The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

I didn’t mention that yesterday, shortly after I got to Chinatown, I saw and choked on smoke and wondered where it was coming from. I moved on a little further, to where orange construction cones were lined up at the edge of the street. I saw a white man put a bunch of incense sticks in the top of the cone, and pea green smoke swirled abundantly out of the cone, both from the top and the bottom. I choked, as did several pedestrians, and someone said, “Where is all this smoke coming from?” I doubt a tourist would do something like that—he’s probably from San Francisco. And I suspect it’s more likely to happen around the forth of July than not.

7:10 PM
Today I went to the Yerba Buena Gardens across the street from SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) and hung out in the gardens and around the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial till the museum opened at 11 am, when quite a number of people were going in. The memorial is lovely and loud in a gentle sort of way: waterfalls cascade into a fountain approximately one and a half storeys below, and there ware quotes engraved on the wall below/behind the waterfall. Above the waterfall, there’s a walkway on two levels, with both ramps and stairs, and there are cylindrical stones, by sections of railing, and I sat on one and continued reading An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire until it was time to go to the museum.

Quotes from the Memorial:

We must rapidly shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

It’s non-violence or non-existence.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militarism stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.


I spent the rest of the day (well, till 5:45 closing time) at SFMOMA. There was some good stuff—such as a couple pictures by Frida Kahlo (including the wedding painting used in the film Frida) and a couple by Diego Rivera, two by Georgia O’Keefe, a picture by Miro, a spear-like sculpture by Louise Bougeois, a couple of photos by Ana Mendieta. The latter two create Goddess art, and the pieces by Mendieta were:

1) A photo in which she’s lying naked in tall grass and is mostly covered in it, but you can still see her, blending in as part of the earth.
2) Again in tall grass—the imprint of her entire body, like she lay there and got up to take the picture.

Now that’s up my alley. But overall, there were more white male artists than anything else, and all the special exhibits are male artists (although one, Shomei Tomatsu, is Japanese). The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City is more progressive.

I explored the second and third floors before I went to the café for a lunch of eggplant soup (the soup of the day), a piece of herbal foccacia bread, and a glass of house made lemonade. I had no idea what to expect from the soup, and it turned out to be really yummy and bright orange.

After lunch, I went into an auditorium and saw a feature-length film (145 min) directed, written by, and starring Matthew Barney, and also starring Bjork, who composed all the music for the film. The music was the best part. I’ve liked other art films, but this one was weird and gross. I think it was an anti-whaling film, but what a way to bring the point across. Afterwards, I went up to the fifth floor and saw the other Afterwards, I went up to the 5th floor and saw the other Matthew Barney stuff. Although I’m an artist myself, and I think of myself as open-minded, I have to confess that his stuff doesn’t move me. It’s cool that he works with different mediums on the same art piece—drawings, sculpture, film, all related—I’ve come across that sort of artist before and enjoyed it a lot more. But you can’t like everything.


Oh,yes, this musuem has nothing by Chihuli, let alone a chandelier. But there’s a Chihuli chandelier hanging in a gallery window not far from the hotel.

During my walk back to the hotel, I stopped at a big Walgreen’s on Market St. and got a package of plastic forks so that I don’t have to eat the stir-fry with my bare hands. Another thing I did was notice some architecture: I thought the flatiron building in NYC was unique, but I noticed two like it, just a block away from each other. There might be more. (Since writing this, I have seen countless flatiron buildings—it’s because of the angle of the streets connecting with Market.)

Back in my room, I used the Chinese foot massage, soaked in a hot tub, and had some stir-fry, two egg rolls, and one moon cake. Good eating.

It looks like, after the Asian Art Museum, I may be going to Fisherman’s Wharf again tomorrow—something that I decided on this evening, because it seems like I should be out on the 4th. Unfortunately, I didn’t copy down the place and address for the “Fuck the Forth” event that was described on a flier at the Anarchist Book Collective. So I’ll take a radical and anti-Bush book with me and hang out with the sea lions before the fireworks. There’s a possibility that I might get a ticket to Alcatraz for that day, but I shouldn’t count on it.