La Frida Bonita y otras cosas

Went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the SF MOMA this weekend. I was surprised by how many paintings were included in the exhibit, and frustrated by how many people were also moving through the rooms. It was hard to read the information displays, and hard to get in close - even sometimes see from a distance - the paintings. But what paintings! I know Kahlo mostly for her self-focused imagery, her struggles with pain, her representations of inner anguish. The exhibit showed her earlier portraits (straight-up, 30s modern), her later still lifes (vibrant, beautiful, static) and many candid photographs from her years in SF and Mexico...in addition to the amazing images you already know. There was good biographical information about her marital to-and-fro-ing with Diego Rivera, as well as her sojourns in America. Altogether she painted some very beautiful, symbolic, thoughful pieces. I was surprised by my enthusiasm. And while she herself was beautiful and charismatic, and she was tragically in love with Diego Rivera, a doughy dumpling of a man - what was she thinking???

Afterwards we got the super-bonus of an exhibit of modern Chinese artists - including Yueh MinJun whose works shows hordes of painfully grinning Chinese men (on ostriches, as fields of near-identical statues, sitting around, etc.). They are somehow perfect - identical, falsely friendly/happy, artificial, vaguely off-putting. Ai WeiWei had taken Neolithic clay pots (5000-3000 BCE) and painted over them with garishly-colored paints. Sacrilege! What a waste! Or...an interesting point about history, conservation, consumerism. Sui Jianguo created "The Sleep of Reason" - my new favorite, a statue of sleeping Mao (very unusual, as the link explains), and filled the room around him with waves of colored toy plastic dinosaurs, radiating outwards in dreamlike technicolor trip-out patterns. Way cool.

Afterwards we had dinner on Fillmore street at SPQR, a mixed-up Italian joint. It was good, but I can't tell you why. The desserts were confused (the "panna cotta" was a delicious chocolate mousse with chocolate cake on the bottom), and I think we paid too much. I was fascinated by the clientele; Mom had commented recently that people eating out in the East Bay are somehow different than the people eating out in San Francisco - more casual. Sitting there in SPQR, all I could see were white people, all the women were blond (almost none naturally), all from a very high socio-economic stratum, healthy, wearing very nice clothing, and not necessarily enjoying themselves. I felt pretty ghetto in my shorts and stringy yoga top. The couple to the right of us complained the whole time about the food, and the woman to the left of us spent almost the entire meal nattering away to her absently listening partner. Dad and I barely needed to talk for all the entertainment we had. Yes Mom, diners in San Francisco are different. I'll stick to the East Bay.