Yesterday John, Bridget and I met Jen, Brian and Mike for lunch in San Francisco. Jen and Brian had to get back to the South Bay in the early afternoon, so the rest of us went to the SFMOMA. There was a Chuck Close exhibit of self-portraits that John really wanted to see. I really enjoyed learning about the complexity of his process. He first takes a self-portrait with a Polaroid camera and makes a grid on top of an enlargement of it. Then on canvas, matching the grid, he paints shapes of different colors in each square or rectangle. If you look closely, the colors and shapes seem a little chaotic; but looking at the whole picture you're able to see the broader image. It was amazing to see the huge paintings in person up close, to see how he uses color.
It was great to have John as my own personal tour guide. I think I learned a lot more than I usually do at art museums, where I usually aimlessly wander around. It was a lot of fun to be able to recognize the names of different photographers and painters that John's been studying.
After the museum we went to Mike's place for dinner. We got to see the Olympics speed skating - one of my favorites. It was a real treat, since we don’t have tv. It did, however, make us want to go to the Elfstendentocht, aka “the mother of all skating tours”, which covers about 124 miles of frozen canals through eleven cities in Friesland.
4 comments:
Donna, I am so jealous. I've been a big Chuck Close fan for many years- even attempted a few paintings in the style of his work. Amazing. Did you feel small next to his ginormous paintings?
cristina, i thought about you while we were at the museum! i remembered the painting you made our junior year- although at the time i wasn't familiar with chuck close. i wish you could have been there! the paintings were super huge- it was cool to see each little square so big.
That exhibit was at the Walker museum this summer. Thanks to the "Free Walker Thursday's" Mark and I were able to check it out, and we too were amazed at all the unique self-portraits. Cool stuff.
I loved the portraits done out of paper. One was the same self-portrait, in paper dyed shades of grey. It was so cool because each individual square (imagine the grid just like the picture Donna has) was three dimensional--so all these little cubes almost sticking out at you.
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