Minna, Ben, Lindsey and Alex dancing at the wedding.

And Murray and I were in San Francisco last week on a top secret mission for great event number 2–according to our lights. Minna was turning 30 and we decided to surprise her with what we assume is the best birthday present ever–us. OK, so not everyone is that crazy about their parents. But we are happy to delude ourselves into thinking she thinks we’re great.

Before the first surprise, we in Yerba Buena Park, at Samovar restaurant, right near all the museums. In the city and not in the city!

The surprises–us and more–were all arranged by Minna’s husband, Ben, although we do confess to offering ourselves up as surprises before the idea was a gleam in Benny’s eye. First there was a dinner with surprise guests, including us as the appetizer. Two days later we urged Minna to take a walk with us. She stomped her reluctant way to a surprise pot-luck picnic and barbecue with more friends and family, including friends who drove up from L.A. The amount of work making this one happen must be credited to both Ben and friend and neighbor Maryn!

Besides time with family and friends, we also got to hike and to visit museums.

No photos allowed in Cartoon Museum. No joke for me.

The Archie comics exhibit at The Cartoon Art Museum of San Francisco was great–the jokes stood up over time. Looking at the gang of cheerful kids in that safe environment I remembered why I loved the cartoon–goofy antics and pranks in a fantasy microcosm–a high school social clique in Riverdale, New York. Archie was an ideal that got repeated in teen dating novels all through the 1960s. My own high school experience was nothing like this.

Archie lives on 70 years since its 1941 birth, and Riverdale High has been updated socially with a gay and a black character, and given some political awareness with Obama and Palin characters. But all this is serious revisionism given that Archie was born as a safe harbor from World War II, a suburban fantasy already gearing up, pre-Levittown, to provide psychological safety from life’s ills.

Wish I had images of the really great drawings! : (

The other retro cartoon on exhibit, Green Lantern, began just a year earlier than Archie. So came out a year before Pearl Harbor. Unfortunately, all the museum presented in both the Archie and Green Lantern exhibition notes were the dates with no context–not a word about how these were fantasies, responses to the realities of a world in turmoil. The best of the Green Lantern drawings–and they were spectacular–were by Martin Nodell and by Gil Kane with Sid Greene. The small museum–a one-floor store front about three rooms deeps–had several other exhibits, including a solo exhibit of works by Lloyd Dangle, a political San Francisco artist who began his career cartooning for Michael Moore’s Michigan Voice. He was the opposite of Archie and Green Lantern–no escapism and no fantasy; plenty of irony.

Once I spotted this, everything else in the gift shop became golden in my eyes!

But ultimately it was the gift shop that stole my heart–one of the best museum gift shops I’ve ever been in. Above is the Allen Ginsberg doll, love beads and all! It took great self control not to purchase it.

Mabobi Hassansahib Bhagavati (Kendalgiri), 2005-06, 53” x 36”, Photo: Henry Drewal

The Museum of the African Diaspora is just a few doors away from the Cartoon Art Museum and I was lured there by the exhibit Soulful Stitching: Patchwork Quilts by Africans (Siddis) in India, where we learned a mess of stuff, like the Africans in India mostly came to Goa in the 1500s, brought there by slave traders.

A Siddi quiltmaker. Sitting on the floor like this, work in lap, is typical of how the quilts are made.

The Siddis adopted many Indian ways, but also retained traces of the culture of their homeland, and the quilts are one example, with exuberant colors, improvised patterning, and running-stitch quilting to pucker the fabric. The piecing, assembled from the outside edge in, is appliqued in layers (the layers become the only inside fabric, no batting) atop sari cloth backing. Here’s a web site selling the quilts.

The exhibit is no longer up. We were there for the last week.

Once we connected with Minna, we went museum-ing with her.

At the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, we saw two good exhibits there. The exhibit Face of Our Time showcases the work of five photographers–Jim Goldberg, Daniel Schwartz, Zanele Muholi, Jacob Aue Sobol, Richard Misrach–who focus on people living and surviving in a variety of circumstances.

Jim Goldberg, (left) Shepherd, 2008, printed 2011, inkjet prints and graphite (right) Saturday, October 25th, Senegal 2008, 2008, printed 2011

The show begins with Jim Goldberg’s large diptych, two enormous photographic prints telling the tale of one young African man, and his failure to achieve his ambitions. But the second image in the pair, taken the same year, is of a significantly older man. Immediately there’s a disconnect between fact and meaning, a disconnect between literal documentation and capturing a more global story.

The large images are assembled from multiple digitally printed 8 1/2 x 11 inch sheets. And suddenly pixels and small portions of the larger story stretch into the story of an entire people. Along the horizon of each image, the artist has written in two brief parts the tale of the young man and his dreams and then the tale of the dreams dashed. Murray thought the empty sky area above the ocean in the first image was wasted space. We had a discussion about his visual point and my conceptual point (I found a limitless sky, a limitless sea, and the idea of a limitless hope for the future all meaningful). We agreed to disagree.

Daniel Schwartz, The Telephone Operator, Alai Corridor, Kyrgyzstan, 2004, inkjet print

The diptych sets the tone for all that follows. Swiss photographer Daniel Schwartz’ images along the Silk Road also tell larger stories of populations under stress and surviving. A panoramic shot of people shoveling sand to keep the Silk Road clear stunned me with its sweep of desert and the implications of the smallness of we humans and the efforts we must make to resist entropy. In another shot, a woman selling meat is draped in an orange-red fabric veined in white, and market day becomes survival of the fittest day.

Schwartz, (l. to r.) Sandstorm Near Lashkargah, Afghanistan 2001, inkjet print Bazaar Day, Osh, Kyrgyzstan, 2004, inkjet print The Vendor, Bukhara, Uzbekistan, 2002, inkjet print

Muholi’s dignified portraits of South African queer women with varying degrees of trans-gender identification announce their place in a culture that abuses them. Also in the show, Misrach’s photos of urgent graffiti messages in post-Katrina New Orleans, and Aue Sobol’s images of life in an Arctic hunting culture. Most of the images are of people who are not mainstream photographic subjects. (Misrach focused on the traces people under stress left behind; people per se were not his subject here). The show is up to October 16.

Klara Kristalova, Catastrophe, 2007, glazed stoneware, approx. 15 x 20 x 22 inches, image from http://collectorofechoes.wordpress.com/

We also visited ceramic figurative sculptures of Tiago Carneiro da Cunha and Klara Kristalova. Kristalova’s fairytale- and story-inspired figures suggest ambiguous, but threatening scenarios. The Czech-born Swedish artist (she moved there in 1968 with her parents after the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia) almost triples the scale of traditional, saccharine figurines and also undercuts their sweetness with terror. Is a girl with black liquid coming out of her ears, nose and mouth melting into her own puddle, like the Wicked Witch of the West or is she just emerging from a deep pool, emitting the excess fluids as she bursts into the air? A girl with a blindfold is either playing a game, or perhaps she is the distraught dupe of a not-so-innocent game, with streaks of black dripping down her face. Some of these are realistically child-size, connecting the fantasy tales to this week’s child-napping, last week’s drowning. The glazes are thick and glassy, adding an inviting, cool tactility to discomfiting imagery influenced by illustrations in children’s books.

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, Generalidade / Generality 2009 faiança policromada / polichrome faience 29 x 25 x 23 cms

Carneiro da Cunha’s figurines are about half the size of Kristalovas, and reference Brazilian tourist kitsch–gift-shop figurines of saints and national heroes or other gift-shop merch that he told me in a studio visit, a couple of years ago during his residency at University of the Arts, were typical in Brazil. The sculptures are Rabelaisian, bawdy satires of decadence, gluttony and self-importance. My favorite was the figure Ubu, in his dunce cap, wearing a draped gown the folds of which form arches supported by the suggestion of an erect penis, a Pope in his own church (sorry but I have no image available of this).

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, gargantua rex 2009 faiança / faience 42 x 43 x 38 cms

While Carneiro da Cunha’s bestiary of humanity refuses to ingratiate in a very male sort of way, and the artist distances himself from his fellow bully guys, Kristalova does the opposite. She is all ingratiation and identification with these pale girl figures beset. Loved the pairing! The show is up to Oct. 30, and Carneiro da Cunha will be speaking at the museum Thursday, Oct. 6, at 7 pm.

In Sausalito, we watched this man balancing piles of rocks. A finger of dense fog obscures the horizon. San Francisco is behind the fog.

Best of all for this trip, we spent time with Minna and Ben, hiking, eating and just hanging out! I was having such a good time, I didn’t think about taking any pictures.

Oh, and here’s a link to the trailer for Alex’s wedding!

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha working on Mudman at University of the Arts

The artist’s residency for the internationally recognized artist was arranged with the help of his hosts, contemporary art collectors Mari and Peter Shaw. He is not the first international artist the couple has brought to Philadelphia and the University of the Arts, providing a chance for students, faculty and the visiting artist to have an exchange.

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, alegoria, alegoria, 2009 faiança policromada / polichrome faience 12 (a) x 35 x 35 cms, in part inspired by the song Alegria, alegria. and a cartoon of an art critic as a barking leashed dog

Tiago is far from his family. His wife, he says, has “a baby bump”–the couple’s first is due in January (it’s a girl)! When I visit him he has just returned from a quick trip home, and seems a little sad that he’s missing this experience with his wife. He seems a little startled by the changes in her belly, even though they have been staying in touch via Skype (a nice lesson in the differences between immediate and mediated, 2-D and 3-D).

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha's skull ashtray includes a rest for the cigarette or cigar; smoke comes out the note and eye cavities when a cigarette is resting there.

At 34,  Tiago is full of charm, energy and enthusiasm. He apologizes for the small amount of work in the studio. Besides the figure, there are a couple of ultra-lumpy skull ashtrays with drippy glazes, part of a larger series with no two exactly alike. When I ask what they fetch at his gallery, he seems almost apologetic when he says $2,000. “They are either an expensive ashtray or a reasonably priced sculpture.”

Tiago Carnerio da Cunha, antropomorfismo nietzschiano coçando, 2009 faiança policromada / polichrome faience 30 x 31 x 40 cms; the philosopher is scratching his balls and not getting much done

His work, inspired by kitsch-y objects, cartoons, fables and movies from Brazil, fits snugly in what’s going on in U.S. and international art, and also Philadelphia art–Jeff Koons, Urs Fischer, Paul Swenbeck.

Tiago’s taste in easy listening as he works in the studio reflects his engagement in popular culture. ” I’ve been watching House Husbands of Hollywood, a horror movie, the newest episode of South Park. I’m really trashy in my tastes.”

generalidade / generality 2009 faiança policromada / polichrome faience 29 x 25 x 23 cms

That same relish for the tacky comes through in the work, but, Tiago’s work, like the artist himself, has a boyish sweetness and playfulness as he mucks about with materials and ideas and culture. It’s tacky as thoughtful commentary on the themes of death, corruption, greed, waste and the human comedy.

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, latinoamericano pensante verde e amarelo / green yellow latinamerican thinking, 2004

Among the figurines that have inspired Tiago’s work are a sleepy Mexican drowsing under a giant sombrero, a masturbating monkey, surf boards and diamonds. “They are all sort of cliches, they are all sort of ready mades usually involving sex.” He tells me about another popular figurine in Brazil–a caped priest with a mechanical erection–one of the inspirations for his Generality caped military man.

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, pedinte pequeno / small beggar 2009 faiança policromada / polichrome faience 21 x 21 x 24 cm

Saccharine beggars is another favorite theme. “…The beggar is a Brazilian traditional figure, portraying misery at the same time that it becomes an opportunistic cliche [i.e. a cheap figure for sale]. I wanted to make it even more pathetic and sarcastic. It’s a reaction to seeing the real beggars on the streets in Brazil.  There’s emotion there. I wanted to do something with that .”

caveira realista roxo perolado 2004 resina de poliester moldada, polida a mão / cast poliester resin, hand-polished 13 x 12 x 20 cms edição variada de 7 mais P.A. / edition variee of 7 plus A.P. coleção privada / private collection

His work has veered from slick, faceted objects cast in epoxy to chunky clay objects heavily imprinted with exaggerated thumb impressions and coated with drippy glazes. Tiago says the elegant facets on the epoxy pieces (which start as plaster) and the crude-looking fingerprints and the exaggerated lines in the clay work are all one–a preoccupation with gesture. “I think the subject matter is an excuse,” he said. “They are about preserving values more linked to drawing. …The facets and the thumb prints are the same thing, defining planes and spaces. I wanted to rescue drawing. I started drawing as a teenager. …With the resin I’m reducing the gesture to something shiny.” He switched to epoxy when he realized his folded paper sculptures were easily damaged.

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, meu 2001 rosa bebê / baby pink my 2001, 2004 resina de poliester moldada, polida a mão / cast poliester resin, hand-polished 50 x 22 x 35 cms edição variada de 7 mais P.A. / edition variee of 7 plus A.P. coleção privada / private collection

Here’s a little more of our conversation:

L. Tell me about your name?
T. My name is from my father’s side of the family, which comes from the Northeast side of the country. Historically, they are famous slave ones and abolitionists in equal number. My mother is a Hungarian Jew. She was born in Portugal but migrated to Brazil. I’m mixed. I’m Jewish but I was baptized. My mother is a professor of anthropology at the University of Chicago. She has lived here for the past 20 or so years. So I’ve been in this country before. (His English is great).

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, zumbi faiança policromada 23 x 30 x 27 cms

L. Has the U.S. changed since the last time you were here?
T. The general perception of the states by Americans themselves has matured. Americans no longer think that the U.S. is the center of the universe. That’s better.

L. Are you excited about the Olympics?
T. At first I was cynical. Brazil has a tradition of public officials stealing money. Huge pubic works in Brazil are started and then never finished. But when I went back, my friends were excited, and now I’m excited too.  International pressure for accountability is too great for the Olympics projects not to get done.

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, esfinge amarela / yellow sphynx resina de poliester moldada, polida a mão / cast poliester resin, hand-polished 28 x 27 x 60 cm edição variada de 7 mais P.A. / edition variee of 7 plus A.P. coleção privada / private collection

L.Where do you live?
T. in Rio. We used to live in a bohemian area that was in the middle of slums. At night we heard grenades, anti-aircraft, machine guns. Now we live in Leme; it’s a community of 18,000 people who all work hard, but it’s dominated by a small gang of 18 to 15 youths. …An effort is being made now to institute community policing. People realized power could be taken back.

Tiago told me that his method of sculpting in clay horrifies the ceramics artists. “I start with a solid piece of clay and carve it. It’s not safe. It’s not the kosher way to do it. I create tunnels and other ways to hollow it out. I don’t think of myself as a sculptor, anyway. I always used domestic sized kilns, That’s how ceramics survived in Brazil. There’s not a ceramics market there to allow ceramics to be risky.”

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, gargantua rex 2009 faiança / faience 42 x 43 x 38 cms

I asked him if he’s ever had a piece explode. Yes, he said. Will this one be okay? “I hope so. I think so.”

The photos in this post are all by permission of Tiago, taken from his website, which is a preformatted photo website hosted by SmugMug for $50 a year.

Postsscripts

Did the mudman sculpture survive the firing? I got the following notes from Tiago about it, now renamed the Philadelphia Experiment (tres Frankenstein).

1) 11/2/2009
i’ll be firing the mudman this week, which is my final week here in philly! it atually broke in half but the ceramics head technician here at uarts saved my life and helped me restore it. hopefully it will survive the kiln.

2) 11/5/2009
i’m coloring the big ‘mudman’ sculpture this afternoon… should be ready by tomorrow… i will definitely send u images as soon as it’s ready! by the way it’s called ‘the philadelphia experiment’: i thought that sounded like it had the right mix of b-horror references, hendrix, and what i was actually doing here…

Tiago Carneiro da Cunha, The Philadelphia Experiment, 2009