i suppose it’s pointless to complain about how hard it is to get a decent photo of a piece of art inside a museum, especially a museum with such drab, yellow lighting (not to mention using a cheap point and shoot canon, but oh well). art, like sex, is best experienced on a one to one level, photos are an extremely poor substitute (plus the fact that it’s not a museums responsibility to provide perfect photo-shoot conditions. i realize that). still, sometimes a photo is all you have, sometimes all you can ever have. believe me, that can really suck. like when there’s a great bauhaus show happening at the moma, and you didn’t get to see it, because it was on the other side of the country. sometimes i want to see what i’m missing, if only just in 2d. chances are, i’ll never get to see that work in person – at least not all in one place. just today i was drooling over installation photos of the new “primary atmospheres” show at david zwirnir. i was glad to at least get a glimpse. heh, man, i’m kickin some serious dirt over missing these 2 shows.

regardless of trying to take decent photos, simply viewing the work in person shouldn’t have to be a challenge. now, i know that uv light is a harmful beast when it comes to art, and sometimes you can’t just point high powered lights right at a piece, especially an old piece. certain types of work need different levels of lux to stay safe from deterioration – but c’mon moca, there’s gotta be a better way than to just not light it at all. as someone with a few years of preparator experience, i’m rather surprised at the quality of the lights/lighting at moca (not that i’m a master preparator, i just happen to notice these things more often, having done the job). mondrian and reinhardt were in near darkness (ok, that’s an exaggeration, but still). i noticed the very yellow quality of mocas lights back in january of 09 when i saw that great louise bourgeois show, but this show was a little worse. i hate to be hard on you moca. don’t get me wrong, i love that you gave me the opportunity to see such an expansive exhibit – but you’re a major institution, shouldn’t higher standards apply? look, if all new lights aren’t in the budget, might i suggest some simple color correction gels. maybe it’s because my eye can’t take looking at yellow light for too long, but i think a lot of the pieces in the show were somewhat hindered by the light they were given.

there seriously needs to be a new breakthrough in art-lighting technology…i’m just sayin. get on it, scientist-lighting-inventor-guy.

ok, having said all that, it’s a good thing that the work in this show is so great that it can shine even with dingy lighting. i was thoroughly impressed right from the beginning (and the beginning, that is, the entrance to the show, was also the beginning of the chronology of work being presented. earliest works first) – curatorially i thought it was a very well rounded show, from start to finish. i even found a new appreciation for a couple artists i’m not usually interested in. oh, and i’m speaking strictly for the grand ave part of the show, the 1940-1980 works. it was a different story entirely when we took the free shuttle over to the geffen location. i can’t say it was a waste of time to see the 1980 – present works, but it wasn’t necessarily a jaw dropping experience either. i will say though that the one highlight of the geffen for me was the diana thater piece “rgb windows” (pictured to the right above). a very simple site specific piece using colored mylar on the museums three exit doors. the effect she got from such a basic application was huge. the coolest thing about it is, as light shines through the tri-colored windows, any object in it’s path will cast a really cool “spectrum shadow”. as pictured below, this is what my “spectrum shadow” looked like on the wall:

i suspect i liked it so much because of a fairly recent interest of mine that deals with the unexpected effects that light shining through windows can produce. like this for example (below) – light shining in through a far off window in another room slightly catches the wall of a hallway and spawns this beautiful patch of glow.

these “shines”, as i’ve come to call them, occur everyday all around us. i’ve been really paying close attention to these unassuming illuminations lately in hopes of coming up with a way to somehow fabricate them without it seeming unnatural – as if they were actually coming from the sun, but it would all be controlled. i haven’t figured that out yet, at least not to a satisfying end. anyway, “shines” are a topic for another post.

as for the topic at hand, i snapped a few shots of only the pieces that i really liked. they’re over at my flickr site – a few have short comments attached. click on louise nevelson’s “sky cathedral” below to see more (by the way, this was by far my favorite piece of the show. i love her work.)

and if you have the opportunity, you really should go see the work in person. because, unlike with photos of sex, photos of art aren’t all that exciting. you’ve got to actually experience it. here’s a link to more info.

ok then…who likes root beer?! meeeeeee!!! and if you like root beer, real root beer, not mug or barq’s, but real cane sugar root beer, then you have to go to galco’s soda pop stop.

they’ve got so many different root beers that after spending 40 bucks, i didn’t even come close to buying them all. haha. and it’s not only root beer, they’ve got sodas of all kinds from all over the world. everything from spruce beer (tastes like drinking tree sap) to cucumber soda (which is quite delightful). almost all their sodas are made with real sugar instead of the dreaded high fructose corn syrup, which any real soda connoisseur has got to love. i found out about this place from the video below. once you watch it, you’ll want to go. it’s worth it.

i’ve got to say though, that the best root beer i’ve ever tasted has got to be “old town root beer”, which is sold right here in my home town of san diego. their website seems to be gone or else i’d link you to it. lukes root beer pages wrote a good review about it though.

so there it is. art and root beer. have some.