notes on works of art i saw today

at the deyoung:

1. ashuntz's iron mongers noon hour, is a painting that i have always loved, because it was homosocial, homoerotic, and the only work of his of note. only seeing it in reproduction, i was shocked how small it was (less then 2 feet by a foot and a half.)
2. Charles Demuth's From the Gardens of the Chateua has an american prescision and a french sense of colour, provence yellows abound
3. one of the peaceable kingdoms, they are more sophistacatred in terms of placement, and visual information, then is credited
4. Albert Beirstadt was a kitsch laden racist scumbag
5. Ramos' Superman, v. early, determines the lines of supermans chest by dragging his finger thru the blue, and making v. crude suggestions, it prints better then it looks.
6. Arthur Dove's Sea Gull Motive is so strong, lovely billowing clouds of black and grey, the colour of water in ice or steam, abstract, but just barely.
7. this photo realist huge size thing, is absurd, with Richters STronium, a 130 part mural, being almost 200 feet sqaure.
8. the thing that is impressing me by Ruscah (and i have seen maybe 8 works today, is how great a formal painter he is.
9. Church is like the demille of the 19th century, but instead of bodies, its landscape porn, overwhelming and battering, but sort of respectful
10. I am really glad i met Danielle, because walking thru a room of Harnett, REmbrandt Peele, and thje like , i leaned heavily, and enjoyed line, colour, form w/o thinking about politics--that apperciation of hyper realism is not something i would have figured out without her
11. Motherwell's Blacks are much better then Klines
12. West Coast and Female Abstractionists, i am liking much better then East Coast and Male--esp Deibenkorn and Mitchell.
13. saw the gilbert and george show, i dont like them, and have not figured out why, though a set of postcard multiple collages of royalist and anglo kitsch, done in 1981, and placed in the room b/w the main exhibition spaces and the gift shop, and not part of the catalog, were fascinting. (esp a modifed st andrews cross made of chuck and diana post cards)

other thots:

1. jane caitlin set of drawings, some charcoal on grey linen, some mixed media on mylar--she cannot handle her colours, but the grey on grey monochrome, have an updated american translation of classical chinese themes.
2. saw a great collection of prints, drawings, work studies, fabric peices, and epherema in the glbtq archives by chuck arnett--work i had encountered in books by waugh, but the sheer breadth, width, and kinky eroticism of this work was impressive, esp an autofellatio peice from the mid 80s
3. Mary Blair show at the Cartoom Art Musuem, had some original production stills from Cinderella, and the Its a Small World ride, i am sort of in love with that kitschy socal vibe, aa bunch of other things, my favourite being a still from gertie the dinaour by mckay, that was a masterpeice of minimal line work.
4. Hiroyo Kaneko photos, mostly not v. interesting, west coast leaves and trees wotrk, in b./w but a great one of a station wagon that s like bechtle before the engrandizing.
5. 6 Candid Hoffer photos, gorgeous and drunk with a rococo attitude towards material, slick, big, seductive, but i am left wondering if that is enough?
6. a purple black and white installation of natural and pseduo natural work (including vitrines, handmade geos, jars, bottles, etc) by ian mcdonald, glittery, and meta --rachel would love this.
7. same gallery saw four uta barths, with different filters, a little too dentist officey for me
8. the staff at marx and zavattero were assholes, but their collection of isenity based work made in strange materials was revelatory, including a show of fabrqiued bears (ie fags not ursines) and a map of oceania made of spam by a phillipino artist
9. mostly wall text show of chinese culture at the california history musuem, but califonria had a head tax about the same time as vancouver did, for the same reasons. would like to know more about the radical history of chinese second generation people, as it was touched on breifly but not expanded.
10. dozens of galleries on gerard showing chagall, miro, picasso textiles, warhol posters from the 80s, bad landscapes, shit all around

SF MOMA:

1. Jim Guntam photo called pop advertising, from 1939, first use of that term offically?
2. David Hanson'a ariel photos of disaster sites are almost too pretty
3. an entire room of stills, better perseved then other work of that peroid, incoudlking one from 1951, that is black and white, on unprimed canvas, so that the less pure white of the backing, left blank, leaves a transition space, nice trick
4. none of the peices had that cosmic blue we expect from Still.
5. A gorgeous, scrabbley Guston from 1951, and an even better one, just at the cusp of his breaking from abstraction
6. a Rberg Combine, made me realise how violent and oppopsitonal some of those combines were to the whole idea of image making
7. A Mid 50s Debenkorn, before the post grid stuff, with a orange jucice coloured splotch in the middle, that might be one of the more joyful uses of colour i have seen.
8. A Cornell Box of Dove Cotes, lit up, with that colbalt blue you see in the glass wear, and also in the medici boxes
9. Milton Avery's Clear Cut from 1951, with a greyblue bottom falf
10. one of Dekoonings Women, from the mid 50s, you could see the hidden influence of Dedini in the pinks, and the full circles to rperesent huge tits.
11. A blue on Black ulta nimial renhardt
12. an oddly disappointing WArhol Self Portrait, and his oversized national velvet, celluioid in its use of black on silver, its veritical narrative compostiion, and iuts repeating only some objects, a masterpeice, but i was a bit underwehled
13. a fantastic bechtle southern calfionria landscape, with that corragted yellow fiberglass and a redwood fance.
14. Lichenteins Mirror 2, i think that Lichenstein is under rated as a painter, and the and this t triptch of benday dots and blue lines, huge at 10x5 feet, plays meta games with not only painting history, but pop itself, self portriture, his history, and the like--epic but in a good way.
15. a great polished aliminum and navy blue judd stack
16. a murandi that was glossy with linseed oil, i always thot his work was dun, basic, and almost badly pinated, but this had an understated, ultra rich glamour, like cashmere
17. a huge chunk of western photgos, one of my favourite adams (the two crossed palm trees from LA), two baltz from park city, a Sternfieldf disaster photo, and others)
18. a couple of fairly medicore Atgets
19. and Olfur Arnesons sky bridge, which was a bridge, 100 feet up, made of whit esteel, and pink, yellow, and purple arclyic glass,. high spectacle.