Happy New Year 2010 !

Earth never stopped spinning for me in 2009, it started with a beautiful dance with most dear friends in a chilly square in Sofia. We danced a horo and made merry. Since then 10 years worth of things happened, but even more things didn't happen and the latter turned out to be really important unhappenings. I can only say I didn't get enough of my family and dearest friends in 2009 so I'd love to have more in 2010. The other almost as important event was of course seeing Picasso's Guernica in the Reina Sofia in Madrid, in the last days of December. along with it seeing Picasso's process while developing his ideas for the giantic piece - it was as if seeing Michelangelo carving a slave or Bernini growing Daphne's marble tree. "Effortless" Guernica took an enormous amount of rejection to make the perfect composition. My quick iphone notes from that moment:

"Reina Sofia . Dali, Picasso, popova, Magritte , Dali:) the masters had impeccable sense for composition. Broad strokes, Dali's paintings are very detailed and full of wonder. And finally the guernica by picasso - picasso's fury monochromatic with perfect sense for composition, I crave to get closer . Odd looks a bit like a collage. Increddible. This has been such an intense day so far. Seeing picasso's process was a very special / guernica looks effortless but took a lot of preparation and study. In hindsight now i understand why Guernica looks like a collage - He worked on and developed parts individually. Can't get enough of Picasso... My back is killing me:) but I am still on the second floor."

Open Studios in SOMA - Garage Gallery

Garage Gallery is for real... and the space is beautiful. SAAB repair shop and used car dealer by day, a Gallery by Night and on weekends. and Where does the art end and the wall start..Curated by Susan Tuttle - way to go, Susan!

Avedon vs Frank vs Adams

I hit the jackpot st SFMoma and was able to see the three back to back, floor to floor. I totally fell for Robert Frank and the fact that The huge pieces, maybe 4x6 feet, by Avedon had less in them than the tiny by comparison Frank photographs. Yes, frank and honest and authentic, grainy, rainy, oppressive and grim - Robert Frank's pieces were a crime back in the sugary 50s and still zap you today. "Quality doesn't mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That's not quality, that's a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy - the tone range isn't right and things like that - but they're far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he's doing, what his mind is. It's not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It's got to do with intention." (Elliott Erwitt)

The think in pictures blog mentions that Jack Kerouac wrote in the introduction of The Americans that “after seeing these pictures you end up finally not knowing any more whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin.”

Sleep of reason

"The Sleep of Reason" - a piece by Sui Gian Guo at SFMoma, all made with plastic toy dinosaurs and a plastic Mao, sleeping in the middle of the sea of dinosaurs.  What I appreciated in this piece is its honesty and irreverent title  - I always appreciate others doing the kind of things I struggle with, like colored plastic and ideology. This work was inspired by an original painting by Goya, titled "The sleep of reason produces monsters"... In the same line of reflection was the movie Goya's ghosts directed by Milos Forman, who also directed Amadeus.

Sui Jian Guo: The Sleep of Reason