I have been wanting to see Louise Bourgeois’ massive bronze spiders at the remodeled San Francisco Modern Museum of Art, and finally got there this week. They were as wonderful as I expected, muscular, dynamic, fun.
The bonus was the Vija Celmins retrospective. Her work starts as representations of single objects (very moving, somehow, painted with love on gray backgrounds) and moves into meticulous graphite representations of the ocean, the desert floor, the night sky. All very tenderly, lovingly done.
The eraser is giant, and looks exactly like an eraser, only huge, and the stones below are single stones that she replicates and paints as identical copies. She had several paintings of letters, which I loved, and several identical drawings done in two scales, as the one of the desert floor, here.
679.2005.a-v.vw1, , 3:03 PM, 8C, 5016×7815 (983+50), 100%, Default Setting, PHOTO>Thomas Griesel
The final room had paintings of spider webs, so we were right back to the wonderful weavers. In any case, it was a terrific museum day.
