Last Saturday we went into the city to go to the Museum of Modern Art. Along the way, we stopped at the restored Ferry Building, where they have installed some wonderful shops and markets, reminiscent of the shops in Grand Central Station in New York, or Faneuil Hall in Boston. There are lovely mosaics in the walls, and upstairs, a huge Seal of California done in mosaic on the floor.

The Diane Arbus exhibit was the reason that Barb & James wanted to go to the museum. I feel that Diane Arbus' photos have been on display everywhere from greeting cards to posters to coffee table books, and didn't expect to see or learn much about her that I hadn't already been exposed to. It turned out that she was a good writer, too, and the notes and letters accompanying the exhibit were quite interesting. But after a while I got tired of jostling among the crowds and went across the hall to the Romare Beardon exhibit.

There, I made the acquaintance of a wonderful collection of artwork by a previously unknown (to me) artist. The colors! the media! the textures! the subject matter! all made me so very happy. His technique was mostly to make collages of paper, some of which he painted on, and then to enlarge the collage photographically, and then to apply surface abrasion to the resulting print.

The look of the works was sort of cubist, and the colors were just magnificent. I liked the emphasis on music in many of the works.. you could hear the jazz through the implied motion of the design.

The Block
Musicians
Vampin'

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