We went to MOMA and it was fantastic and totally worth it.

So SFMOMA happened today. And it was ridiculous. We were able to score some special Charter Member Tickets For Cool Kids Only(actual name) for the MOMA charter member event that happened today, April 30th(or yesterday, depending on when this is posted). The day began when I was able to take a train down the bay area, which was also fantastic. Let's hear it for the trains.


Model Behavior

SFMOMA has been closed for just about 3 years now for massive renovations and expansion. This new wing of the museum, sandwiched between existing buildings and towers in the center of the block, roughly doubled the show space of the previous museum. The new addition was designed by the Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta as an homage to the notable fog of San Francisco and the imposing rolling wall it is capable of forming in the city by the bay.They were tasked with creating a compelling and relevant form on a nearly invisible site. Model Behavior is one of the first exhibits you are greeted by upon entering the new wing, and represents some of the earliest ideas for the new museum wing.

Model Behavior

Model Behavior

Model Behavior

 Sculpture Garden

Near the exhibit for the museum expansion is an outdoor sculpture garden complete with a living wall and several large Alexander Calder works, as well as other artists. Just off the garden was a large room with several more Calder mobiles on display. In the photo below you can see one of the large scale non-Calder pieces on the balcony, as well as the living garden wall installed behind it.

Barnett Newman, Zum Zum 1, 1969, Weathering Steel.

Alexander Calder, Tower with Painting, 1951, Metal, wood, thread, and paint with oil on canvas mounted on wood.

The plague beside this work of Calder's states that this is piece from an unofficial series he began in 1951 creating wall-mounted towers similar to this one. These were a slight deviation from his more recognizable constellation-style work and showcase a heightened focus on the creation of work from line. In the photo below you can see another work of Calder's, this very large mobile greets you as you enter the museum from the 3rd street entrance and hangs above the redone set of stairs, remodeled to tie in with the now completed new wing.

Alexander Calder

Richard Serra

Richard Serra, Gutter Corner Splash: Night Shift, 1969/1995, Lead. 

Originally conceived and executed in 1969, this work was recreated as a perminent installation at SFMOMA in 1995, taking over three nights to fully install. Serra heated shards of lead and then repeatedly threw them into the "gutter" of the room, the point where the vertical space of the wall met the horizontal of the floor (the literal intersection between the tradition worlds of painting and sculpture). Once each cast was completed, Serra and his assistants removed it from the gutter and placed it on the floor. The work is direct, powerful, and beautiful; displaying the action required in the creation and the unique characteristics of lead as a material.

Richard Serra, 1-1-1-1, 1969/1986, Hot rolled steel.

Richard Serra, House of Cards, 1969/1978, Lead antimony.

I was very excited to come across this work. Each of the four panels of lead antimony used weigh in at 12,000 pounds. Each panel is precariously balanced against its neighbor to create a freestanding and sound work with a hollow center to counter the solidity and rigidity of the panels themselves.

Richard Serra, Sequence

Richard Serra, Sequence

Just before closing we were able to bribe security to let in to see this massive sculpture Serra has installed in the new admission free section of the museum off Howard street.

Carve, Cast, Mold, Print: Material Meditations

Outside of the wildly impressive and imposing work seen of Richard Serra, and perhaps the specific Diebenkorn seen at the end of this post, this was my favorite part of visiting MOMA on Saturday. Architecture, as well as the concept of form and its tie in with function, has been a topic of interest and influence for my work. Donald Judd (who actually has a chair in this scene, copper in color, seen just behind the laminated wood chair in the front, center) wrote an article in the Design and Art White Chapel book titled It's Hard to Find a Good Lamp. Just as a side note, I actually picked this article to read first because I found the title humorous, and only realized that Judd was the author after flipping to it from the table of contents. Of course I would be interested in an article written by Donald Judd. It's also worth noting that in the entire five page article Judd never once mentions anything about lamps.

The article talks about Judd's efforts at turning a sculpture of his that already resembled furniture into an actual table, and finding that the thingness of the work was already established and any effort at imbuing function into it, such as making it an object with a specific tangible use, was unsuccessful. There is overlap between architecture, sculpture, and furniture, and often similar themes can be present in all three. But while there may be specific venn diagram features to the three, once something is identified as furniture, or as architecture, it can never be just sculpture. The thingness of sculpture is different and less specific to that of furniture and to architecture. Tangent aside, it was really cool and really exciting to see a room like this in the museum of modern art. The text on the wall accompanying this installation has a quote by an architect who's work I find influential.  Le Corbusier famously quipped: "Chairs are architecture, sofas are bourgeois."

15 chairs by various artists/designers

Marijn van der Poll, De hit, chair, designed 2000, formed 2010, Steel; folded and smashed to form with accompanying sledgehammer.

Michael Boyd, Plank, sidechair, model P1201, designed 2011, fabricated 2012, Douglas fir. 

Two Other Really Neat Things

Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #67, 1973, Oil on canvas. 

Antony Gormley, Quantum Cloud VIII, 1999, Steel.