Pier 24: the debriefing

William Eggleston

If you want to see the Peaches photo, go to Pier 24 immediately! (The American contemporary room is a color lover’s paradise! Soth’s green chair photo that I’d blogged earlier was there!) Although, they said that the next show, which includes some of the Fischer collection to contribute to SFMOMA’s introduction show, will contain all of Eggleston’s Guide. Shows will usually last half a year, but this first one was curtailed to make sure that their Fischer show coincided with MOMA’s.

I went to Free First Tuesdays at MOMA and the photo galleries at 49 Geary that same day for comparison. The jury’s still out on whether Pilara’s collection spans the breadth that MOMA’s does, though his collection sure seems complete – there were whole roomfuls of Winogrand’s Animals, Friedlander’s TV screens and Larry Clark’s Teen Lust, as well as an Arbus portfolio and all of Sugimoto’s portraits of waxen Henry VIII and his six wives.

Muybridge + Klett!

That said, the stuff in the Fischer Collection intro show at MOMA was incredible. (I’ll have to go again, especially since the New Topographics show is coming to town this weekend.) I loved the Calder room – it’s great that they put the mobiles in an area that is a passageway, so that air currents of moving people stirred the pieces. I’ve seen collections of mobiles in enclosed spaces and it just isn’t the same. Though this time the brightly lit area made enjoying shadows impossible. Still, it was fun, I think for the same reason that it’s pleasant to lie under a tree and watch the leaves flutter.

And. The scale and color of the Ellsworth Kellys and Anselm Kiefers were invigorating in a way that made the relative darkness of the warehouse at Pier 24 seem a bit funereal. Still, considering that they only have one full-time and one part-time employee, and charge no admission, it’s very impressive. After the tour ended, I found myself virtually skipping toward the rooms I liked.

Both these places let me with a bittersweet feeling as a side effect of too much exposure to $$$$. You can work at your aesthetic language and photograph for 20 years, but in the end, the people who end up bringing your work to the public in an affordable, appealing way are the super rich guys. It’s great that the money goes toward these sort of things, but you wonder if there will ever be anything that rivals affluent patronage and donations from men looking to preserve their embossed eternal names.

At least there are no prices attached, as in the galleries. It’s so strange to see them next to the work. You know that the thing on the wall is not aimed at you. Strange that a place that shows artists’ work is so implicitly not for artists. Maybe that’s just my cynical side. I’ve been reading books on the art world and there are dollar signs everywhere. It’s a bit disheartening that so much effort is spent talking about the money and business rather than the artwork. But I suppose that’s what sells books.

Still, it’s really strange to see Barry McGee’s work in a corner of Fraenkel. Am I wrong?