Art I'm Looking at: Ruth Asawa, Paul McCartney, Kunié Sugiura, and Richard Diebenkorn

In the past six weeks or so, I've seen some of the major shows currently on view in San Francisco, mainly the Ruth Asawa show and work by Kunié Sugiura at SF MOMA, the Paul McCartney photographs at the De Young, and a small show of prints by Richard Diebenkorn at Crown Point Press. 

The Ruth Asawa show, which runs through September 2, brings together more than 300 pieces from all phases of Asawa's career. Like many people, I have been most familiar with her hanging wire sculptures. I was largely ignorant about the details of her career, however. The show, which is roughly chronological, offers an excellent opportunity to put the wire sculptures into context and to get a sense of the range of her activity. From the earliest work in the show, mainly from her time at Black Mountain College, to the last work she did, in San Francisco, where she eventually settled and raised a family of six children with her husband, architect Albert Lanier, it is evident that she had a deep interest in and understanding of natural forms, which appear to have been a constant inspiration. 

I particularly enjoyed seeing folded paper creations, early printed works, and some exquisite botanical contour drawings in the show, as well as drawings done using Screentone on matboard. Well worth a visit.  (Photos: Top – SF MOMA, installation view. Above, Mounted Paper Fold with Horizontal Stripes, ink on paper, 1952. Below, Photocopy of Ruth Asawa's Hand, not dated, photoelectric print.)

Also on at SF MOMA is a show of work by Kunié Sugiura, an artist I had never heard of, who appears to have been active mostly as a photographer. In the show are everything from small photomontages to very large photograms, but the show features what she refersto as "photopaintings." Sugiura's photopaintings are assemblages that combine photographic images with sculptural elements. Some of these put me in mind of Robert Rauschenberg's "combines." Others suggested Rothko with their simple pairings of diffuse, flat surfaces. I thought the photopaintings rather effective. The photographic elements function simultaneously as independent images and as abstract compositional elements within the whole of each piece. 

The show will be up through September 2025. If you're heading to SF MOMA to see the Ruth Asawa show, I recommend taking in the Sugiura show as well. (Photos: Above, SF MOMA installation view; below top, Introse BP3, toned silver gelatin print, 2002; below bottom Deadend Street, photographic emulsion and acrylic paint on canvas with wood, 1978.)

The Paul McCartney photographs now on view at the De Young I found interesting for their historical value; they present an intimate look at life behind the scenes with the Beatles just as Beatlemania was taking off, but I found the show a bit disappointing. With a few exceptions, the photos are not especially fine as photographs. Those on view are almost all digital prints from the negatives rather than silver gelatin prints (and where negatives have been lost, digital prints from scans of contemporary contact sheets), which would have been more authentic, and many of the shots were poorly focused (which is not to say that all photographs must be in sharp focus to be worthwhile). They mostly read as incidental snapshots – which, I suppose, is what they are; McCartney makes no claims to art here. Finally, not all of the photos on display are by McCartney. A fair number include McCartney's image, taken not by him but with his camera handed to someone else, and a couple of the best shots in the show are by other photographers entirely. Color photos in Miami reveal McCartney responding as a tourist. That said, any Beatles fan will enjoy seeing the collection presented here. I thought the photo of John Lennon in Paris and a shot of Ringo and George, both shown below, among the better images.

When Yale University Press in association with The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Richard Diebenkorn Foundation, published the Richard Diebenkorn Catalog Raisonné in 2016, I acquired the set, as Diebenkorn is among my favorite artists, but I was disappointed to find that none of his many prints were included. I learned that a definitive catalog of the prints was to appear in a separate edition, and that has just appeared, almost ten years later. In honor of the publication, Crown Point Press in San Francisco (on Hawthorne St., a short walk from SF MOMA) is now doing a small show of some of the prints that Diebenkorn made at Crown Point Press. The show is small, with only about 25 pieces on the walls, but each is choice and one of the finished prints is shown alongside several proof versions, which allows a glimpse into the process of its creation. Worth a visit, but, checking the Crown Point Press website, it looks like this show may have just closed. I'd recommend calling in advance, but Crown Point Press is almost always worth a visit. 

Very close to Crown Point Press, walking along the sidewalk on Howard St., I noticed some pavement markings that looked very much like a Diebenkorn to me.  

Art I'm Looking at: Tamara de Lempicka at the De Young

There are two major shows worth seeing right now at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, one each at the Legion of Honor and the De Young Museum, both featuring women who mostly painted women. At the De Young is a show of works by Tamara de Lempicka (1898, Warsaw – 1980, Cuernavaca, Mexico), a painter I've been drawn to in the past for her highly stylized portraits and nudes. The show provides a look at the full arc of her career – with which I had only a sketchy acquaintance. 

I hadn't been aware of her long interest in and study of some of the Renaissance painters. At first glance her strongest influence would appear to have been cubism. In particular, some of her work, with limbs reduced to columns, reminded me of Goncharova, but, the connection having been pointed out, it's easy to see the Mannerist tendencies in the poses and the sometimes hollow-looking eyes right out of Pontormo (I hadn't thought of it before, but Modigliani, too, must have been strongly influenced by the Mannerists - those empty Modigliani eyes).  

De Lempicka's strongest work comprises her early portraits and nudes depicting lovers – both male and female. Later, she started painting religious and other subjects and the work starts to look kitschy. According to the wall text, her last show, in New York in 1941, after which she almost completely gave up art until her death in 1980, was mainly of this type of work, and it is quite instructive to see the seven or eight pieces from that show that have been brought together here. Apparently, the work was not well received (criticized for looking insincere and, again, like kitsch). She had lost her mojo. All things must pass, they say. 

As for me, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to see so much of the earlier, vital, erotically-charged work from the peak of her career, as well as quite a few interesting photographs of her, although I was a bit disappointed that my favorite De Lempicka and probably her most celebrated image – the self-portrait with her sitting in a green Bugatti (in a private collection) – is not in this show. Worth a visit nevertheless. Tamara de Lempicka is on view at the De Young through February 9, 2024.