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Museums
Adding Context to Myth
With her prominent white face makeup and elegantly flowing kimonos, the geisha is one of the most compelling and misconstrued icons in Japanese culture. The subject of the Asian Art Museum's current exhibit, Geisha-Beyond the Painted Smile, casts a decorous shadow on her own mythologized images; while there's an clear cultural context that attempts to dispel prevalent stereotypes about the geisha, the ritualized élan of her world retains its esoteric charm. More
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Museums
Skateboards, Slang, and Symbols
Propounding the DIY ethic and jabbering about street cred are, by now, cliches, but something about the persistent vogue of skating culture makes me feel like a downright luddite. Beautiful Losers, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is a celebration of skateboard memorabilia and contemporary art inspired by skateboard culture. In the 1990s, a group of American artists barely out of their teens redefined youth subculture by connecting the dots between skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion, and music... More
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Museums
Intention to Fail
Celebrated film and video artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila is a master at depicting the kinds of oppressive horror and despair that can only be unearthed from domestic matters. Ahtila depicts women who are imbricated in a web of phobias, fears, and dysfunctions. In a series of cinematic episodes entitled Intention to Fail, currently on display through September 5 at the Berkeley Art Museum, Ahtila reimagines conventions of film and video by removing her characters from traditional narrative and exploring insanity through multiple perspectives. More
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Museums
Innocence Lost
Beyond his treatment of common children's motifs - dolls, toys and ambivalent nymphets- Austrian painter Gottfried Helnwein's vision is shrouded in an aura of enigmatic darkness. With his giant color portraits of stillborn babies; paintings that juxtapose Nazi-era photographs with his own images; and pictures of deformed, abjectly countenanced children swathed in bandages, Helnwein is preoccupied with the indelible suffering that mirrors the more delicate aspects of youth. More
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Museums
The Hidden History of Woman Comics
Comic books have always been a boys' club. From the bulging muscles of Marvel superheroes to the hyper-sexualized women of R. Crumb, the overwhelming odor of adolescent male fantasy has permeated the form. In my ignorance of the comic world, I had no idea what to expect from an exhibition of female comic artists as I entered "She Draws Comics: Great Woman Cartoonists", currently showing at the Cartoon Art Museum. My reluctance to engage with comics has had a lot to do with the feeling that I could never "get" it; comics seemed to be in a wholly different language, created for boys by boys. What, I wondered, could be in it for me? More
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Museums
At the Musée Mécanique
Musée Mécanique reopened December 20, just in time for tourists lugging soggy presents to duck in out of the downpours and have a little fun. Having relocated from its previous home at the Cliff House, overlooking Ocean Beach, the Musée Mécanique is now a part of Fisherman's Wharf, one component of what is referred to as the 'Pier 45 Walk', which also includes World World II vessels the USS Pampanito, and the Jeremiah O’Brian. More
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Museums
By Melissa Broder
The Cartoon Art Museum changes their Gorey at Bay exhibit every three months, presenting Edward Gorey lovers with a perennial buffet. For the rest of the population, a trip to the Cartoon Museum is inherently a mind-expanding experience. The current Gorey Stories exhibit altered my perspective on the validity of cartoons, both within a social context and in an aesthetic framework. This exhibit will continue until November 17th, when it will then be replaced by Gorey Details on November 23rd. More
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Museums
Introductions South
Despite a title like (un)Common Ground, the emerging Bay Area talent included in this group show at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art displays a group mentality. This is not to say that they risk conformity. It's quite the opposite, in fact, because each body of work possesses a style unique unto itself. Rather, the artists compiled by curator Chris Oliveria seem to share a common dialogue, one that, aside from other less obvious factors, may result from their shared identity as Bay Area artists. More
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Museums
Sampling / Christian Marclay
An examination of the relationship between sight and sound is at the center of SFMOMA's current Christian Marclay exhibit. Marclay, an artist whose career has spanned music and visual arts, seems to be gleefully challenging us to question what we are seeing as opposed to what we are hearing, and vice-versa. More
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Museums
By Julie Kim
It's hard not to like what's showing in the little hallway tucked away in the otherwise expansive Architecture & Design galleries at SFMOMA. It's an intimate space, reminiscent of the corridor connecting the bedroom and kitchen in your Victorian flat. A visit to this gallery provides a much needed respite from rainy-day-museum-overload, where you might find yourself wandering aimlessly from one large white box to the next, unable to really focus on or be enlightened by the art. There's only room enough for a handful of contemporary design pieces, so it's a good place to hide out if you really want to absorb. More
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