My Favorite Artifacts in Phoebe A. Hearst Anthropology Museum, UC Berkeley

Phoebe A.  Hearst Museum of Anthropology of University of California, Berkeley has a huge trove of wonderful and sometimes strange artefeacts from all over the world and many of its prized collections are those from the ancient civilizations.

The most amazing pieces are a group of Egyptian mummy portraits. These ancient works astonished with their verisimilitude. Perhaps, there were some customary beautification, but these portraits really strove to capture the likeliness of the deceased, and their living spirits and personalities. Another interesting aspect of these portraits was that the deceased were all portrayed as quite at peace, and devoid of any traces of sadness, often seen in latter-day cemetery monuments.

Egyptian Mummy Portrait

Another amazing piece was also from ancient Egypt — an Egyptian iconography relief found at Tebtunis, a town or city located in the present-day village of Tell Umm el-Baragat, in the Al Fayyum Governorate, Lower Egypt. This stone carving fragment featured some commonly seen, fantastic ancient Egyptian deities in the shape of wondrous beasts and humans, or maybe simply princes. These beautifully rendered relief profiles dazzled with fluid lines, and economic yet rich details, and they immediately evoked the world full of grace, mystery and spirituality beyond our feeble comprehension.

Egyptian iconography at Tebtunis - Hearst Anthropology Museum

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
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List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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My Favorite Artefacts at Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley

Like many Jewish museums, the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life of UC Berkeley focuses on artefacts of Jewish culture accumulated through centuries sedimentation and diaspora.

One of the very interesting objects was an illustrated Esther scroll tracing back to the 17th Century Italy - a beautifully illustrated and calligraphed document, whose black figurative images and decorative borders framed pale red texts wonderfully. The simple cherry-colored wooden handles added proper weight to this ancient object.


Illustrated Esther scroll - Italy, 17th Century

My second favorite was a piece of dark green silk cloth with embroidery of an eagle and banner beneath its claws, plus some Hebrew circling above the eagle and inside the nook of the hanging banner. This solemn and rather grand piece of fabric was identified as a Challah cover, and it must be intended for important occasions, and it rightfully reflected the richness of Jewish culture. 


Embroidered Challah cover

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 146: My Favorite Artifacts in Phoebe A. Hearst Anthropology Museum, UC Berkeley
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 144: My Favorite Paintings at Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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My Favorite Paintings at Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive

BAMPFA, the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, is the visual arts center of the University of California, Berkeley, with a proclaimed mission to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through art and film. 

One of the most striking paintings I saw in their inaugural exhibition at the new downtown location was 4 Brushstrokes over Figure by Hyun-Sook Son, a painting of a woman half-hidden behind a gauzy white curtain on the left half of the painting, contrasting greatly to the very dark background on the right, bound together by a perhaps broom held by the protagonist. The painting invoked essence of traditional Korean paintings or perhaps the golden age porcelains, with its sparseness and cleanness and the light-handed and deft rendition. There was a great sense of mystery and somewhat sadness to a very ordinary yet almost ritualistic chapter of life. In front of this near monochromatic painting, people felt like eavesdropping and automatically be hushed by its overwhelming quietude.


4 Brushstrokes over Figure, Hyun-Sook Song

For a contrast, my second favorite was a combustive color burst — Summer Bliss (1960) by Hans Hofmann, whose initial donations kickstarted the founding of this museum. This wonderful pure abstract featured bold color blocks, primarily in red, yellow and blue, over a large expanse of green. The most striking part was the color contrast and harmony, and above all, the kineticism of the painting, a overwhelming sense of constant movements as all those colors and color blocks seemed forever shifted, pulsated and moved in many directions, according to the relationships of adjacent colors and shades, and ultimately formed a great choral symphony, full of combustive life and energy.


Summer Bliss, 1960, Hans Hofmann

My Favorite Museum Collection Series
>> My Favorite Museum Collection Series 145: My Favorite Artefacts at Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley
<< My Favorite Museum Collection Series 143: My Favorite Paintings at Art Institute of Chicago

List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

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Berkeley Art Museum Closed Its Bancroft Way Site

Yesterday, Berkeley Art Museum / Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) closed its facility at Bancroft Way due to earthquake safety concerns, before it relocates to its exciting new facility at Center and Oxford Streets, currently under construction.

Yesterday, BAM staged a full day celebration; at 4 pm, I stopped by to say final farewell to the uncompromising site, and saw performance by artist Dohee Lee and her team, a performance of Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes led by Sarah Cahill, and participated the festive procession to the site of BAM/PFA’s future home, under construction at Center and Oxford Streets.

Below are several video segments I took during those events, including brief speeches by University of Berkeley, California's chancellor Nicholas Dirks, and the Museum director Lawrence Rider, who led the process to the new beginning.













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Silke Otto-Knapp at Berkeley Art Museum

Last week, I stopped by the Berkeley Art Museum (BAM) briefly and was delighted to see the special exhibit "Silke Otto-Knapp: A light in the moon / MATRIX 239" (September 30, 2011 - January 15, 2012).

The website of Berkeley Art Museum stated that:

With layered washes of similarly hued watercolors, the canvases of London-based German artist Silke Otto-Knapp seem at first monochromatic, but slight changes in light or a viewer’s position reveal figures or landscapes. Conflating the mediums of painting and performance, Otto-Knapp draws from the vocabulary of abstraction to renew our engagement in the act of seeing.

Otto-Knapp's images were extremely haunting and had a delicate beauty, even the somewhat awkward postures of the human figures hypnotized me with their inevitability and "naturalness", like the chromatic music by Bellini or Wagner.  Understated yet with myriad layers of meanings.  Never melodramatic.









There was another special exhibit, 1991: The Oakland-Berkeley Fire Aftermath Photographs by Richard Misrach, resonated with more urgency with local residents who just witnessed a fire destroying a four-story 1916 building, including all the 39 apartments and two very popular restaurants, on the iconic but economically struggling Telegraph Avenue. 

The BAM website said this about the exhibit:

In October 1991, immediately following a catastrophic firestorm that struck the Oakland and Berkeley hills, renowned Bay Area photographer Richard Misrach ventured into the fire zone armed with his eight-by-ten-inch view camera. Working alone amidst the ruins, he roamed devastated neighborhoods, recording stark vistas and intimate details of destroyed homes. The resulting images are distinguished by Misrach’s masterful framing of his subjects: the compositions are dramatic without being sensational and incisively reveal a world transformed.

Indeed, the eerie and alien landscape showed the devastation without being unduly sensational and that was a very impressive achievement:





Again, I savored the industrial, muscular looking building as much as I could because due to seismic reason, this building would cease to serve as the museum in a not so distant future.

"So Low Show" at Worth Ryder Gallery, UC Berkeley

"So Low Show" of the honored students at Art Practice Department, University of California, Berkeley opened on 30 November 2011 at Worth Ryder Gallery.  There were many fascinating artworks on display.  The exhibit consisted of mostly installations and prints, one photography, several watercolors and only one painting. Tradition is definitely perceived as less edgy in academic setting for sure.  Installation, performing arts and other flashy stuff are the order of the day. Cannot blame the kids for wanting to be hip.


What I like most are two installations (see images below) - they were equally evocative and even transcendent.  Most important to me, they were beautiful to behold, which is not always the case in modern art.








Sketch, Stephanie Smith, metal, graphite

Another my favorite piece was a gesso, charcoal and graphite on canvas by Jessica Kreck below, which was beautiful, moody and mysterious.  The execution was excellent.


Untitled, canvas, gesso, charcoal, graphite, Jessica Kreck

There was a series of prints, showing various presses, by Valerie Carbajal:






Some Days are Easier Than Others (Two), Hard ground etching, 6" x 8" zinc plate, Finesse luggage bag, Valerie Carbajal


(Eight)


(Sixteen - Twenty-One)

I also like the same artist's print "We are not Equals; We are Different" below:


We are not Equals; We are Different,  Soft ground etching with embossment, Valerie Carbajal


A very fun and ambitious installation was "Home Sweet America", made of handmade wood toys, rug, flags, found furniture by Ariel Ruby.  This piece was so engaging that it was heartening to see many people stopped there to play with the toys and to color the wonderful book created by the artist.


Home Sweet America, Handmade wood toys, rug, flags, found furniture, Ariel Ruby












The more traditional works were represented by Bliss Morton, who had wonderful five watercolor and ink paintings, though I did find the most realistic one dull:


Watercolor, Bliss Morton


The Junkyard I (right), Ink and Watercolor, Bliss Morton


The Homestead, Watercolor, Bliss Morton

Other interesting ones are a side way photograph and a group of ceramic (?) plates but I did not find them very meaningful:






Another large-scaled installation strove hard to be avant-garde but the result was a mess and ugly, and I had no stomach to figure out its meanings, if any.  My loss?



Overall, it was a wonderful show and the artists ought to be congratulated for their thoughtful endeavors.

Construction As Art - UC Berkeley's Student Resident Hall

University of California, Berkeley's new student resident hall at the Anna Head site has been growing steadily in the past few months and now, in anticipating of winter rainy season in San Francisco Bay Area, the construction crew wrapped most of the building in white sheets and made the construction site a unlikely art installation:

























True, it is not as fancy as the wrapped Reichstag in Germany by Christo and Jeanne-Claude below, but is quite interesting in the understated way.