walkabout day 27

Media Overload Day

I went to the (new) De Young Museum in GGPark. It looks like a terminator building looming over the band shell concourse:

Star Wart Walker invading GGP

But has a spectacular 360 view from the top:

out beyond the Golden Gate

Inside was one holdover from the David Hockney show that closed just before I arrived in town. A multi-channel video which slowly panned across an English landscape at slightly different speeds on each screen. Even if I didn't really like his painting this was mesmerizing:

Seven Yorkshire Landscape Videos, Hockney, 2011

And many many more things from many many more ages of mankind. Most interesting was the curatorial interweaving of old and new. For instance this early 20th century African "mask and costume" (c.f., the "mask" at the very top), which looked for all the world like New York Dancer IV from 1965, in amongst some more ancient things:

Also the work of what one might think of as minor painters who did stuff (almost just) as good as the big names in and around the first half of the 20th century. Unfortunately much of the contemporary section was cordoned off for installation of new shows, the most well publicized of which was Georgia O'Keefe -- coals to Newcastle in my case.

However they have a small outdoor sculpture garden with some big names, including Moore, Nevelson, Oldenburg, and my current tour theme James Turrell:

down the Turrell rabbit hole

Of course, this being the Avenues rather than the Streets it was fully overcast, or Marine Layered as they call it in Lost Angles, so the view from his installation was somewhat less inspiring than it may someday be in NE Arizona. But it is of interest in using LED illumination (a bit too dim to be inspiring) to augment the Sky portion of the Space in a study for last year's Guggenheim piece:

Skyspace, Turrell, 2005

I found that darned Art & Place book in the gift shop and verified that I had had my head installed in my nether-regions when thinking that the Getty also had a Turrell piece. It was Ruscha and I missed seeing it because I didn't know what to ask for at the time.

Afterwards I shuffled off to the Zuni Cafe for oysters, caesar salad, and gnocchi with Brian, Ken, and Erika. Once again through judicious selection of arrival time I managed to score the bow-window cafe seats and hog them for the duration of our grazing experience.