Published

San Francisco Art Institute is closing

Facade of the San Francisco Art Institute

SFAI is closing indefinitely. Such sad news. It sounds like the CoViD-19 situation was the nail in the coffin.

I took a painting course there during the summer before my senior year of high school. I lived in the East Bay and took BART or drove over the Bay Bridge every day. It’s the sort of place I’d want to be if I had decided to keep studying art. A place where you could get lost and be left to your own devices, sort of like the old Foulis building at GSA but more labyrinthine.

The school has been around for almost 150 years. Diego Rivera painted a huge mural in the student-directed gallery in the 1930s. The photography department was founded by Ansel Adams. San Francisco’s wild parrots sometimes roost loudly in the loquat tree in the Spanish courtyard. I can’t think of anywhere in SF that offers better views of the city and the bay, for free from the Brutalist ampitheater or for the price of a bagel and a coffee at the cafe.

It’s one of my favourite places. Very sad to see it go.

Loquat tree in the Spanish courtyard at SFAI

Concrete work at SFAI

The cafe and terrace at SFAI

Published

Sonia Delaunay exhibition at Tate Modern

Guardian review of the Sonia Delaunay exhibition at Tate Modern

Surprised/embarrassed to say I had never heard of Sonia Delaunay or her work before this Guardian review. Looks impressive. The EY exhibition: Sonia Delaunay is on at Tate Modern 15 April – 9 August 2015.

Published

Work by Glenn Brown

Painting titled Decline and Fall by Glenn Brown

Decline and Fall from the Arts Council Collection (image source)

Glenn Brown
Decline and Fall, 1995
Oil and canvas on board
58.4 × 54.6cm

Decline and Fall by Glenn Brown is currently on display in the One Day, Something Happens: Paintings of People exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery. The smooth surface of the painting is astounding and incredibly confusing up close, the image above just doesn’t do it justice.