The de Young museum in San Francisco is currently exhibiting 'South of Market', a group of photographs taken by artist Janet Delaney in the mid-1980s of the South of Market neighborhood. During the period the photographs were taken, San Francisco was experiencing a wave of re-development and "gentrification" in this area of the city that permanently altered the neighborhood. It was at this time that the Moscone Center complex was first built (it would later be expanded several times) and also...

I had heard about the show 'Botticelli to Braque - Masterpieces from the Scottish National Galleries' through the advertising around San Fancisco and other places. I hadn't investigated it too much though, and it wasn't until some family came in from out of town that I made it to this truly fabulous show at the De Young Museum. The museum has had so many of these traveling shows (usually made up of selections from a museum that decided to do some renovations and has shipped part of its colle...

The season for MFA graduation shows is upon us and with the run of these shows being so short it’s easy to miss them. I made it to ‘Edge Effect’, the exhibition for the San Francisco Art Institute’s current crop of MFAs on the last day it was up (it was up for less than a week). In fact, as I was finishing up my tour parts of it were already being taken down. This was the second show I saw this year and I must say that I like the venue a lot more than the other one I saw. One reviewer descri...

Every year across the country during May and June, art schools and universities graduate a new class of MFA graduates. Going to an MFA exhibition is a bit like opening birthday gifts in that you don’t know what you are going to get and it is guaranteed that there will be a wide variety of work to look at. The ‘2015 MFA Thesis Show’ at the California College of the Arts (CCA) has highlights, pitfalls, and works in the middle, but this is par for the course as this these things go. I encountere...

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Will Yackulic at Gregory Lind Gallery (Photo by Greg Flood) 

Seth Koen at Gregory Lind Gallery (Photo by Greg Flood)

Karla Wozniak at Gregory Lind Gallery (Photo by Greg Flood)

Walking farther down the corridor, I came upon the booth for Gregory Lind Gallery. Standouts this year include a large painting by Karla Wozniak, small sculptures of wood and knitted thread by Seth Koen, and a drawing by Will Yackulic made with a typewriter and graphite on typewriter embossed...

 Vik Muniz at Rena Bransten Gallery

This year’s Art Market San Francisco fair arrived with a great opening night party at Fort Mason Center. This is the annual convention of the Bay Area art world, where old friends catch up, rivalries and even hostilities are sometimes renewed, and a general accounting of what has been happening in the art world around the bay is taken. While this is all well and good, the quality of the galleries attracted to showing at this fair does nothing to represent the...

Roy De Forest 'Let Sleeping Dogs Lie', 1979; Polymer on canvas (74 x 86 inches) (Courtesy of Brian Gross Fine Art) 

Walking into ‘Roy De Forest: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie’ last week at Brian Gross Fine Art, I entered a world that was at once familiar, but also full of surprises. (See my previous review of his work here) The show has a selection of works culled primarily from either the 1970s or from the post-2000 portion of his career. The real stars of the show are the title painting ‘Let Sleepin...

Image Courtesy of Gallery Paule Anglim

The Bay Area art community has gone into mourning with the news that prominent dealer Paule Anglim passed away peacefully on Thursday, April 2, 2015 in her Russian Hill home.

A leader in in showing the some of San Francisco's most important artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, Gallery Paule Anglim has always been one of the sought out homes for artists to show their work. Paule Anglim opened her gallery in the early 1970s, with its first home in the N...

J. John Priola's 'Nuture: Willow', 2014; archival pigment print (40.25 x 29.5 in.) (Courtesy of Gallery Paule Anglim)

J. John Priola is an accomplished photographer with numerous bodies of work under his belt. For his current show - 'Nurture' - at Gallery Paule Anglim, Priola has presented a body of work that is easily recognizable, but also leaves us feeling uneasy with the implications of its subject matter.

J. John Priola's 'Nuture: Grey Wall', 2014; archival pigment print (18 x 24.5 in.) (...

Pegan Brooke, 'Untitled (S-173)', 2014; oil on canvas (36 x 26 in.) (Courtesy of George Lawson Gallery)

Given the period of art production we find ourselves in, it is hardly surprising to find a show of abstract painting while wondering around the gallery scene in any city. Many of them are lackluster, uninspired, or otherwise simply derivative without the strength of their aesthetic forebearers. Too many of these paintings sit on the wall and, once glanced at, require no more attention or rec...