In this photograph and the next two, you can see art created by and artist who has been called “one of his era’s greatest sculptors.” Can you find it?
These photos were taken a couple days ago behind the old luggage terminal of Santa Fe Depot, in downtown San Diego. The historic terminal, needed back in the days when train travel was a very common mode of transportation, would become the downtown home of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. A year or so ago the museum moved entirely up to their beautiful La Jolla location.
What you see here is the patio between the old luggage terminal and a Santa Fe Depot trolley platform.
What are those metal cubes?
Those six large cubes, together weighing 156 tons, is an art installation commissioned by MCASD in 2004 titled Santa Fe Depot. The artist is Richard Serra.
Richard Serra was a giant in the art world. He died earlier this year, March 26, 2024, at the age of 85.
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Georgia O’Keeffe. Henry Moore. What do these two famous modernist artists, who lived on two separate continents, have in common? Love of nature. And a singular exhibition now open at the San Diego Museum of Art!
I enjoyed a very special tour of O’Keeffe and Moore a few days ago and I’m still deeply moved while thinking about it.
I, like many people, have always loved the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe. However I knew precious little about Henry Moore, apart from a curvaceous sculpture he created, Reclining Figure: Arch Leg, that stands in the sculpture garden at the San Diego Museum of Art.
When compared side by side, the abstract work of both artists is strikingly similar. Organic, sensuous, familiar, elemental, inspired by forms found in nature. It’s no surprise that their art seems to be distilled from flowers, landscapes, bones and clouds. Because both artists loved nature and closely studied these things.
Both Georgia O’Keeffe and Henry Moore collected bones, driftwood and smooth river stones. Their studios resembled work areas at a natural history museum. In one gallery at the San Diego Museum of Art, recreations of the two artist studios are displayed for visitors to enjoy.
I was surprised to learn that O’Keeffe created sculptures, and that Henry Moore, the sculptor, also painted. The exhibition contains over a hundred pieces between the two artists.
Here is some of O’Keefe’s beautiful work:
The White Flower (White Trumpet Flower), Georgia O’Keeffe, 1932. Oil on canvas. “I have painted what each flower is to me and I have painted it big enough so that others would see what I see.”Red Hill and White Shell, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1938. Oil on canvas. A moon snail shell from the Atlantic shore in the New Mexico desert.Ram’s Head, Blue Morning Glory, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1938. Oil on canvas. Juxtaposition of skull with a flower.
Museum visitors admire Georgia O’Keeffe’s recreated studio which was located at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico:
Abstraction, Georgia O’Keefe, 1946. White lacquered bronze. Inspired by spiral of ram horns.
And here’s Moore at work, and a recreation of a studio in rural Hertfordshire:
Moore Working on the Elmwood Reclining Figure 1959-64. Photographer unknown.Recreation of Henry Moore’s Bourne Maquette Studio, which was named for a stream near the old farmhouse where he lived and worked.
A few of Moore’s sculptures, some of which are models for even larger pieces:
Working Model for Seated Woman, Henry Moore, 1980. Plaster with surface color. Enlarged from a small maquette created in 1956.Mother and Child, Henry Moore, 1978. Stalactite. Inspired by two seashells. (You don’t often see a sculpted piece of stalactite!)Working Model for Oval with Points, Henry Moore, 1968-69. Bronze. Inspired by the interior of an elephant skull.
This truly extraordinary exhibit is made possible by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and Henry Moore Foundation. It will be on view at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park until August 27, 2023.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
The Clearing, André Derain, circa 1906. Oil on canvas.
The San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park has been invaded by wild beasts!
Les Fauves is French for Wild Beasts, and paintings by early 20th century artists known as the Fauves are running rampant in one amazing gallery!
These particular paintings are part of a wider exhibition titled Monet to Matisse: Impressionist Masterpieces from the Bemberg Foundation. I visited the San Diego Museum of Art back in May and blogged about the exhibition here.
During my visit yesterday, my docent friend Catherine took me through several of the museum galleries and explained how Impressionism evolved into Post-Impressionism and other avant-garde movements.
Fauvism was a modern movement that shocked art lovers in France between 1905 and 1908. It was led by Henri Matisse, André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck.
Looking at these canvases, museum visitors can see how the Fauves loved strong contrasts, saturated colors and bold brush strokes producing abstract, often weirdly unexpected forms.
Trees can appear as gangly streaks of pure color. Thick smudges and dabs of paint create startling still life images and brilliant landscapes.
In a strange way the dreamlike effect is similar to the gauzy, delicate work of the Impressionists. The viewer feels the momentary impression of a place or object. But these particular dreams are quite vivid!
The more I looked at these unique works, the more I appreciated the artistry and visionary genius of the Wild Beasts.
Head down to the San Diego Museum of Art and experience this famous artwork with your own eyes!
Monet to Matisse: Impressionist Masterpieces from the Bemberg Foundation was to end in August, but it has been extended through October 10, 2022.
The Gulf, Henri Manguin, circa 1920. Oil on canvas.Still Life with Fish, Maurice de Vlaminck. Oil on canvas.View of Chatou, Maurice de Vlaminck, circa 1907. Oil on canvas.
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There’s a sculpture garden open to the public in La Jolla that’s very easy to miss.
Large numbers of tourists, walking along the Pacific Ocean, south of Children’s Pool near Cuvier Park, pass this sculpture garden without even realizing it.
This park-like space isn’t readily noticed from Coast Boulevard. Curious eyes might observe an unusual sculpture made of many boats mounted on the building behind it. That building is home to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego!
Look for the gate in my upcoming photographs. Walk through it and up the curving path. You’re now in the museum’s Sue K. and Charles C. Edwards Sculpture Garden. See what your eyes will see.
My own eyes saw these particular sculptures months ago. Yes, these images have been lingering in my computer for much too long. While I’m self-isolating recovering from mild COVID-19, I’m finally getting around to posting them!
Whether these same pieces are on display right now, I don’t know. Over the years, I’ve noticed that some of the outdoor sculptures in MCASD’s collection are shifted from place to place.
Ready for our walk? Here we go!
Niagara, Alexis Smith, 1985. NOTHING IN THE WORLD COULD KEEP IT FROM GOING OVER THE EDGE… (Marilyn Monroe starred in the film Niagara.)Monument to a Bear, Erika Rothenberg, 2002-2003. Glass-reinforced concrete over steel, bronze plaque.Froebel’s Blocks, Richard Fleischner, 1983. Limestone.Spanish Fan, Robert Irwin, 1995. Steel and glass.
If you’re curious about that mural in the distance, you can see more of it here.
Pleasure Point, Nancy Rubins, 2006. Nautical vessels, stainless steel, and stainless steel wire.Crossroads, originally sited at the border crossing of US/MEXICO in Tijuana/San Diego, Marcos Ramirez ERRE, 2003. Aluminum, automotive paint, wood, and vinyl.
If you want to see quotes by artists written on the opposite side of these directional signs, click here!
Garden Installation (Displaced Person), Vito Acconci, 1987. Concrete, stones, dirt and grass.Pasta, Mark di Suvero, 1975. COR-TEN steel.Long Yellow Hose, Gabriel Orozco, 1996. Plastic watering hoses.Maria Walks Amid the Thorns, Anselm Kiefer, 2008. Lead books and NATO razor wire.
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Walk beside the ocean in La Jolla and you might observe the curious statement: BRAVE MEN RUN IN MY FAMILY.
The bold words appear in a large outdoor mural, on a wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego high above Coast Boulevard. The humorous wordplay is coupled with the silhouette of a tall ship under many sails running before the wind.
The title of the mural is Brave Men of La Jolla. It’s by Southern California pop artist Ed Ruscha. Created in 1995-1996, the image is acrylic on PVC coated fabric and measures a whopping 24.75 x 36 feet.
I took photographs of the mural from MCASD’s Edwards Sculpture Garden during my visit to the recently renovated museum a few weekends ago.
If the sly “brave men run in my family” quote seems familiar, it was originally spoken by Bob Hope’s cowardly dentist character “Painless” Peter Potter in the 1948 comedy The Paleface. He says these words when faced with danger, and then he promptly runs away!
Would the brave men of La Jolla do the same?
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Art is often a stir of moods and strange contradictions, like life itself.
I saw this complexity during a fun visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in La Jolla. A major exhibit in the recently reopened, beautifully renovated museum concerns the often experimental artwork of world-renowned artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who spent her last years living in La Jolla. The exhibition is titled Niki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s. It will be on view through July 17, 2022.
As I walked around several spacious gallery spaces, observing the artist’s sensuous sculptures, and fantastic drawings, and paintings created by shooting guns, I saw joyful, fertile, exuberant life displayed side-by-side with bleak, shattered, debris-filled pessimism. It seemed that positivity was associated with female experience, negativity with modernity. As if the two are absolutely separate.
Niki de Saint Phalle’s female sculpture Nanas dance everywhere one turns, bursting with life. Her large Tirs, or performance art “shooting paintings,” looked to my eye like dead junkyards: rigid, punctured, streaked, drained.
As I gazed at the various artworks, whose elements often seem primordial or mythical, I wondered how seemingly opposed ideas could tangle in the mind of an artist–how paint and gunshots could so easily coexist. Oh, wait. Life and death is the prime subject of art.
Go visit this amazing exhibition of rampant creativity and form your own conclusions!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Stand by the water at La Jolla Cove and look up toward the buildings on the hill above you. Is that the ocean up there, too?
See that lone palm tree painted on a building with a cloud shaped like a brain hovering above it? That’s one of the Murals of La Jolla, and it’s the creation of an internationally famous conceptual artist, John Baldessari. His Brain/Cloud (with Seascape and Palm Tree), 2011, can be viewed up close by diners at the George’s at the Cove restaurant.
John Baldessari explained: “A brain can look like a cloud if you manipulate it in the right way. We see things in clouds. It looks like it’s hovering almost from outer space. I like banal images and I can’t think of anything more banal than a palm tree and an ocean.”
In the present day, with the rising importance of artificial intelligence and cloud computing, this curious image might suggest something quite different!
Born in National City, Baldessari grew up in San Diego. According to Wikipedia: “In 1959, Baldessari began teaching art in the San Diego school system. He taught for nearly three decades, in schools and junior colleges and community colleges, and eventually at the university level. When the University of California decided to open up a campus in San Diego, the new head of the Visual Art Department, Paul Brach, asked Baldessari to be part of the originating faculty in 1968…” He passed away last year.
Baldessari’s work has been the subject of over 200 national and international solo exhibitions, and his awards are numerous. His provocative art often poses unusual questions, poking at accepted norms, directing the viewer’s perception and mind in unexpected directions.
In the past I’ve photographed a couple other representations of his art, which you can see here and here.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
The front of the Rancho Peñasquitos Post Office building doesn’t feature art, it IS the art!
I was walking through Rancho Peñasquitos yesterday when I saw something shiny and silvery up on a hill, so I investigated. These photographs show what I discovered!
Few people were around on a Sunday, which made this sight even more surreal. It was as though I’d stepped into a contemporary sculpture garden, and this was the enormous abstract centerpiece.
I don’t know a single thing about his unusual post office building. I tried to google its history, date of construction, designer . . . could find nothing.
If I do happen upon any information concerning the architecture of this very unique post office, I’ll “post” an update here!
If you know anything, please leave a comment!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
I stopped by the UTC mall in University City last Saturday on my way from downtown San Diego to North County.
Laugh if you want, but it’s probably thirty or forty years since I last took a leisurely stroll around what used to be called University Towne Center. (When I was a young man, a friend and I would visit the arcade above the ice skating rink and play pinball, Defender, Galaga, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Centipede…)
Over the past ten years, Westfield UTC has been renovated and enlarged. Today it’s not just a popular outdoor mall, but a major entertainment destination. (And before long the Mid-Coast Trolley extension, the construction of which appears to be making great progress, will terminate at the UTC Transit Center.)
As I wandered randomly about the mall last weekend, I noticed a number of very interesting sculptures along a stretch of its perimeter. Out came my camera. I read on some plaques that the three Beverly Pepper sculptures belong to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
After I got home and did a little research, I found out I’d missed other sculptures scattered throughout the mall. Perhaps I’ll have to make another visit in the future!
Here’s what I saw:
Three Graces (Madam in Bloom, Madam Elegance, Madam Beauty), Yuriy Akopov, 2016/2017…
Octo, Anthony Howe, 2015…
The First Amphitheater, Beverly Pepper, 1965…
West Coast School, Laddie John Dill, 2017…
Severio Column, Beverly Pepper, 1978…
Zeus Triad, Beverly Pepper, 1997-1999…
Radix, Joshua Koffman, 2017…
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
The organic sculpture you see above seems to have been “dumped” in more ways than one!
In 1988, a sculpture titled Okeanos, commissioned for $200,000, was placed in front of La Jolla’s Scripps Green Hospital. World-famous British modernist sculptor William G. Tucker intended the thing to resemble an ocean wave. Art critics considered it a great, masterful work. People arriving at the medical facility thought it resembled something else.
So Okeanos, which was popularly called the Scripps turd, at the cost of another $40,000, was moved to the less-seen corner of John Jay Hopkins Drive and General Atomics Court, which happens to be near the middle of one the world’s most important biotechnology hubs.
Which seems appropriate. The dumping of this organic thing marked the end of a human push to expel it.
Okay, in all seriousness, Okeanos, when seen up close, is actually pretty interesting. It does make the surface of an ocean’s foaming wave appear like a complex, surging, living thing. I’m glad I checked it out!
I took these pics today during a long walk though UC San Diego and along North Torrey Pines Road, and half a dozen more blog posts concerning my adventure are forthcoming!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
Cool San Diego Sights! 