(ok, I'm just KIDDING)
--- Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> ``I love living in a big city full of all kinds of
> people from all over
> the place.'' Doug
>
> ``I live in a megapolis too. I like megapoloi. I
> don't
> want millions and millions of them.'' Chris
>
> --------
>
> Hey, guys I had great Saturday in SF. Got on BART, a
> five short block
> walk from my place, whizzed over to the Montgomery
> Street station on
> Market, came up from the fading futuristic gloom to
> sit on the stone
> steps at Post and Market and watch the people
> streaming by on a
> brilliant Saturday afternoon---well, to have a
> cigerette.
>
> Then up a block or so and then down 3rd Street to
> SFMOMA to see
> Picasso and the Americans, along with a Bruce Marden
> retrospective. I
> had to go through each show backwards to avoid the
> crowds and tours so
> I could study the paintings. There were several de
> Koonings and Gorkys
> I have never seen before, although I knew them very
> well from
> books. It's just great to see the real thing. Also
> an earily Elain de
> Kooning when she was following Gorky's lead. And of
> course the
> Picassos. There were several masterpieces I had also
> studied in books
> and then got to see, live as it were.
>
> Before I went over to the Marden retro, I went back
> outside and down a
> block to a Pete's on 3rd and had a Duppio and
> another cigerette and
> watch more people, mostly tourists. This is a very
> small, comfortable
> and civilized city. Sitting there in the sun
> outdoors on the sidewalk
> was just wonderful.
>
> Normally, all I do is deal with the underbelly of
> the city, the down
> and out, the desparate, the old, the disabled, the
> poorest. But not
> yesterday. Yesterday was a treat to get out of the
> gloom. What a
> fucking joy.
>
> The museum crowds were interesting too. They seemed
> to be the young
> always dressed in black who were obviously art
> students. I had been
> temped to bring my camera but decided I didn't want
> to leave it at the
> check-in counter in back pack...meanwhile I ran into
> a couple of asian
> kids in their twenties, all dressed in stylish black
> stuff with a
> small Hasselblau shooting the architecture of the
> central atrium which
> is pretty wild---a five story open drop from
> skylight to the ground
> floor lobby. Oh well, maybe another day.
>
> Anyway the crowds were either young or old, and very
> few in between in
> their say late-thirties to late-forties something.
> The older crew were
> my age or older, and definitely up-scale. I was
> probably the only guy
> in his sixties dressed in mostly black. Very funny.
> My eyes are going
> so I had switch back and forth between glasses and
> no glasses. I like
> to stand about as close as I can to painting so I
> can feel how they
> were painted. In other words, about where you have
> to stand to paint
> the painting. This is a public annoyance since
> nobody can see around
> me. That's why I usually go backward or dodge around
> to work that
> doesn't have people in front of it.
>
> I liked the early Marden stuff from the 60s when I
> remembered it
> best. The later wiggly line stuff didn't do it for
> me. I mean, I got
> it, permutations on linear rhythms---organic
> tensions and so
> forth. But his real attention was on the surface and
> the field and how
> to obscure the hand made origins. This general
> tendency in almost all
> works from the period got so intense by the late 60s
> it was referred
> to as the L.A. Finish Fetish (maybe by Peter
> Plagens)---all that
> perfection crap. I used to spend days on end
> polishing cast resin
> pieces and hand rubbing lacquered surfaces. My
> scuplture supplies were
> mostly auto-body shop supplies. One piece I just
> knew the minute I
> moved it, I would knock off a corner on the concrete
> floor and that
> would be the end of its perfect look. Sure enough, I
> moved it into an
> empty area to photograph it and off came a little
> bottom corner. Shit!
>
> After that I revolted. I decided to make things that
> were so tough,
> the floor had to worry. Welded steel. Then when I
> moved those pieces
> around the concrete got chipped instead. The
> difference in materials
> was absolutely amazing. The super finish work made
> you want to touch
> it, feel it, look closely at it for flaws. But the
> steel work just
> exhuded hostility and danger. One piece which was
> balanced against
> itself was about seven feet tall and over hung in a
> cantilever. You
> really didn't want to get too close, since it
> threatened to fall on you
> and kill you outright. Very funny.
>
> You can run out of money fast playing around with
> steel, which I did,
> so I switched to new or used construction materials.
> Set up the work,
> photograph it well, then off to the dump you go
> sucker. If any gallery
> was ever interested I could reproduce it exactly
> since the materials
> were common, and I kept the designs and plans.
> Nobody was
> interested. They liked the plastic stuff and the one
> guy who saw the
> steel pieces liked them but worried about his
> hardwood polished
> floors. See what I mean? Funny. Also forgot to
> mention a really good
> David Smith, The Hero.
>
> So the Marden show was caught in this inner
> monologue. And sure enough
> on the older work, the corners and edges were
> chipped where the
> emaculate painted surface had flaked off. These wear
> points didn't
> really bother anybody but me. The tell tale signs of
> age, of a long
> gone era of a lost perfection. Since this gallery
> was almost empty, I
> could spend plenty of time by myself there and enjoy
> my
> contemplations.
>
> In these contemplations, I was comparing Marden's
> surface, his fields
> of bland color, in other words his handling of paint
> to Picasso, de
> Kooning, Gorky and those in the other show. I had
> played around with
> waxes and encaustic to find that satin quality and
> managed to get it,
> but it took a long time and luck to reproduce it
> over and over as a
> technique. It was interesting that the big Picasso
> The Studio) had
> managed this kind of non-reflective and almost
> emaculate surface as if
> with ease. No need to concentrate on that, since
> there were many other
> things going on in that painting. By the way this is
> definitely a 20C
> masterpiece and it has to be seen in the flesh to
> get that from
> it. None of the tour guides mentioned Velasquez, Las
> Meninas. Maybe
> the referrence was too obscure. It takes quite
> awhile to see the
> connection, most of which has to do with the
> translation of
> Velasquez's composed perspective study (which is
> also a study or
> narrative on painting composition and perspective)
> into Picasso's flat
>
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