RUTH ASAWA RETROSPECTIVE: Spectacular Hanging Wire Sculptures and Much More

Wire Sculptures, Ruth Asawa Retrospective, SFMOMA.

When I was in Oakland in August, I took BART to San Francisco to see the Ruth Asawa exhibit at SFMOMA, just before it ended. The exhibit, a retrospective of Asawa’s life’s work, will open in New York at the Museum of Modern Art on October 19. It is an amazing show, featuring not only Ruth Asawa's unique wire sculptures, but a wealth of her other work--drawings, paintings, and other media. 

Photograph of Ruth and her young son in front of a sculpture in San Francisco.

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) began her art career at Black Mountain College (BMC) in North Carolina in 1946. In 1949 she moved to San Francisco with her husband, Albert Lanier, an architect, who had also been a student at BMC. They had six children! Ruth spent the rest of her life living and working in San Francisco and was active in the art community.

Meander, ink on paper, 1948-49.

The exhibit is arranged chronologically, and fills twelve rooms of the museum, beginning with her student work at Black Mountain College.

Ruth had a job in the college laundry. This design was created with the stamp that marked the college linens.

Folded paper design.

Throughout her early works you can see Ruth’s fascination with repetitive motifs, from folded paper, fabric designs, to pen and ink drawings.

 In these two pieces, one chair is defined with positive strong black strokes, the other by negative space.

Detail of chair. Created by repeated dabs of a felt tip marker.

Ruth’s first wire works were baskets, inspired by a trip to Mexico in 1947 where a craftsman showed her how he made egg baskets by looping wire.  

Early works--baskets.

But what has made Ruth Asawa famous are her hanging wire creations of all sizes and shapes--some with shapes nestled within one another, some exploding outward, some resembling giant teddy bears, others like tear drops or space ships, some elegant, others whimsical, and some even calling to mind an extraterrestrial! In room after room the hanging sculptures were the center of attention in the SFMOMA exhibit. Although suspended by wires from the ceiling, they seemed to float in space.

One large room of the exhibit reproduces the living room of Ruth Asawa’s Noe Valley house in San Francisco, which was filled with hanging wire sculptures and other works of art, both hers and those of friends. Many of the same pieces seen in the photo were displayed in the room at the museum.

 

Photograph by Rondal Partridge of Ruth Asawa's family in her living room.

Ruth loved her garden. Among my favorite pieces in the room were watercolor paintings of a geranium and a detailed drawing of a sunflower.

The exhibit is huge, with more than 300 works of art. Truth be told, my friend and I only looked closely at half the exhibit, spending the first two hours in the first six rooms looking at each and every item. By then we were starving for lunch, and walked quickly through the remaining six rooms in order to exit through the gift shop, stopping briefly to look at just a few pieces. We had a tasty lunch in the museum café on the fifth floor. We could have reentered the exhibit after lunch, but would have had to stand in a long line, so decided not to. In any case I felt I had a good experience and I knew I would enjoy the exhibit again and again as I looked at my photos at home.

Casts of Ruth Asawa's hands.

ALEXANDER CALDER SCULPTURES at SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA, by Caroline Arnold at The Intrepid Tourist

Fish Bowl by Alexander Calder at SFMOMA

Making a mobile is not only an exercise in creating visual balance, but actual physical balance of the various elements. The all-time master of the mobile is Alexander Calder and at the San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMOMA) there is a large room is dedicated to his work.
A year and a half ago I went to SFMOMA to see the spectacular retrospective exhibit Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again (now ended) and on my way I was sidetracked in the large room where works of Alexander Calder are displayed. I returned to see them again on a more recent visit in December 2019.

Mobiles by Alexander Calder

Large mobiles hang from the ceiling, their colorful flat shapes seeming to float in mid-air as the wires slowly rotated. Outside on the rooftop patio are a number of Calder’s large stabiles, lurking like large beasts enjoying the sun. But my favorite is a small piece–a wire fish bowl, complete with a snail and its spiral shell inching up the side of the bowl. It is like a 3-D drawing, using black wire instead of a pencil to define the shapes.
I once made a mobile in one of my art classes in college, using  found materials (tiny blocks of wood and other scraps I found at a construction site.) I discovered that it is not so easy to achieve the exact perfect balance when hanging the various wires! Which makes me admire the beauty and execution of Calder’s work even more.

Note: SFMOMA has been closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Check out their website for information on when they will reopen as well as forvideos and articles from around the museum that will give you food for thought, a reason to smile, or a moment of connection.

All text and photos, copyright Caroline Arnold.  www.theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com 

Entrance to SFMOMA

 

ANDY WARHOL: From A to B and Back Again, Exhibit at SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA

Andy Warhol, Self Portrait, at SFMOMA exhibit Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again

At the end of August, when I was in Oakland, I took the BART to San Francisco to see the fabulous Andy Warhol retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. (The title of the exhibit is taken from Andy Warhol's book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 1975.) The show ended September 2nd but is  now at the Art Institute of Chicago where it opened on October 20th. (Previously, the show was at the Whitney Museum in New York.) 

Portraits of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe

The exhibit encompasses Andy Warhol’s career from his growing up years in Pittsburgh and early career in New York in the fashion industry, to his ground breaking conversion of soup cans and Brillo boxes to pop art, to portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy, and much, much more.

Painting of S and H Green Stamps, created by making a stamp from a rubber eraser.

His painting of S and H green stamps (apparently inspired by helping his mother paste them into books) brought back similar memories of mine, filling books with stamps my family got at grocery stores and gas stations and then turning them in to redeem prizes. In the same room at the museum a pile of Brillo boxes and a diagram of dance steps to do the Lindy were displayed.

A pair of diagrams showing the pattern of foot-steps (one for the man, one for the woman) doing the Lindy, a popular dance originating in the 1920s

The exhibit was so big that at MOMA in San Francisco it took up space on three floors (plus one more if you count the examples of his black and white photographs displayed on the third floor of the museum.)

Mylar silver cloud pillows. Recreation of 1966 exhibit of helium filled Mylar balloons at the Castelli Gallery.

In one room, giant silver balloons formed a popular interactive exhibit. Visitors, especially children, enjoyed batting the cloud-like pillows into the air, creating a constantly changing 3-D art piece.

Flower paintings and cow wallpaper

The variety of Andy Warhol's creativity is astounding, ranging from painting and pop-art, to video, television, interactive and performance pieces, to magazines (Interview) and advertising.

The large Rorschah painting was inspired by the "ink blot test" created by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach.  Warhol folded the canvas in half vertically to make a mirror image of the design.

Although I had long been aware of Andy Warhol’s soup cans and extravagant life style during the 1970s in New York, I never appreciated the breadth and brilliance of his creativity until I saw the exhibit of his work at SFMOMA.

A few of Andy Warhol's commissioned portraits.

Among my favorites were his portraits, displaying both his painterly style as well his impeccable sense of design and ability to capture the essence of his subject. From 1967 to 1987, Warhol made hundreds of commissioned portraits, typically using a combination of Polaroid photography, screen prints, and paint. One room at SFMOMA is dedicated to these portraits.

The giant image of Mao was created by Andy Warhol in 1972. (Acrylic paint, silkscreen ink, pencil on linen.)

To appreciate the giant painting of Mao Tse Tung one has to stand on the other side of the room. It is mounted on a recreation of the Mao wallpaper that was on the walls of Andy Warhol's studio.

Wilhelmina Ross

Andy Warhol often painted the same subject over and over, as in the case of Wilhelmina Ross. He painted her 73 times, originally as part of a commission by an Italian art dealer in 1974 for a series of 105 portraits of drag queens.

A matchbook with "Drink Coca-Cola" on its cover, has been blown up to giant size in this painting.

But what most people will remember about Andy Warhol is his elevation of ordinary objects, such as a bottle or glass of Coca-Cola, to the status of art, making us think twice about the role these objects play in our lives and our culture.

GORGEOUS: Art exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Detail from Miss Blanche Chair, 1988 by Shiro Kuramata

What is beauty?  What is gorgeous?  Curators at the Asian Art Museum and at the Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in San Francisco have picked out examples of their personal idea of gorgeous art from the two museum’s collections and arranged the pieces in a fascinating and thought provoking exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco.  From the statue of a bird/man from Thailand to Andy Warhol’s portraits of Jackie Kennedy, from a Rajastani miniature to a large luminous painting by Mark Rothko, the exhibit illustrates that beauty IS in the eye of the beholder and that each piece of art connects with the viewer in personal ways.

Phebo by Beatriz Milhazes, 2004, combination of painting, collage, printmaking.

To quote from one of the exhibit panels:  “Certain artworks come alive in the mind’s eye.  Others linger in memory, inspiring a range of imaginative musings, pointing to ideas, implications, or states of being beyond the visible. Sometimes this experience surpasses the art itself over time, and that may just be the point.”

Ewer with lid, 1050-1150, Korea. Stoneware with celadon glaze

Some of the pieces in the exhibit are gorgeous because of their elegant simplicity–such as a celadon glazed Korean jar–or from the richness and complexity of the design–such as the intricate woven designs on a Japanese robe. However, many of the works chosen for the exhibit contained an inherent conflict between the richness of the art medium and the subject being portrayed. From the sensual to the cerebral, elegant to outrageous, intimate to grandiose, ancient to modern, the exhibit has something for everyone.

Girl in a Pink Dress, Senegal, 2008, photograph by Jim Goldberg.

Among my many favorites was a photograph of a young girl at a construction site in Senegal.  The colors of the photo are hauntingly beautiful and yet I had some of the same questions as the curator who chose it. “I am curious about what led up to the photo.  Why does the girl have on (in addition to her flip-flops) a satiny dress and necklace that seem to fancy for everyday?  Was it her idea to climb the rubble pile?  Did she get to know the photographer?” Like the curator who chose Girl in a Pink Dress I liked the photo because of its visual qualities but was also intrigued by what it did–and didn’t– depict.

Portrait by Yasimasu Morimura recreated Edouard Manet's 1865 Olympia using his own image for Olympia and her maid

 I actually had many favorites.  Here are a few of them.

Women of Algiers, 1955, by Pablo Picasso.

Women of Algiers is one of 15 paintings by Picasso inspired by Eugene Delacroix’s 1834 painting Les Femmes d’Algiers dans leur appartament, depicting Algerian concubines in their private quarters. I love the abstract figures against the patterned background.

Miss Blanche Chair, 1988 by Shiro Kuramata paired with ancient Chinese throne chair

I went to see Gorgeous on a recent trip to San Francisco.  I had never been to the Asian museum before. It is at the Civic Center, across from the square with convenient underground parking. It has a nice café where I had a delicious lunch of dim sum and a wonderful gift shop with many tempting items. I realized that I need to go back to the Asian Museum another time to see the rest of the floors.  Gorgeous will be on view through September 14, 2014.

Detail, Phebo by Beatriz Milhazes, 2004, combination of painting, collage, printmaking