de Young in the Dunes

de Young in the Dunes

mixed media photo collage on board, 10”x8”

Being an apartment dweller without a garden, Golden Gate Park has always been my backyard.  After 25 years I have seen the park change with restorations, renovations and even the replacement of the original de Young Museum with the current building.

The park has continued to evolve since its creation.  While it is a wonderful retreat from urban life, the park could also be called unnatural.  All of the trees that have been planted, gardens laid out and buildings added still cannot defy the seemingly constant wind and fog.  

Today the de Young Museum and the Academy of Science sit atop an underground parking garage with the well-groomed Music Concourse in the middle.  Back in the 1860s much of what is Golden Gate Park was windswept dunes.   I miss the old de Young — as a museum it was a like a comfortable old pair of jeans and a tattered sweater.  While the new museum building has its merits, I always laugh when the outdoor café has to be wrapped in plastic tarps to protect patrons from the incessant winds.  The starchitects chose to ignore the wind and the ghosts of the dunes.  The original de Young had an outdoor café sheltered from the wind on the other side of the building.

It’s Shocking How Art Imitates Life

Or is it Life Imitates Art?

Today it was time to visit the Botticelli to Braque exhibit at the de Young Museum and see what sort of goodies they brought over from the National Galleries of Scotland.  I walked into the big special exhibition space with the walls painted in a rich, deep red and of course I immediately could only think of one thing when I saw that room – fallen bimbo-boy Congressman Aaron Schock.  It took some time to get passed that. 

And with walls in mind, this special show with the extra ticket price has a lot of empty walls. Big, empty walls and plenty of room for a show of just 53 paintings.  It seems the work could have been comfortably installed in about 2/3 of the space they used.  This would have allowed for another show, even of some of the less often seen pieces in the de Young’s own collection.  One has to wonder if they are really just using the entire space in order to justify the ticket price.  It’s beginning to feel like those cereal boxes that are half empty.  It keeps happening and I realize the box is the same, but the weight of the contents has been lowered so they can sell less cereal for the same price while making me think I am buying a larger box.

Yes, there are a few exceptional works that I am glad they brought over.  Particularly, Edgar Degas’s, Diego Martelli, (below).  I have a feeling this painting had to have influenced the work of the Bay Area artist Elmer Bischoff. 

Yes, there is still art at the art museum.

Left: Untitled (Coit Tower), Center: Untitled, Right: Untitled (Powell Street); all 1964

Yes, you can find art at the museum, but it remains a challenge.  So many museums, including the de Young, have succumbed to disneyfication.  More and more it’s the hyped up mega-shows.  The current attraction at the de Young is noisy, dark and claustrophobic.  It feels like one of countless cool shops I wandered into in Europe during the 1980’s.  As shop, it’s cool, but as art?  We’re moving beyond exiting through the gift shop to a world where the entire exhibit looks like a shop.  Throw in animatronic mannequins and I wonder if they are remaking the Terry Gilliam classic Brazil. 

Not surprising, the real treasures remain in permanent collections and in the understated, under promoted smaller exhibits.  Ignore the hype and stay upstairs.  There is a stellar show on the main floor.  Arthur Tress: San Francisco 1964 is the “don’t miss” show at the de Young right now.  I discovered Tress when I found the book Fish Tank Sonata and have been following him ever since.

The de Young show is a body of work from early in his career when he was fresh out of art school.  Tress spent the summer of 1964 in San Francisco photographing everything from the Barry Goldwater Republican Convention to a counter campaign rally for Ringo Starr (!) to civil rights demonstrations on Van Ness.  This is like a last glimpse of “olde tyme” San Francisco before the Summer of Love, the Castro in the 1970’s and all that followed. Most of these photos haven’t been exhibited since 1964.  If you can’t get to San Francisco to see the exhibit, the accompanying book is well worth picking it up.