Art

Berkeley, Pacific Film Archive, Le Bonheur

I actually don’t get back to the Berkeley campus or its surroundings very often, and when I do, it’s usually on the north side where my graduate-school life centered: the computer-science or computer-music centers, the winding roads of the hills, or the “gourmet ghetto.” It’s pretty rare that I find myself on Telegraph Avenue or along the south side of campus, as I did this time. It seemed like very little has changed, many of the shops, restaurants and institutions along the street are still there, many of the buildings look the same. But it did seem a bit cleaner.

While in Berkeley, I saw a screening of Agnès Varda’s film Le Bonheur at the Pacific Film Archive.

It basically a film about a young family living a Paris suburb and leading a life that seems so overly perfect that something bad clearly is going to happen. In this case, it is the husband and father François beginning an affair with another woman. As the affair progresses, the film, whose its rich colors and classical soundtrack do seem to resonate “happiness”, very gradually begins to feel a bit unsettling, and eventually a bit creepy.

Even as it is a film about a particular set of circumstances and events that happen to a family, it is also very much a film about colors. Each scene seems to focus on a specific color. The initial scene of the family on a picnic in the countryside is all yellow, and the family’s (somewhat small and cramped) apartment is blue. In each of these scenes, everything matches the primary color, from the flowers to the background light to the clothing worn by the family. This is particularly apparent with yellow and blue dresses of Therese, the wife and mother (and coincidentally, a dressmaker). She reprises these colors throughout the film, they seem to represent the “happy” aspect of the family. By contrast The scenes with mistress Émilie, particularly those in her apartment, are stark white, with only sparse adornment such as movie posters on the wall. The colors also change with the seasons over the course of the film, from yellow in spring to bright green in summer, to muted orange and brown in the autumn.

Before the film, I did take a quick trip through the Berkeley Art Museum. Although they did have interesting exhibitions – Mario García Torres’ multimedia installation focusing on ruined buildings on a Greek Island that once housed modernist performances and installations, and an eclectic assortment from the permanent collection – it was in some ways overshadowed by the building itself, with its large space and oddly angled concrete balconies.

Perhaps the thing that makes visiting Berkeley most different now is that I am living in San Francisco, so the trip is now going from a large city to a medium-sized college town and then back at night. It’s not good or bad per se, it’s just different, and coming home to the city at the end of the day (instead of the trip in the middle) has become quite familiar, and comforting.

Art notes: SFMOMA, Kentridge, Shettar, First Thursday

This was a rather art-intensive weekend, even by our recent standards at CatSynth., spanning Thursday through Sunday. This article will only touch on a few items.

At an unplanned visit to SFMOMA, I encountered for the first time work of William Kentridge. Kentridge is a South African artist working with stop-motion films, multimedia, dance and theatre. His work spans from whimsical to overtly political, often dealing with themes from both South Africa and the region. My initial impression of Kentridge’s work from the exhibition ads and the first passing glance at the gallery were mixed. The figures in his earlier animations, such as Soho and Felix are caricatures, with squat bodies and exaggerated features, are usually not that inviting to me. But one can quickly see the immense time and skill that went into these works, which are made from a sequence of charcoal drawings. And having seen the craft, I started to notice the art, and able to step away from the figures themselves to see the mixture of film, animation and music at a more abstract level. His later works, such as 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, Journey to the Moon, and Day for Night, allow for a more abstract viewing, and also introduce his self portraits and self-deprecating sense of humor. Set on six screens, I moved between abstract animations of star and insect movements, and the artist spilling coffee onto his blank paper.

Probably the most interesting was his newest piece, I am not me, the horse is not mine, 2008, loosely based on Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose. There was of course a partly live-acted, partly animated nose as the “star”, but also other elements depicting the demise of the Russian avant-garde under Soviet rule, and elements mixing abstraction and Soviet-style realism, with muted color fields, geometry and text. There was also an interlude of South African choral music for good measure. I wish I had been in town for the performance and lecture last month.

The final works, based on Mozart’s The Magic Flute, were the most elaborate, with video projects based on archival film, animations and stills projected into wooden stages with live mechanized shadow puppets. It was clear that the audience was transfixed in a way I usually don’t see for multimedia and video presentations in an art gallery.

This is probably worth going back to see in more detail. I simply did not have the time to stay and watch every video and animation.

Also at SFMOMA were some exhibitions I had seen but not written about previously, including the portrait photography exhibit Face of Our Time. I usually don’t go for straight-out portrait work, but these mostly large images worked in the context of the other exhibits at the museum.

I did take note of the abstract and whimsical sculpture of Ranjani Shettar. Her work combines modern technologies and traditional Indian craft techniques, but with none of the nostalgia or adherence to cultural stereotypes that often dominates Indian art, at least as it is presented in this country. Her sculptures do have a very naturalistic quality, reminiscent of much contemporary work in the western U.S.

Last Thursday was also the First Thursday open galleries in downtown San Francisco for April (this year is going by so fast, isn’t it?). I should first recognize Trevor Paglen, who was showing both at SFMOMA as a SECA Art Award recipient, and at the Altman Siegel Gallery. It is quite a coincidence to see the same artist at two venues in a single week.

Perhaps my favorite show was Ema H Sintamarian at the Jack Fischer Gallery. Her drawings/paintings consisted of surreal, curving architectural elements, with an almost cartoonish quality. Bright colors and shapes against a white background.

The show by South African artist Lyndi Sales was intricate and very meticulous, work digital cuttings of found and printed objects – it was also a poignant tribute to her father’s death in the Hederberg crash.

Portraits seem to sneak their way into many of my experiences this week, with Gao Yuan’s “12 Moons”, a series of photographs with a Chinese take on the “Madonna and Child” theme. She was featured at MOCA Shanghai last year in 2008 (MOCA was of course closed the main weekend I was there).

Susan Grossman presented chalk and pastel drawings of photographs, that quickly revealed themselves to be familiar scenes of San Francisco. The black-and-white coloring and soft edges also serve as a fitting close to an article that begin with the soft charcoal drawings of William Kentridge, even if the subject matter could not be more different.

Museum of Broken Relationships

On Saturday (the 14th), a friend and I visited the Museum of Broken Relationships, which is currently at Root Division here in San Francisco. The museum was founded in Zagreb, Croatia in 2006, “dedicated to broken hearts”:

The Museum of Broken Relationships is an art concept which proceeds from the assumption that objects possess integrated fields – ‘holograms’ of memories and emotions – and intends with its layout to create a space of ‘secure memory’ or ‘protected remembrance’ in order to preserve the material and nonmaterial heritage of broken relationships.

It has toured several countries – this is its debut in the United States.

The museum is built of donated artifacts, each with an anonymous story about the relationship it represented. There was a large variety of artifacts, such as the handcuffs in the poster shown above. There lots of love notes, the most interesting was one that was pasted to a mirror which was then shattered and the pieces cut out and encased in glass. There was also a large number of stuffed toys, such as Valentin below:

Some more toys, a prosthetic hand and a wedding dress:

There were a surprising number of prosthetic body parts on display, including the hands shown above and a leg with an interesting story. The story for the wedding dress can also be found online here.

The stories are as diverse as the artifacts themselves. Many of the standard broken-relationship variety: “it wasn’t meant to be” or “over the years we drifted further apart.” Some involved tragic events, the death of one or the other parter in the relationship.

One image that was rather sad involved a small painting of the Sesame Street character Grover. It was painted as an affectionate handmade gift to someone who kept a stuffed version of Grover, but the recipient then dismissed this gift as “childish.”

A funny piece was a set of shot glasses donated by someone in San Francisco (there were several local pieces donated), with the tag line “PS: his name is Larry and he is an asshole.”

The evening opening was actually quite crowded. I suppose I should not have been surprised so see so many people out to celebrate broken hearts on Valentines Day. However, judging from the attire of many of the visitors, they were stopping here either on the way to or the way from a romantic dinner. Or maybe this event was their “date”, as there was plenty of food and drink provided.

There was a brief performance piece involving an accordion and a dancer in a symbolic tying and unraveling of knots. It was rather difficult to see or here, given the density of the crowd.

Root Division does seem to have some interesting exhibits. Next month is an exhibit dedicated to algorithms, mathematics and problem solving. Now attempting to relate that back to broken hearts…