. 

http://www.examiner.com/article/chicago-has-scored-the-george-lucas-museum

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jun/24/star-wars-creator-george-lucas-museum-chicago

ArtZone 461 closes this weekend

Another gallery closes - the last one of the once vibrant and lively Valencia St. art scene:

http://www.examiner.com/article/artzone-461-closes-this-weekend

'Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible' opens at the Berkeley Art Museum

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) presents "Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible," the first museum retrospective of the eccentric outsider painter in more than twenty years. Organized by the Menil Collection in Houston, the Berkeley presentation features approximately forty of Bess’s works, dating from 1946 to 1970 with an installation of archival materials curated by American artist Robert Gober.
 More at:  http://www.examiner.com/article/forrest-bess-seeing-things-invisible

'Modernism from the National Gallery of Art: The Robert and Jane Meyerhof Collection,' opens at the de Young

 Frank Stella. Gray Scramble. 1969

 While SFMOMA is closed for renovations, those wanting their modern art fix have have had to look elsewhere. But after today until October 12, 2014, they won't have to look very far. "Modernism from the National Gallery of Art: The Robert and Jane Meyerhof Collection," just opened at the de Young Museum, following touring shows from Paris' Musée Picasso and Musée d'Orsay and the Mauritshuis in the Hague.

 Frank Stella. Flin Flon IV

 The show features 50 important works in the Meyerhof collection, seminal works in the history of modern art. For half a century, Robert and Jane Meyerhof worked to put together one of the greatest collections of post-war American painting. They donated over three hundred works to the National Gallery, fifty of which will be shown here. All but six have been donated to the National Gallery.

 The National Gallery of Art is in the midst of renovating its East Building galleries, making this show and the current one at the Legion possible. "It's no coincidence," said Harry Cooper, the National's curator of modern art, by telephone. "We have a great relationship with the Fine Arts Museums in San Francisco."

The contrast between the show at the Legion of post-Impressionist art and this one is an art history lesson in two exhibits. Post-Impressionism was still concerned with the figure, with landscape, portraits and with presenting the real world. Modernism has left the real world behind to create pieces that are based on the numerous fleeting art movements of post war America, from abstract expressionism to minimalism to pop. All of which reject any connection between the art created and the world of realistic objects and many of which aimed to replace religious feeling by painting seeking that "inner space."

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Barnett Newman’s "The Stations of the Cross" (1958–66). This series of 15 paintings, widely considered to be the artist’s most important work, has been displayed as the artist intended. Newman's compositions are built around a strict format: a field of color is bisected vertically by one or a few bands (narrow or wide) that he referred to as "zips." The black and white pieces are installed within a separate section of the gallery, in order to encourage the proper quasi religions gaze. Newman - like many of the artists in the show - was interested in evoking a metaphysical emotion, an art of "pure ideas' by discarding narrative, figures and even painterly detail.

 Roy Lichtenstein, Painting with Statue of Liberty, 1983.

 But other works are not so austere.  Stella’s "Flin Flon IV" (1969), Johns’ "Perilous Night" (1982), and Lichtenstein’s "Painting with Statue of Liberty" (1983) are colorful, chaotic and playful with riotous imagery.  Lichtenstein's "Fragmented Painting of Lemons and a Melon on a Table" pops with red stripes, yellow circles and the horizontal plane of a white table.

 The show is not organized by chronology, Rather, Harry Cooper, curator of modern and contemporary art at the National had identified ten material and visual themes "Scrape, Concentricity, Line, Gesture, Art on Art, Drip, Stripe to Zip, Figure or Ground, Monochrome and Picture the Frame."  Cooper tags Rothko's "No 3" as an example of "Stripe to Zip" and Jackson Pollock's "Untitled 1951" is classified as "drip; looks like Jack the Dripper can't get away from that nickname even within the higher echelon of art criticism.

The de Young is the exclusive venue for this exhibition, the first of the Meyerhof Collection to be seen outside the greater Washington, DC, and Baltimore metro areas.

Modernism From the National Gallery of Art: The Robert and Jane Meyerhof Collection: Runs Saturday through Oct. 12. De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. $20 (includes museum admission). (415) 750-3600. www.deyoungmuseum.org.

http://www.examiner.com/article/modernism-from-the-national-gallery-of-art-opens-at-the-de-young-1

How often can you see both John Waters and Alice Walker in San Francisco in the same week as well as the kick off for Queer Art Month?

The Green Arcade is hosting "A Conversation with John Waters." Filmmaker, author, celebrity, and provocateur John Waters sits down and talks with the proprietor of The Green Arcade, Patrick Marks, about his new book, "Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America." Waters' fans will not be disappointed in this sometimes side-splitting saga of sagacious sexuality, a witty, urbane and oft downright filthy journey into the heart, soul, and bowels of America.

It is what you would expect from the director of "Lust in the Dust," and other transgressive cult films.

Tickets $10 or free with purchase of "Carsick" from The Green Arcade. Monday, June 9, 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. At The 3rd Floor McRoskey Mattress Factory, 1687 Market St. E-mail: info@thegreenarcade.com

More at: http://www.examiner.com/article/for-june-7-9-john-waters-alice-walker-catherine-clark-queer-arts-festival?CID=examiner_alerts_article

San Francisco vies with Chicago for Lucas's cultural museum

 Of course, there are city politics involved - copious amounts of politics and egos. But let's get real - what large building, much less an museum, was built by saints. I hope we get the museum because it's not only a collection of art and costumes from Lucas' own collection but a collection of exquisiite art from the Golden Age of Illustration - Maxfield Parrish, Arthur Rackham and more

http://www.examiner.com/article/san-francisco-view-with-chicago-for-george-lucas-s-new-museum

'Sorolla in American' opens at the San Diego Museum of Art

This artist is one of my favorites and I am so glad that this massive exhibit has come to the west coast. First Anders Zorn and now Sorolla - if they show the work of John Singer Sargent, I will be one very happy woman:

http://www.examiner.com/article/sorolla-and-america-opens-san-diego

Walking Distance Dance Festival, Gutter Petter at Andrea Schwartz and more

Walking Distance Dance Festival, Gutter Petter's powerful and enigmatic works at Andrea Schwartz and more for the weekend:

http://www.examiner.com/article/odc-theater-s-walking-distance-dance-festival-loakal-gallery-andrea-schwartz

'Beauty Fierce as Stars*, Groundbreaking Women Painters' at Mythos Gallery

From the sidewalk, Mythos Gallery looks like just another non-descript storefront off busy Shadduck Avenue in Berkeley. But if the viewer takes a second look, he (or she) will see one of the most powerful – if smallest – exhibitions of women artists from the 1950’s through today. The exhibition at Mythos Gallery is the first of two to showcase women painters who arose out of the Abstract Expressionist and Figurative artistic movements of the 1950's.

http://www.examiner.com/article/beauty-fierce-as-stars-groundbreaking-women-painters-at-mythos-gallery

The Berkeley Art Museum and Film Archives 44th Annual MFA show

Student work but it's all very intriguing..http://www.examiner.com/article/the-berkeley-art-museum-and-film-archives-44th-annual-mfa-show

'Iconoclasm' at the McLoughlin Gallery

The title of the current show at the McLouglin Gallery, "Iconoclasm" is apt for the work presented by Italian artist Max Papeschi and Dutch artist Arnix is a deliberately provocative challenge to our common  assumptions about icons of popular culture and organized religion.

Sinclair Lewis is purported to have said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Italian artist Max Papeschi updates that idea to the 21st century with his images of capitalist destruction masked by cute icons of consumer culture. Mickey Mouse wears a Nazi uniform, Kermit and Miss Piggy are posed in front of a burning house - coded symbols for the Fascism, the attack on democracy, financial crisis, and false advertising promoted by Fox News and financed by the Koch Brothers. Papeschi's background as a writer and director for theater, TV and film shows in his theatrical imagery, which doesn't make it any the less accurate.

His work is subversive, crude, genuinely populist and while made by an Italian, reflects the way that many Europeans and Americans view the current political and social scene. Eighteen altered photo collages display the heads of political figures photo shopped on the bodies of cartoon figures. Black against a white background, they only fail in two instances; Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln don't belong in this gallery of the dictators and sadists. In his 12'x12 images, Papeschi portrays dictators such as Hitler as Charlie Chaplain, Lenin and Stalin as Laurel and Hardy and Marx as a cheerleader. The effect is shocking and slightly nauseating.

One can't call the Disney characters and the Muppets images limited to America; American advertising and ubiquitous advertising have popularized these images - and the ideas they represent - over the globe. To look at his work carefully is to see the hypocrisy behind the slick facade of fake prosperity to hollow ideas and genuine looming disaster.

The “American Dream” so glossily presented at the McLoughlin Gallery is becoming a fantasy with upward mobility almost nonexistent for the poor living within a stratified society and placated by the fantasies of mass advertising so cleverly and crassly shown by Pappeschi’s digital images.

Dutch Artist Arnix (a pseudonym) confronts the power of largely Catholic iconography through a subversive engagement with religious symbolism. Raised as a Roman Catholic, Arnix also has a sharp eye for manipulation and hypocrisy. In a statement on his website, Arnix wrote, "Faith and power. I get their reason for being. Although I have no faith myself, I understand that religion helps and supports people. Great, let’s keep it that way. I also understand that we need to guard our territory. What I really don’t get is that institutions dealing with power turn away from justice."

"The Seven Deadly Sins" are portrayed in pastel images with stick on shapes fixed on linear plastic plates.  Each plate is topped by a silicone (and realistic looking) pig's head. The pig represents filth, dissolute living, an image that rightly or wrongly disgusts us. Each panel represents another one of the deadly sins - anger, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Given the saturation of our culture with pornographic and quasi-pornographic images, Arnix’s use of pig’s heads was necessary to get the viewer’s attention. Otherwise the delicate and pastel colored figures on his plates would be admired for their beauty while the deeper message is ignored.

Elegant votives containing candles and male genitalia, sculptures combining creepily realistic silicone body parts placed inside antique copper and brass buckets and adorned with strategically placed crucifixes are set out in orderly fashion on the floor and along the walls of the gallery. Masks of the human face with a cross in their mouths mimic the graveyards to the “honored dead” which are scattered all over Europe. This particular instillation misses the mark as many of those buried died to free Europe from Nazism but, then, there is no mandate for a conceptual artist to be completely historically accurate. Nevertheless, the mark of a Catholic upbringing has left its mark on Arnix as well as many others.

Through May 2014

49 Geary Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94108. 415.986.4799 . info@mgart.com. 
 Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:30 a.m. - 6 p.m.

http://www.examiner.com/review/iconoclasm-at-the-mcloughlin-gallery

The weekend ahead. Somarts 'Eating Cultures,' Marin Open Studios and more

SOMArts Asian American Women Artist Association (AAWAA) and Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC) join forces to present the multidisciplinary art exhibition "Eating Cultures." Featuring over thirty emerging and established Asian Pacific American artists from around the country, "Eating Cultures" is a provocative multi-disciplinary arts exhibition of artworks inspired by Asian American food and foodways.

Cup of Noodle by Jessica Tang

Using food as a lens, artist share stories of global migration, adaptation, entrepreneurship, and the central importance of food in Asian communities around the world. In addition to over fifty art, film, and literary works, "Eating Cultures" will feature Asian American oral histories provided by Southern Foodways Alliance via Guide by Cell, dynamic programming co-presented by Asia Society and the Culinary Historians of Northern California, a pop-up shop, and a recipe wall for audiences to share their favorite family recipes.

Photo by Bob Hsiang

"Eating Cultures" is curated by lead curator Michelle A. Lee and co-curators Linda Inson Choy and Cynthia Tom, featuring APA artists of all genders selected by University of Connecticut Art History & Asian American Studies Professor Margo L. Machida. Invited artists include Chinese-American San Francisco-based painter and sculptor Cathy Lu, Vietnamese-Irish American Los Angeles-based artist Genevieve Erin O’Brien, and Korean-American Berlin-based artist Kate Hers Rhee.

SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco. Opening on May 1, 2014 through May 30, 2014

MARIN OPEN STUDIOS
May 3rd and 4th and May 10th and 11th...11am to 5 pm
ICB Building. 480 Gate Five Road Sausalito Ca.....Over 40 Artists!

 

Art work by Sherry Miller

http://sherryart.typepad.com/

http://www.examiner.com/article/somarts-creativity-explored-marin-open-studios

A celebration of the life and works of John James Audubon

Audubon, Golden Eagle, 1833–4

John James Audubon (Jean-Jacques Audubon) (April 26, 1785 - January 27, 1851) was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats.

 Audubon, White Gyrfalcons

His major work, a color-plate book entitled The Birds of America (1827-1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon identified 25 new species.

 In this image: John James Audubon (1785?1851), Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) and Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus), Study for Havell pl. no. 76, ca. 1825. Watercolor, pastel, graphite, black ink, oil, gouache, black chalk, collage, and outlining with a stylus on paper, with selective glazing on paper, laid on card; 25 13/16 x 39 3/8 in. (65.6 x 100 cm).

http://www.examiner.com/article/a-celebration-of-the-works-of-john-james-audubon

Happy Birthday Richard Diebenkorn

http://www.examiner.com/article/happy-birthday-richard-diebenkorn

The week ahead: Leonora Carrington at Gallery Wendi Norris and more

I have to confess that this is not one of my better written columns; it is pretty straightforward but that does not mean you shouldn't see the shows. I mean - Leonora Carrington, Romare Bearden, Creativity Explored and Gallery 16 all in one small city. How cool is that? Surrealism, African-American Art, the unique artists at CE AND Rex Ray whose powerful graphic design has gathered him international recognition. Carrington deserves - and has - volumes writen about her work. The twenty works on exhibit at Wendi Norris is just a small selection of her oeuvre. Carrington’s exhibition will include roughly ten rarely exhibited oil paintings in addition to a seven-piece gouache series that was on view at the Guggenheim’s seminal exhibition, "Surrealism: Two Private Eyes,"  the Nesushi Etegun and Daniel Filipacchi Collections in 1999.

• 

   The "Celtic Surrealist" in the title of the show is a bit of a stretch but as the work was first shown in Dublin, it makes sense to tie it to a specific location. One tapestry - that of the hunter, dogs and horned deer could pass for Celtic but those figures are also part of ancient Indo-European mythology. 

   

  The rest of the work is not Irish at all but still, what differences does a title make. If the Irish want to claim her as a Celt (and her mother was Irish), why not?

   

  "The Celtic Surrealist" at Gallery Wendi Norris. Through May 31.  11 A.M to 6 P.M. Tuesday through Saturday. 161 Jessie Street. San Francisco, (415) 346-7812.

   

  If Duchamp can call a urinal a work of art, the Irish can claim that Carrington - English born, the lover of German Max Ernst and who lived most of her long life in Mexico - is using Irish symbolism. and mythology in her art. 

   

  It is exciting to see that Romare Bearden, the master of collage, is also the master of watercolors, that most difficult of mediums. Bearden’s collages in "Storyteller" — including mural maquettes, an Olympic poster, and a book jacket for a collection of poems by African writers — highlight the artist’s mastery.

   

  

   Baptism

   

  His watercolors were originally commissioned for the opening titles of the 1980 film Gloria with the vibrant colors reflecting his Caribbean heritage. 

   

  Prints based on his collages are showcased in his Odyssey series, which illustrates Homer’s epic poem; the series seemingly departs from his best-known work of edgy urban and jazz scenes or his depictions of African American life in the rural South. Yet, because Bearden depicts these Greek mythological figures as black, he invites a comparison between classical myth and African American culture. Viewers may liken the Greek king Odysseus’ arduous and heroic ten-year search for home after the Trojan War to African American struggles. 

   

  

  At the dock.

   Replacing white characters with black figures, Bearden attempts to defeat the rigidness of racial roles and stereotypes and open up the possibilities and potentials of blacks. Bearden says about this series and his work in general, "What I tried to do is take the elements of African American life….and place it in a universal framework."

  
  Romare Bearden: Storyteller: Through June 21. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, until 5 p.m. Saturday. Jenkins Johnson Gallery, 464 Sutter St., S.F. (415) 677-0770.www.jenkinsjohnsongallery.com.

  
  

  http://www.examiner.com/article/the-week-ahead-leonora-carrington-at-wendi-norris-and-more