Weekend Picks: MoAD, CJM, OMCA, Peninsula Women's Caucus for Art

http://www.examiner.com/article/weekend-picks-moad-omca-cjm-and-peninsula-women-s-caucus-for-art

Free admission to the CJM and what else is open in the Bay Area on Christmas Day

At the Contemporary Jewish Museum: Grammy nominated duo—The Pop-Ups perform their music using cardboard props, hand-painted sets, and a colorful cast of original puppets; crafting a world of magic that engages, educates, and delights all ages. Performances at 1 and 2:30pm with a special “meet the puppets” workshop at 11:30am.*Tickets for The Pop-Ups performances available on a first-come, first-serve basis on the day of the event and are extremely limited.

http://www.examiner.com/article/free-admission-to-the-cjm-and-what-else-is-open-the-bay-area-on-christmas-day

Bay Area picks for post-Thanksgiving activities

Visit the Contemporary Jewish Museum and explore the delightful world of the bird-chasing dog Mr. Lunch in a new exhibition inspired by the much-loved children’s books illustrated by J. Otto Seibold and written with Vivian Walsh.

The museum has created a three-dimensional version of Mr. Lunch's office, complete with a modern computer hidden behind a clunky 1980's interface, a jail and a simulated airport security gate.

 The experience of "Mr. Lunch Takes a Plane Ride" begins at the gallery entrance where visitors go through an airport security gate and children receive a free take home activity passport for use during their visit. The passport includes scavenger hunts, drawing activities, and more.
This Friday, Drop-In Art-Making Friday, Nov 28 (continued on Sunday, Nov 30, Sunday, Dec 7)

Contemporary Jewish Museum. Free with regular admission

Fred Lyons and more at: http://www.examiner.com/article/bay-area-picks-for-post-thanksgiving activities

Arnold Newman at the CJM, Keith Harring at the de Young & a bit more

Dali

Ben Gurion

"Arnold Newman, Master Class," at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM): Nobody will be able to accuse Arnold Newman of promoting a simplistic or easily recognizable brand. An influential 20th century portrait photographer, "Arnold Newman: Masterclass" at the CJM presents some of his most famous portraits as well as numerous works which have never before been shown in public.

 Martha Graham

 Divided into 10 sections that delineate Newman's various approaches – the extensive exhibition, which is too much to take in at one visit, expands on how he thought and practiced his craft. Empathetic and sympathetic, he never descends to romantic cliche or facile glamor.

 Henry Miller

 Newman found his vision in the empathy he felt for artists and their work. Although he photographed many famous personalities—Marlene Dietrich, John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Ronald Reagan, Mickey Mantle, and Audrey Hepburn—he maintained that even if the subject is not known, or is already forgotten, the photograph itself must still excite and interest the viewer. He sought to capture the person in their environment, avoiding the staged cliches of other photographers.

 Marilyn Monroe

A vulnerable Marilyn Monroe has never been photographed with such delicate understanding or the grand diva of dance, Martha Graham, with such respect for her icy power.

"I didn't just want to make a photograph with some things in the background," Newman told American Photo magazine in an interview. "The surroundings had to add to the composition and the understanding of the person. No matter who the subject was, it had to be an interesting photograph. Just to simply do a portrait of a famous person doesn't mean a thing."

"We want to show another side of Newman," said co-curator Todd Brandow. "There's a whole body of his work that hasn't been explored. For the first time we're getting into the way he worked. He kept his secrets to himself, but we had access to his archives."

The first major exhibition of the photographer's work since his death, "Arnold Newman: Masterclass" examines the evolution of his singular vision. Contemporary Jewish Museum. Through Feb 2015.

The Haring show is bound to be enormously popular - jazzy, brightly cartoon figures, all fun and games. But Arnold Newman's photos require much more attention and should not be missed.

More about Keith Haring, Mark di Suvero and Udo Nöger at
http://www.examiner.com/article/the-week-ahead-keith-haring-arnold-newman-and-more?CID=examiner_alerts_article

'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

Free non-Christmas events during Christmas week

Arnold Lobel, "Old pig with pen."

In celebration of "Frog and Toad and the World of Arnold Lobel," The Contemporary Jewish Museum's Community Day is an admission-free, fun-for-all extravaganza. The exhibition features over 100 original illustrations and works on paper highlighting Lobel’s detailed illustration technique and warm, funny tales of love and friendship, mostly among animal friends. Lobel subtly reflected on human foibles in a charming world populated by a talking frog, a toad, an owl, mice, kangaroos, and other colorful creatures.
http://www.examiner.com/article/contemporary-jewish-museum-s-annual-free-day-on-xmas-day

Christmas is coming, which means you’re most likely spending the day with friends and family or stuck at work (or maybe both). If you want to get away, there are a multitude of opportunities and best of all, most of them are free.

If you’re looking to volunteer, opportunities abound, like serving meals for homeless and in-need families at Glide. More at: http://www.examiner.com/article/non-christmas-events-for-christmas-week

'Frog and Toad and the World of Arnold Lobel' at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

The most delightful show in town..

 http://www.examiner.com/list/frog-and-toad-and-the-world-of-arnold-lobel-at-the-contemporary-jewish-museum

'Beyond Belief' opens at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

Agnes Martin, Falling Blue, 1963; oil and graphite on canvas; 71 7/8 in. x 72 in. (182.56 cm x 182.88 cm).

Co-organized by the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Beyond Belief: 100 Years of the Spiritual in Modern Art is an expansive exhibition conceived as a journey into the connections between spirituality and modern and contemporary art. Spanning the years from 1911 to 2011, the exhibition features more than sixty works on loan from SFMOMA.

The exhibit benefits from the more intimate space; smaller works like those by Klee and Kandinsky have been lost in SFMOMA's larger galleries. But three pieces in particular - Philip Guston's"Red Sea; The Swell; Blue LIght," .Rothko's 'No 14" and  Teresite Fernandez, 'Fire" needed more space. Each piece needs a room by itself as each is so powerful. But, again, it may be the more intimate spaces at the CJM that make the viewer aware of the power of this art.

Teresita Fernández. Fire, 2005

"Beyond Belief" is divided into ten sections, organized under headings that examine widely held spiritual ideas, many of which closely parallel or are rooted in Jewish religious thought—such as the Bible’s original creation story and the bias against literal depictions of God.

The exhibition begins, aptly, with Genesis and wends its way through different sections that reveal how artists have addressed diverse spiritual ideas, such as the invisible presence of God, death, redemption, mystical writing, and the understanding of God as a divine architect.

In Tallus Mater (Madre Tallo/Stem Mother), Mendieta evokes the power of prehistoric fertility goddesses, especially those associated with Mayan and Native American spiritual systems. The ficus, or fig tree, roots with which Mendieta created this sculpture might allude to the Garden of Eden, a primary creation myth in Western monotheism.

Many rich religious stories are translated into complex and provocative works of art, some on display for the first time in years.

Helen Lundeberg’s mysterious painting Oracle—a Greek word meaning either a prophet or the physical shrine where a divine voice emanates—evokes a host of natural forms.

The show requires an open mind to other dimensions of spirituality. There is a lot of wall text and some have found the organization confusing, but a thoughtful and contemplative approach will allow the deeper meanings to emerge.

While perhaps the museum overreaches in their attempt to bring together the aesthetic and the spiritual, the presentation of artists who affirmed the transcendental in art yields much in the way of both enjoyment and enlightenment. In a decade which has seen art reduced to cow parts in formaldehyde, any attempt to break away from the crass commercialism and expensive emptiness is commendable.

The museum has created an interactive website to help visitors explore the exhibit in more depth: http://beyondbelief.thecjm.org

Contemporary Jewish Museum: 736 Mission Street (btwn. 3rd and 4th Streets), San Francisco, CA 94103 | Hours: Daily 11am–5pm, Thursdays 1–8pm, Closed Wednesdays | 415.655.7800 | info@thecjm.org

http://www.examiner.com/list/beyond-belief-opens-at-the-contemporary-jewish-museum

Free Sunday at the CJM, Ferlinghetti at Krevsky, Sandi Yagi at Bash & a new gallery opens at the Oakland Museum of California

The Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) welcomes its new Executive Director Lori Starr and celebrates the first five years in its Daniel Libeskind-designed home in downtown San Francisco. Free admission, dance and music performances, art-making and crafts for families, and more on Sunday, June 9, 2013.

The festivities will include a reading by San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguía and remarks by California State Senator Mark Leno on Jessie Square in front of the Museum, plus  indoor and outdoor performances by AXIS Dance Company, a cappella Leonard Cohen choir, The Conspiracy of Beards, Bulgarian woman’s choir True Life Trio, and Porto Franco Klezmer All-Stars.
Sunday, Jun 9. Free admission all day. http://www.thecjm.org/

Bash Contemporary: Grand Opening tonight with an exhibit of works by Sandi Yagi , mistress of 21st century Gothic. This will be Yagi's first solo show at a location that is becoming full of interesting, quirky art spaces, not afraid to show "risky" art. The Tenderloin is becoming the center of SF”s cutting edge art spaces, as noted in a recent article in "Beyond the Chron":
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=11458
http://bashcontemporary.com

 Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Future Woman. Through June 2013

George Krevsky: "Future Woman." SF poet laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti is having his 7th solo show at George Krevsky. The 94-year old shows commendable vitality, if little finesse, in his current paintings of brash nudes.

“In 20th century art, the image of woman was constantly under attack, from Picasso’s two-faced women to De Kooning’s merciless portraits, to the latest tagger’s decimation.” Ferlinghetti wrote recently, “Women’s liberation movements freed women from conventional restraints, but also dethroned her from the pedestal where she had always been seen as the embodiment of pure beauty and mystery.” Pure beauty and mystery? Obviously he hasn't been looking at much for the last 50 years. Ferlinghetti's work is crude enough to qualify as a sexist attack and as far as women's lib freeing women - maybe Mr. Ferlinghetti should read the daily news. http://www.georgekrevskygallery.com/

But he is still the poet laureate of SF and can do no wrong as evinced by this laudatory interview at SF Weekly: http://www.sfweekly.com/2013-06-05/culture/lawrence-ferlinghetti-beat-generation-city-lights-howl-and-other-poems/

 Oakland Museum of California: After more than 3 years of construction, the Gallery of California Natural Sciences is open to the public. Visitors can experience seven real places throughout California that depict the stat's diverse habitats. A new exhibit is on display "Inspiration Points: Masterpieces of California Landscape," presenting more than 60 iconic paintings, photography and works on paper.

Xavier Timoteo Orozco Martinez

The artworks included in Inspiration Points have been carefully selected from the Museum's extensive and pre-eminent holdings of California art from the Gold Rush era to the present to tell the stories of how people have interacted with the natural world. Artists featured will include Ansel Adams, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, David Hockney, William Keith, Arthur Mathews, Richard Misrach, Thomas Moran, and more. The exhibition will be divided into several areas of focus that reflect artists' depiction of the landscape from a celebration of California's sublime natural world, to the documentation of exploitation of natural resources, to the investigation of the intersection of the urban and "wild."

 Arthur Mathews. Spring Dance.

Drew Johnson, Curator of Photography and Visual Culture,  says, "From majestic scenes of unspoiled wilderness to exploited lands and dystopian visions, Inspiration Points illuminates how artists have interpreted the landscape at particular moments in time. Highlighting important recent acquisitions while also shedding new light on timeless favorites, the exhibition examines the changing attitudes toward the environment over time and provides a surprising investigation of California's natural world." http://www.museumca.org/

http://www.examiner.com/list/cjm-sandi-yagi-at-brash-ferlinghetti-at-krevtsky-oakland-museum

The Contemporary Jewish Museum presents 'Beat Memories. The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg'

On March 25, in 1957, Allen Ginsberg helped make literary history. when 520 copies of his poem "Howl" were seized by U.S. Customs agents on charges of obscenity. Ginsberg and his publisher, City Lights, would fight those charges -- and win.

The current exhibit of his personal photographs at the Contemporary Jewish Museum won't make artistic history but they will help illuminate the private life of Ginsberg and his band of famous friends. The focus is on the personal lives, a disappointment to those who are looking for more documentation of the history that Ginsberg lived through as a poet and an activist.


http://www.examiner.com/list/the-cjm-presents-beat-memories-the-photographs-of-allen-ginsberg

'The Snowy Day' and the art of Ezra Jack Keats

 'The Snowy Day' and the art of Ezra Jack Keats

 http://www.examiner.com/article/the-snowy-day-and-the-art-of-ezra-jack-keats

'The Radical Camera; New York's Photo League, 1936 - 1951' at the CJM

They wanted to change the world, one photograph at a time.

Rosalie Gwathmey (1908–2001, born Charlotte, North Carolina)
Shout Freedom, Charlotte, North Carolina, c. 1948 Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase with funds provided by Elizabeth M. Ross, the Derby Fund, John S. and Catherine Chapin Kobacker, and the Friends of the Photo League 7 ⅞ x 6 3/4 in.

"The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936–1951" now open at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM) presents the contested path of the documentary photograph and the League during a tumultuous period that spanned the New Deal reforms of the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War.

Arthur Leipzig (born 1918, Brooklyn, New York)
Ideal Laundry, 1946 Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Esther Leah Ritz Bequest. 10 x 8 in.

That could have been the motto of New York’s Photo League, founded in 1936 by young Jewish-American photographers Sid Grossman and Sol Libsohn. Young, idealistic, mostly Jewish, they believed in the expressive power of the documentary photograph and progressive, socialist ideas and art.

A unique complex of school, darkroom, gallery, and salon, the League was also a place where you learned about yourself. Sid Grossman, one of the founders, pushed students to discover not only the meaning of their work but also their relationship to it. This transformative approach was one of the League’s most innovative and influential contributions to the medium.

Sid Liebling, Butterfly Boy. New York. 1949

Photo credit: courtesy Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio,

The group eventually had over 300 members, including legends in the field such as Berenice Abbott, Weegee and Aaron Siskind.

Their work resulted in a street-level, popular history of the era, told through documentary photographs of the marginalized. criminalized, and dispossessed. In its early years the League was committed to the idea of photography as honest and unmediated. A “true” and “good” picture was one in which aesthetic qualities did not overwhelm the content or subvert its message. The Leaguers were inspired to make inequity and discrimination tangible in their work.

Photographs, with titles such as "Shoemaker’s Lunch" and "Salvation Army Lassie in Front of a Woolworth Store," exposed issues of class, poverty, racial inequality, and lack of opportunity.

Vivian Cherry (born 1920, Manhattan, New York)
Game of Lynching, East Harlem, 1947.Gelatin silver print
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, Photo League Collection, Museum Purchase, Derby Fund 6¼ x 9 in. (15.9 x 22.9 cm)

Vivian Cherry’s disturbing images of boys playing at lunching were the first photographs to link certain kinds of violence in children's games with racism.

The series was published by ’48 Magazine of the Year; Photography republished them in 1952, commenting, “The pictures are not pretty, but they do represent an attempt to . . . use a camera as a tool for social research.”

Sid Grossman, interviewed in the film, “Ordinary Miracles,” said that their desire was to “get close to people as human beings, to try to push them in a progressive direction."

The images range from the street life of the lower East side to farming communities hard hit by the dust bowl. The sensitive and compelling images of African-Americans were the first to document their lives with respect. showing their humanity and strength while coping with extreme poverty.

During its fifteen-year existence (1936–1951), the Photo League would mirror monumental shifts in the world starting with the Depression, through World War II, and ending with the Red Scare. Throughout those tumultuous times, its members engaged in lively debate and ongoing experimentation in the streets to propel documentary photography from factual images to a more subjective, poetic reading of life.

  Consuelo Kanaga (1894–1978, born Astoria, Oregon)
Untitled (Tenements, New York), c. 1937 Gelatin silver print
The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: The Paul Strand Trust for the benefit of Virginia Stevens Gift

Presented in collaboration with another major Photo League collector, The Jewish Museum in New York City, “Radical Camera” offers nearly 150 photographs created around and during the league’s lifespan, as well as videos, oral histories and interactive displays.

The Cold War politics of the McCarthy era eventually destroyed the group. Shocked and dismayed at the attacks upon the organization, they mounted an exhibition entitled “This Is the Photo League,” which showcased the diversity and quality of its members’ work.

The retrospective opened in December 1948 with photographs by more than ninety past and present members. While it achieved a measure of critical attention, the effort came too late. By now, the political atmosphere was by now far too toxic. Membership and revenues dwindled and the group was ostracized.

Sid Grossman, the League’s great teacher and mentor who led passionate debates about the rolerole of the personal and subjective in the documentary image, was particularly victimized and disillusioned by the blacklist. He resigned in 1949 and retreated to Provincetown, Massachusetts.

There he continued to teach photography and to make art, but his reputation faded. Shortly before he died in 1955, at age forty-three, he commented with some irony on a late series of “pictures of birds” he had made in Cape Cod. They were, he acknowledged, scarcely the kind of documentary subject that he would have pursued earlier in life.

“Yet this material,” he said, “was quite harmonious with my past history as a photographer, visually and emotionally.” Grossman perhaps felt obliged to explain that these photographs, with their allover pattern of flickering light and agitated movement, drew upon the contemporary language of abstract expressionism. More poignantly, the birds’ feeding frenzy suggests the poisonous atmosphere that had finally forced him out of the League.

In 1950, the Photo League officially closed its doors, a casualty of the Cold War.

Although short lived, the Photo League’s influence was significant. The sense of artistic “presentness” and the assertion of the photographer’s identity in the work of artists such as Diane Arbus, Louis Faurer, Helen Levitt, and Robert Frank are, in many ways, the legacy of the Photo League as was the subjective, poetic renderings of social themes that would characterize the next generation of street photographers.

Review: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-radical-camera-new-york-s-photo-league-1936-1951-at-the-cjm
At the Contemporary Jewish Museum. http://www.thecjm.org/
Through January 31, 2013

Looking back at the year in art

"God created the Maharajas to provide a spectacle to humanity” wrote Rudyard Kipling, and the Asian did justice to his observation in their next big show, "Maharaja, Splendors of Indian's Royal Courts. There wasn’t an object in the show that wasn't embellished, inlaid with gems and gold, looped with sapphires and diamonds or outlined with pearls.The gaudy display was a reminder that today's 1% aren't alone in ignoring the misery outside their  mansions. 

The FAMSF gave us a feast of European art - from Pissarro to the splendors of the old masters to the subtle skill of 17th century Dutch painting in the Von Otterloo collection. 

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/masterworks-from-the-dutch-golden-age-at-the-legion-of-honor

Pissarro is probably the least well know of the impressionists and the show displayed his humanistic look at family, friends and the working people of the day as well as his political radicalism.

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/pissarro-s-people-at-the-legion

The behemoth blockbuster of the year was the two-museum tribute to the Stein family. Most of us know of Gertrude, the contrary, cantankerous and sometimes charming women who is notorious for saying 'There is no there, there" when referring to Oakland. Using a wealthy of archival material, the show brought to life her and Alice and a multitude of the famous and infamous of the Parisian avant-guard for decades.

 Right across the road, at SFMOMA was an eloquent tribute to the family as art collectors. Seldom have so few bought so much art with so little money. It's difficult to say which is more amazing - the low prices paid for now priceless paintings by Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse or the Steins' (particularly Sarah Stein's) courageous support of art that was then new, provocative and revolutionary.

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/masterworks-from-the-dutch-golden-age-at-the-legion-of-honor

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/the-steins-collect-matisse-picasso-the-parisian-avant-garde-review

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/seeing-gertrude-stein-five-stories-at-the-contemporary-jewish-museum-review

Across the bay, the Berkeley Art Museum hosted two unique shows, the first West Coast exhibit of the work of Karl Schwitters and "Create," a show of art made by artists with disabilities.

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/kurt-schwitters-color-and-collage-at-the-berkeley-art-museum-review

"Create" highlighted the extraordinary contributions of three of the foremost centers for artists with disabilities, all located in the Bay Area: Creativity Explored (San Francisco), Creative Growth Art Center (Oakland), and NIAD Art Center (Richmond, CA).

As I said at the time, "It's really a shame to call them "artists with disabilities" because they are artists first, and mentally challenged second. Yet, to ignore their condition is to make light of the difficulties they face.

Thanks to the lack of a safety net, the disabled roam our streets, beg on the sidewalks, mutter to themselves, are messy, dirty, frightening. They challenge us to define what it is to be human. They test the limits of what we can do, can afford to do, have the will to do. Unfortunately, they can't always communicate how extraordinary they can be, with help, with encouragement, with love and a support system."

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/create-at-the-berkeley-art-museum-review

The MoAD brought us a rare look at original works by Romare Bearden, the vibrant quilts of the Siddis, part of the African diaspora in India and "Textural Rhythms," swing, jazz and be-bop in fabric and thread,

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/soulful-stitching-patchwork-quilts-by-africans-siddis-india-at-the-moaf

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/textural-rhythms-at-the-museum-of-the-african-diaspora-review

The CJM brought us the work and tragic life of Charlotte Salomon, considered among the most innovative artists of mid-century Europe whose work defies categorization, and continues to influence artists in unusual ways.

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/cjm-presents-charlotte-salomon-life-or-theatre-review

In the galleries: Hosfelt bought up a rare look at works by Jay De Feo. Next year, a major traveling retrospective of Jay DeFeo's work, organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, will be presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the autumn of 2012.

http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/jay-defeo-at-hosfelt-gallery

These are a few of my favorite things from the rich offerings from my favorite city by the bay. But none of this would be possible without the people behind the scenes at the museums. I want to give a shout of thanks to the following: Jill, Robin Wander, Cheryl McCain and Peter Cavagnaro at the Berkeley Art Museum, Libby Garrison and Robyn Wise at SFMOMA. If I left out your name, accept my apologies.