Gorgeous? Only Mostly.

The current exhibit at the Asian Art Museum is entitled Gorgeous, one of those pretentious adjectival titles so beloved of show organizers scrambling for a label, any label, to encompass the miscellany they have scrounged together. My sweetie wanted to see the show, so we went on a pleasant Saturday. The ticket price was reasonable. The exhibit was divided into four parts, although the sequence was not apparent without explicit guidance. I'm still not sure what the justification for the division, other than space, was. Many of the items were very beautiful, quite a few were fairly pretty, some were baffling, and a very few should not have been in an exhibit entitled Gorgeous! The statue of Michael Jackson and Bubbles (the chimpanzee, not Fred Astaire's tap dance tutor) was pretty - a bit tacky and shiny, and something which the Ancien Regime would have loved. The abstract art, especially the paintings, held a tenuous position - my beloved could see no worth in them, but I had to concede that the proportions followed a pleasing geometry. The display of an iPhone offended my very sense of art - not a block carved or painted in the shape or colors of an iPhone, not one constructed or mutilated by the artist, but just an iPhone. Found art requires a context - otherwise, it's just an object! The display of an iPhone as art should also serve as an indictment of the art- and music-starved education of the millennial generation.

A different item which suffered from lack of context was the quartered pile of rubble in Room 4 of 4. If it were in the vicinity of a bombed-out building like those of Cocteau's post-World War II Orpheus, or next to Grace Cathedral when the grand stairs had been demolished, I could have deemed it art; without that context, an informational poster updating a committee on building progress would be more artistic. And then there was the urinal, well-made and clean, and by no means the ugliest thing in the exhibit. Craftmanship has become rare, but so rare that there is no difference between good design and artistic creativity? If there were an artist in this situation, it was the designer of the urinal model, not the vapid artiste who ordered it from home furnishing.

Afghan Exhibit, Asian Art Museum

Today, after Scouting for Food, during which the boys found a faster, more efficient way of covering the territory - good for them!), I went to the Asian Art Museum to see the Afghan treasures exhibit with my dad (who had been willing, available, and nearby when I had asked). We went by car, instead of by bus, as we had planned. At the front desk, we ran into Deb, Damon’s lovely wife, although this was not a surprise, as she works at the front desk. I waved at her. We headed to the Afghan exhibit. It was a smallish, visitor-friendly size. The first section of the exhibit demonstrated the synthesis of Greek and Indian sculptural traditions, with numerous examples of jewelry and figurines, much of it gold. The second section augmented these elements with glass drinking vessels and an ingenious mechanical device which created the illusion of fish swimming in a very shallow pool. The third section displayed the fragments of an ornate chair, complete with computer reconstruction of the object. The fourth section addressed the contents and occupants of a tomb of a rich nomad and his women. This section had by far the greatest quantity of gold jewelry.

The exhibit runs through January.

Palace of Legion of Honor

Today I went to the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I don't like the cabbageware in the ceramics room; I prefer two-tone patterns when I think about such things at all. The multicolored ones offend me greatly. I also visited the dark little room next to the cafeteria, in which There was an exhibit of paintings inspired by a rambling country preacher. The jewelry exhibit was what I was there for, but Art Deco still does nothing for me. The necklace of Mumtaz which Elizabeth Taylor recieved from Richard Burton interested me more for its historical value than than its entertainment value (unless I'm watching Blue Velvet, I don't give a fig for Elizabeth Taylor). A jewel associated with the Taj Mahal, on the other hand, is fascinating.