It’s been a while since we’ve expanded our cultural horizons. Sure we see movies and read books, but we haven’t been to a play or a museum in a stretch. We decided it was time to remedy this situation. There are so many opportunities in our area to see great art and we really haven’t made enough of an effort to seek out such things since we moved to the bay area. We remedied that a bit last weekend with a trip in to SF.
The bay area seems to sleep later than we’re accustomed to, but this is good for us; it means fewer crowds in the mornings. We got up at a reasonable hour last Sunday and caught BART into the city and then a bus to Golden Gate Park (and the bus was quite crowded for 10:00 on a Sunday morning, I thought). We came particularly to see a limited engagement exhibit at the De Young Museum of the artist Dale Chihuly. I’d heard of people waiting hours to see this installment, but because we got there so early we went in immediately.
A master of color and light, Chihuly’s exhibitions are different than most artwork featured at museums. The works are often large in scope and scale, comprised of many individual pieces of glass-work. He came to fame for his innovative work with blown glass, but having lost the sight of one eye due to an accident, he can no longer “make” the individual pieces, but is the director of a group of artists who follow his vision. Some of the works are visually stunning, sometimes even jarring, while one piece (glass bowls made to look like ancient indian woven baskets) was surprisingly subtle. I can’t help but like Chihuly, I love vibrant colors, I love the radiance in some of the pieces. His “Persian” pieces, comprised of many individual off center bowls created with a mille-fiore technique are meant to capture every color in the rainbow. Individual bowls may have a palette very similar to a Monet “Water-lilies” type of piece, while others use more primary colors. I prefer the bowls individually to the way they are presented in a large grouping, as they are individually graceful with hues that mix well, but taken as a whole, the piece can feel a bit disjointed, though the forms are constant. Photo courtesy KellyGrimm.com. 
I’ve been told that Chihuly isn’t much liked by the artists in his native Seattle. His work has been met with great commercial success, which often breeds dislike, and a lot of his works are annoyingly similar. He’s obviously found something that works and is profiting from it. I’ve seen Chihuly before, in 2002 at the Botanical Garden of Chicago. I have to admit I preferred it to the De Young exhibit. Set among plants and other natural elements, the organic and earthy aspects of many of Chihuly’s pieces are brought out, and anything beautiful is made even more so by gorgeous surroundings. I also ran into a piece at Cold Spring Harbour Labs that was supposedly inspired by green fluorescent and yellow fluorescent proteins in neurons, but it looks a lot like all of his chandelier type pieces, just in pale yellow and green.
I really enjoyed the rest of the De Young museum. The collection is eclectic to say the least, with modern art, contemporary art, revolutionary war American pieces, art from ancient cultures of south and central America, as well as New Guinea. I particularly enjoyed the small collection of contemporary art which featured a handful of remarkable pieces.
Once we’d exhausted our eyes and minds at the De Young, we went for a more zen experience at the Japanese Tea Garden. There we had the most overpriced pot of tea in history ($9 for rather nondescript Jasmine tea with almond cookies and rice snacks, I don’t care if they are served by Japanese girls in Kimonos, it’s still a rip-off after the $4 admission fee). The garden is enjoyable, a short stroll through a rather non-traditional seeming environment with a few Japanese pieces (some of which are in bad need of repair). After an even more crowded bus ride to downtown SF, we vainly searched for a decent place to eat, eventually dining in the admittedly upscale food court of the Westfield shopping mall. By then we were pretty exhausted from all the walking and culture and we called it a day.
Today we tried to continue our cultural education by attending the Berkeley Art Museum. I admit I’m grateful that admission was free since we work for the university. Mostly I found this museum disappointing. It features a lot of modern art, which I really want to like, but just can’t seem to wrap my head around. I find it mostly pretentious and rarely enlightening or beautiful. There was a video/performance art piece that I felt represented all that is wrong with modern art, though I’m sure a great deal of people would disagree, and that’s their prerogative. Art is a highly individualistic by its nature.
There are still a lot of sights to see in the area, and I hope, as we find the time, we will continue to explore them. Next time we’ll take the camera.