Arts & Culture :: Art

Mythical Creatures Unbound

Mythical Creatures Unbound

  • by Sura Wood
  • Oct 18, 2017

Long before Walt Disney dreamt up the Magic Kingdom, dancing brooms and evil queens proffering poison apples, wizened Jewish storytellers were unraveling the mysteries of the universe.

Pterosaur Psyndrome!

Pterosaur Psyndrome!

  • by Erinosaurus Blackwellis
  • Oct 12, 2017

The desire for dinosaurs in the digital age is easily met.

Vernacular Eye

Vernacular Eye

  • by Sura Wood
  • Oct 8, 2017

A quintessential American photographer who's inarguably one of the most influential of the 20th century, Evans attempted to define the fundamental features of American culture through photography.

Vernacular eye

Vernacular eye

  • by Sura Wood
  • Oct 5, 2017

Somewhere deep in the heart of the mammoth new Walker Evans retrospective at SFMOMA lies a group of black & white photographs of sidelined circus wagons.

Painter Poet of the Gay Counterculture

Painter Poet of the Gay Counterculture

  • by Sura Wood
  • Oct 1, 2017

The openly gay Chinese-American artist, who trained as a ceramicist, hawked his talents as a street portraitist in the city and in his student days at Humboldt State.

Spirits Reaching Across Time

Spirits Reaching Across Time

  • by Sura Wood
  • Sep 17, 2017

It may come as a surprise - or perhaps it won't - that the most esteemed historical portrait painter of the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, was a late-19th, early-20th century Vienna-trained Czech named Gottfried Lindauer.

Fall Preview: Bay Area Art Galleries

Fall Preview: Bay Area Art Galleries

  • by Sura Wood
  • Sep 10, 2017

Artwise this fall, galleries are the name of the game when it comes to adventure and the unusual. The mini-survey that follows is a glimpse of what's to come.

Fall Preview: Bay Area Art Museums

Fall Preview: Bay Area Art Museums

  • by Sura Wood
  • Sep 3, 2017

Variety, not quantity, is the watchword for the fall season at Bay Area art museums, and thankfully, there's not a blockbuster in sight. Here are some pathways to cultural enrichment in the coming months.

Getting the Big Picture at CAS

Getting the Big Picture at CAS

  • by Sura Wood
  • Aug 17, 2017

For the last four years the California Academy of Sciences has been hosting an annual Natural World Photography Competition and displaying the winners and finalists in their "BigPicture" show, where each color photograph is more spectacular than the next.

Out There :: Lighting Up the Legion of Honor

Out There :: Lighting Up the Legion of Honor

  • by Roberto Friedman
  • May 13, 2017

Out There trucked out to the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park last week to catch up with two exhibits there.

Out There : Collaborators in Uncommon Art

Out There : Collaborators in Uncommon Art

  • by Roberto Friedman
  • Dec 3, 2016

People on deadline, crazy writer types and polyamorists all benefit from having structure in their lives, even on vacation.

 William Blake, Artist in Paradise

William Blake, Artist in Paradise

  • by Sura Wood
  • Nov 27, 2016

William Blake at last has a gallery dedicated to him.

Bruce Conner's walk on the dark side

Bruce Conner's walk on the dark side

  • by Sura Wood
  • Nov 4, 2016

A retrospective has the ability to map the arc of an artist's career, its unifying and diverging themes, but it's unlikely that it's an artist's intention to have his or her life's work shown en masse.

 Through A Japanese Postwar Lens

Through A Japanese Postwar Lens

  • by Sura Wood
  • Oct 23, 2016

"Japanese Photography from Postwar to Now," the second photography show to open at SFMOMA's Pritzker Center for Photography in the last two weeks, is a tsunami of images.