Tuesday 24th April 2007. The City by the Bay...

San Francisco's Famous FOG...During the summer, hot air in California's Central Valley rises, drawing cool ocean-drenched air through the Golden Gate. A sea of fog creeps through the gap and spills over the coastal hills. Stiff wind usually accompanies this fog creating the city's natural air conditioning.


I begin my day with breakfast at my hotel where I meet again the two Scottish guys I met last night.

Downtown San Francisco is a really beautiful city with many elegant skyscrapers, a great deal of which date from the boom days of the early twentieth century, and thus are built in that ornate oppulence of the newly developing commercial empires...like the Hearst Building.

William Randolph Hearst 1863-1951, the founder of Hearst newspapers began his publishing career with the San Francisco Examiner on March 4th 1887 by announcing...

"The Examiner with this issue, has become the exclusive property of William R. Hearst, the son of its former proprietor. It will be conducted in the future on the same lines and policies which characterized its career under the control of Senator Hearst".

Many of these wonderful buildings are Gotham Cityesque in that pseudo-Gothic style that chracterised this period of American office building. The majesty of this architecture is a reflection of America's growing cultural and economic imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century along with its new found confidence as one nation with a national identity (post the Civil War).

But then again this was a nation that on gaining independence from Britain established itself with Senators and Congressmen evoking the glory days of ancient Rome and although the USA has not been an imperial power in the traditional sense of colonising lands (although the Philippines, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, West Germany, present day Iraq etc etc??)...anyway, American imperialism has come in the form of economic expansion in the traditions of western European territorial expansion.

The growth model that dominates Wall Street as opposed to a consolidation model, may well be the very reason why corporate America is losing its stranglehold. After all the markets of the world are becoming saturated in a similar way to the political playing fields that have been so irrigated by the world's self-appointed policeman that we now find ourselves in flood season; but all this is another conversation for another time!!

I am really starting to fall for this city which is extremely walkable and with a great vibe.

After my explorations I stop for coffee at Caffe Museo at my day's destination. I am visiting one of the great icons of San Francisco, the Museum of Modern Art where I am attending the Picasso and American Art exhibition amongst other treasures.

Well let me begin by telling you that this is a beautiful building...and now to Picasso and his influence on American Art.

The artist Max Weber (1881-1961) is credited with having brought the first Picasso to the USA in 1909 on his return from Paris where he had lived with and studied under Henri Matisse from 1905-1908. That painting Still Life (1908) is exhibited for the first time as part of this show.

Weber persuaded the art dealer Alfred Stieglitz to present the first exhibition of Picasso's work at his Gallery 291 on New York's Fifth Avenue in the spring of 1911; the Cubist influence on American art had begun.

Picasso never actually set foot in the United States during his long life but as one of the most recognised and prolific artists of the twentieth century he brought cubism to international acclaim whilst working in a myriad of stylistic techniques and diverse media. From Weber to Gorky, Pollock to Lichtenstein (a personal favourite of mine) and Johns his influence was extensive.

Weber not only brought Picasso to America he was the first American artist to emulate his work. The small size of Still Life is in part one reason why Picasso's work came to America so early as the painting could be, and was, carried in Weber's luggage.

When developing his cubist ideas Picasso was heavily influenced by African Art and like Weber many of the most influencial American artists to become devotees were immigrants. These artists saw themselves not only as Americans but as international citizens and so American art was to become so influential in part due to this global perspective.

I really liked Weber's Trees (1911) which reflects this world-citizen idea with its foliage looking from a distance like a collection of American flags.

One of the highlights of this exhibit has to be Woman with Mustard Pot which was first seen in the States at the Armory Show in New York in 1913, the first major exhibition of modern art to be held in America. Another favourite in this show was Picasso's Female Torso (1908) and I loved the naturalistic The Bather (1913) by Weber.

By the mid 1910's synthetic cubism was emerging where works were made up of large areas of colour and pattern development such as in Picasso's Untitled (1915) with the built up image of a man with a pipe and Weber's Chinese Restaurant (1915) which for me was a reflection of the layering of modern life and its increasing rapidity.

It could be argued that cubism gave American art an identity helping it to move away from post-impressionism and thus allowed it to develop a different stylistic approach that utilised fully painted, schematic outlining and dot pattern forms (a major element of Lichtenstein's work). Works like Lucky Strike (1924) are the basis of American Modernism with people like Davis applying cubist principles to American cultural icons such as Lucky Strike cigarettes.

And so Picasso's influence on American art goes on...

The Studio (1927-8) drove Gorky to both explore and communicate surrealism in a way that subsequently impacted on others like David Smith the sculptor, who when working as a painter enjoyed the ability surrealism gave to explore both drawing and space.

It was from cubism and surrealism that the uniquely American Abstract Expressionism Movement (characterised by gestural brushwork and flattened abstract forms) emerges aided greatly by the second major exhibition of Picasso's work in America with the 1939 Museum of Modern Art, New York's Fall Retrospective of 400 works that go well beyond Picasso's cubist paintings.

Pollock's Galaxy (1947) was one of his first works in the drip-style of abstract realism for which he became famous and which we can link directly to Picasso's disturbing angular masks.

...and, of course, Warhol. Andy didn't really wish to emulate Picasso's style, rather he wanted to examine Picasso's fame...after all Warhol was the father of the cult of celebrity.

From this exhibition where another work that stood out for me was Davis's Early American Landscape (1925) I head to the Brice Marden retrospective of paintings and drawings.

I liked the earthy tones of his Red Rock group that for me were evocative of my time in Australia's Northern Territory. His linear painting style does manage to create a sense of his inspiration and I enjoy his blending of ancient Mediterranean and Asian cultures.

At the Matisse and Beyond: The Painting and Sculpture Collection works like Picasso's Scène de rue (1900) reflect his genuis as an artist in the traditional form. This show with works by the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Mark Rothko, Max Beckmann and Marcel Duchamp was a treasure.

You can see the geometry of Picasso's influence in Sheeler's Aerial Gyrations (1953)and I loved seeing Jasper Johns Flag (1958) a real icon of Americana.

Whilst Matisse's Femme au chapeau (1905) intinced me it was Paul Klee's Der Tod für die Idee (1915) that really grabbed my attention...

dying for a cause, this lithograph really spoke to me about war and protection of empires and cultures when maybe man needs to move on beyond preserving the known and comfortable and just let go and allow life to take us to the next phase of human development? So the world has become a globalised Americana culture. It happened because people allowed and wanted it? Why then waste time trying to maintain national identities that are the base of so much feuding and war? Homogenisation has its benefits, right?

Does modern art indeed speak to us or is it all intellectual crap? This is a question both with regard to my ramblings and a question faced when you encounter Mutt's (1917) Urinial.

As you may be able to tell I never got beyond the museum today...it was a real joy. And I must just mention one other work that caught my eye today and that was Le guéridon (1935) The Pedestal Table by Georges Braque.

Tonight I end my day with supper at Tangerine accompanied by David a New Yorker from my hotel who is a typical all-rounder being Presbyterian Deacon, IT Consultant, singer and successful professional actor all in one...and on my short walk home I saw at least seven VW Beetles; how appropriate...I guess it is true Herbie Does Ride Again!!