Jan. 9, 2004 -
I went to a planning commission hearing at City Hall yesterday, right after the inaugural ceremonies for the new Mayor (Gavin Newsom) and the new DA (Kamala Harris). The hearing was about Starbucks wanting to get a zoning change to put a coffee shop in at 44th and Judah. It went well. I was frankly surprised. The same smug crew, more or less, was on the bench and I was expecting the same outcome as when I was there a few years ago for the Burger King hearing, but... who knows, maybe it really is a new day at City Hall? In any case, it felt good to see the place packed with neighbors, many of whom made rousing speeches about the Sunset district. Starbucks had about six lawyers, in black suits, the landlord and his wife, and three people from the neighborhood. The anti-Starbucks side had a petition signed by 4258 local residents, 46 letters for the record, and about 50 people lined up to speak... most of us looking pretty funky and worn-down compared to the Starbucks group. But with each speech you could feel the Sunset pride rising. See the story in the Sunset Beacon.

My letter to the Board:
To: San Francisco Board of Supervisors
Re: Planning Commission Meeting, January 8, 2004, Agenda Item #16

I have lived in the outer Sunset district of San Francisco since the 1980s. I live, work and shop here. Like all of San Francisco's neighborhoods, the outer Sunset has a unique culture, which includes many life-long residents who help maintain the low-key nature and sense of friendly cooperation that are part of the "Outside Lands." We are on a first-name basis with the business owner/operators in our area because they are our friends and neighbors.

Joe's Grill used to be at the corner of Judah and 44th Avenue. We were sad to lose our favorite breakfast place when Joe's closed, but we'd watched his daughters grow up and go on to college (working at the restaurant weekends and summers) and we understood when he wanted to retire.

Now Starbucks, of Seattle Washington, wants to open a coffee shop in that location. There are already 65 Starbucks coffee shops in San Francisco, including one in the inner Sunset and two in the mid Sunset, so Starbucks fans don't have far to go. For the rest of us, we have 3 locally owned coffee shops within walking distance. These 3 coffee shops (Java Beach, the Corner Cup, the Sea Biscuit) each provide venues for local artists and musicians, as well as meeting places for local groups, and of course food, coffee and desserts. The money we spend at these local coffee shops stays in our neighborhood. And the (local resident) owners facilitate connections between those of us who work at home (there is actually a huge number of writers, artists and musicians who live out here - especially close to the ocean.)

It's hard to imagine what benefit a corporate clone operation like Starbucks could provide to our neighborhood. There are many kinds of businesses (book store, vegetarian restaurant, drug store, music or art store) that the outer Sunset could use But a national chain coffee shop is not one of them.

Please do not approve the opening of this Starbucks.

Thank you,
Anna L. Conti

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Jan. 8, 2004 -
A few days ago I went down to see the "Supernova" show at SFMOMA. It was my first chance to see some work I had heard a lot about, but had only seen in magazine photos. I'll admit to coming into this show with a mildly negative attitude... I was feeling pretty cranky after finding out that another show I'd been looking forward to, "100 Artists see God" did not contain a single painting! Which, since it was an invitational show, says more about the curators than the state of the arts. But still...

Coming out of the elevator on the 5th floor at SFMOMA, the first thing I saw was a neon wall piece by Tracey Emin composed of pink letters saying, "Fantastic that I feel beautiful again." Kind of like Jenny Holzer or Barbara Kruger , but personal rather than political.

Then a set of three life-sized sculptures by Katerina Fritsch , "Doctor", "Dealer", and "Monk". Three men on a small pedestal: "Doctor" - flat white, with a bare skull head and long lab coat; "Dealer" - flat red, skimpy ponytail, nice suit, left foot is cloven; "Monk" - flat black, in Franciscan robe. Interesting concept, well executed, funny too.

With a few exceptions, the show went seriously downhill after that.

I was particularly curious about John Currin's painting, since his reviews make him sound like the last great hope for painting and a master realist. But before I made it to the Currins, I had to confront Thomas Scheibitz's "Funny Game", oil and markers on canvas. It wasn't a bad painting, necessarily, but why the markers? They'll fade in a few years. In the same room was Michel Majerus' "Splash Bombs 2", acrylic on canvas - a painting so bad, in every possible way, that I hardly know where to begin, or whether to bother.

Damien Hirst was represented by several pieces. There was a huge example of his "Dot" paintings - row after row of small circles, casually painted with multicolored household paint on a white canvas. There was the requisite dead animal in formaldehyde, and a "painting" of dead butterflies carelessly stuck to a canvas coated in thick yellow enamel paint. There was also a medicine chest, filled with bottles and covered with clear plexi. I'm at a complete loss when it comes to understanding his popularity. I don't see any skill, original thought, humor, beauty, or any other message or reason for the existence of this work.

Yasumasa Morimura had three very large chromgenic prints on canvas. His work is the digital drag queen version of Cindy Sherman's oeuvre. These were manipulated photos of himself as Mona Lisa - smiling, pregnant, and anatomically dissected. A small group was gathered in front of the "dissection" frame, trying to identify various bodily organs. The landscape background of the "pregnant" frame was identified by one viewer as Nagasaki after the bomb. He usually references well-known art images and his work has a vaguely familiar, comfortable, yet loopy air about it that reminds me of William Wegman's dogs.

On to Takashi Murakami. His acrylic paintings show amazing skill, especially in terms of controlled brush handling, and the care and craft in his work is apparent - the surface of his canvases are flawless. But the content, particularly of his sculptures, manages to be funny, offensive, and banal all at the same time. Still, can't complain - it's real art.

Fang Lijun is an interesting painter, who only had one piece here - a monchrome grey painting of people floating (swimming?) under water. The bald guy who shows up in most of his paintings was there, along with a grimacing woman. The slightly distorted figures reminded me of Alice Neel, the way they look wierd, and yet they work, perfectly.

I'm a big fan of Chuck Close, and I was surprised to see his painting, "Robert", in this crowd. The Fraenkel Gallery had a show of his self-portraits a few years ago and one of the paintings there was so beautiful it almost brought me to tears. "Robert" is not one of my favorites, but it's still worth a long look.

Yukinori Yanagi's "Two China" ant farm was another familiar piece. When he had his show at the Haines gallery a few years ago, I went several times. The ants were still doing their work then, and I liked seeing their progress. In this setting "Two China" looked a little stale and faded, but it still works as conceptual art.

Ron Mueck's super realist sculpture, "Man Under Cardigan" has got to be the most amazingly realistic art being made today. The scale of his work (this one is smaller than life, some are bigger) distinguishes it from casted work like Duane Hanson's people. Ultimately though, I feel about these the way I feel about classic nude paintings - they're a great demonstration of the artist's skill, but they just don't hold my interest. I need a little mystery, narrative, symbolism, or complexity to keep me coming back. Either that, or a loved and familiar image (for instance, if the figure was someone I knew.)

Which brings me to the rest of the realist or representational artists in this show. Lisa Yuskavage was represented by a couple of her typical bimbo paintings: "Asschecker" and "Good Evening, Hamass". I still don't understand the fixation with frail child-like females with inflated breasts. But in any case, her paint handling is adequate and her heightened use of color would be interesting, if she had anything interesting to say.

Her classmate, John Currin, is the painter (almost) everyone seems to love these days. His "Laughing Nude" is his most recent work here - a female nude against a flat dark background. Currin is most often compared to Hermann Goering's favorite artist, Lucas Cranach the Elder. In this painting the comparison is valid, at least in terms of the simple, stylized torso. The large masculine hands and cartoon face are jarring elements, but surprisingly, he actually knows how to paint. It's not the best painting I've seen, but not bad. His other two canvases are examples of his earlier work which was crude, dull, lifeless, and pointless.

I left this show feeling depressed about the state of the arts and the fate of all the sincere, hardworking, talented artists out there... people like Vincent Desiderio and Sandra Yagi. Their figurative work is not only highly skilled, but intelligent and original.
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Jan. 01, 2004 -
Yesterday I walked all over downtown San Franacisco, taking photos and looking for images for my next series, but I left before the New Year's Eve festivities started. Lots of outrageous security stuff going on... the hotels (at least) must be taking this terrorism thing seriously.

Jan 12, 2004 -
Just finished Howard Zinn's book, "artists in times of war" (112 pages, paperback, ISBN 1-58-322-602-8, published 2003 by Seven Stories Press ). It was disappointing, mainly because it had very little to do with art or artists. It's a collection of transcripts from three speeches and one essay. Mostly they present a series of thumbnail sketches of anarchists and anti-war activists, very few of whom could be considered artists.
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Jan 10, 2004 -
I just read an interesting article by Oliver Sacks in the Jan 15th issue of the New York Review of Books. It was perfectly timed to contribute to my recent thoughts on painting. The piece is titled "The River of Consciousness" and, like much of his work, it investigates human perception. He posits that consciousness is composed of discrete perceptual moments, rather than a continuous stream. We only perceive those discrete moments in a linear, movie-like manner due to visual and memory "smear", much like individual images appear to move in a zoetrope. He also says that "consciousness is always active and selective" and works with perception in a kind of feedback loop that seems to "constitute our very being."
(I'm simplifying - the complete text is at <http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16882> . )

This gave me some insight into the puzzling question of why painting refuses to die. The death of painting has been proclaimed many times but its "endangered species" status in the contemporary art world does not reflect its presence in the real world, any more than a lack of coyotes in Manhattan means they are about to disappear from North America. It's obvious to me that painting fills some kind of vital universal human need, as it's been around since the ice age. But what that need may be, why so many people (including myself) feel compelled to make idiosyncratic two-dimensional, hand crafted images of their world, and why so many other people feel compelled to view and collect these images is the mystery that keeps me looking, reading, pondering, and questioning.

If Sacks is right about human memory and perception, then it makes perfect sense that a unique, static, two-dimensional image of a particular reality would continue to hold the interest of a twenty-first century human inured to ubiquitous video and digital images. First, the discrete nature of the painting echoes the basic unit that underlies a human experience of the world. Second, if we are intuitively aware of the fact that each of us is alone, in the sense that no two people experience time or space in quite the same way, then studying a painting (at least a good painting) will provide essential information, needed for narrowing the gaps between us.

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