Tag Archives: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Mindful Slow Art Sells Out at SFM0MA

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For Slow Art Day 2019, Michelle Nye, Manager of Gallery Programs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, brought in Claudia L’Amoreaux of Mindful Digital Life to lead the day.

Nye selected selected 5 artists for the event: Apexer, Deladier Almedia, David Becker, Robert Larson, and Emma Webster.

Participants looked for 10 minutes at each artwork and then had a group discussion about the experience (and a light lunch). The museum sold special tickets for Slow Art Day at $10 each (including the food) and sold out the event.

L’Amoreaux wrote about a common part of the Slow Art Day experience – the surprising nature of slow time and of focused looking.

When everyone started, I think we were all thinking 10 minutes was an impossible eternity to look at one piece of art. But afterwards, many of us shared how quickly the 10 minutes passed and how surprised we were by what we noticed, especially with pieces we weren’t especially attracted to.

Claudia L’Amoreaux

Phil

P.S. We are planning a webinar with Nye and L’Amoreaux to discuss the design of their event. More on that soon.

Slow Art with Willa Koerner and SFMOMAslow

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[Slow Art Day Social Media Manager Alie Cline recently interviewed Willa Koerner from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to chat about the museum’s new Slow Art Day inspired project, SFMOMAslow.]

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Slow Art Day: First, introduce yourself for us – what do you do at SFMOMA?

Willa: I’m Willa Koerner, SFMOMA’s Digital Engagement Associate. I manage SFMOMA’s social media accounts, from planning, writing, and editing posts, to documenting the goings-on of the museum, to collaborating with co-workers on digital projects and online engagement initiatives.

Slow Art Day: How did you initially hear of Slow Art Day? What sparked your interest in the project?

Willa: I heard about Slow Art Day through the social media grapevine. My interest was sparked right from the get-go, as the idea of looking/thinking slowly is fascinating when contextualized within the incredibly manic pace of the Internet.

Slow Art Day: How did the idea for SFMOMAslow initially develop, and how have you expanded on “Slow Art Day” and turned it into a larger project?

Willa: In collaboration with Suzanne Stein, SFMOMA’s Head of Community Engagement (and manager of SFMOMA’s blog, Open Space), I’ve been working on ways to get people talking with the museum in exciting, interesting ways through crowd-sourced projects hosted on a special Tumblr (SFMOMAcrowd). Hosting successful user-generated projects can be a bit difficult, and we’ve seen firsthand how challenging it can be to generate interest/response to a project prompt, no matter how interesting that prompt may seem to us within the museum. In my opinion, this is due to a simple truth: people don’t want to spend their valuable time creating something unless there is an explicit reason to participate, or a reward. Knowing this, we wanted to pursue a prompt that would ultimately lead to a rewarding and satisfying experience for all types of participants. The Slow Art Day concept fit this desire perfectly, so we decided to create a whole slew of programming, tweaking the idea so that it would be interesting to those who can visit the gallery in person as well as those who may prefer to participate remotely.

Slow Art Day: What has the response been like?

Willa: People have seemed genuinely excited about (and possibly thankful for) the idea of #SFMOMAslow/Slow Art Day. It is an invitation to relax and appreciate life, isn’t it? In terms of participation with the crowd-sourced project more people prefer to watch than to join in, I think, but those folks who have taken the leap and participated seem to have truly valued the experience. One person ended her post with, “ I feel as if [looking slowly] sharpens perception because there is a very deep meditative quality to it! Thank you!” That made me smile.

Slow Art Day: How do you think “slow” art fits into our fast-paced, modern world?

Willa: I see Slow Art Day and the challenge to truly look slowly as a bit of an intervention. People move so quickly and rush through experiences that would be much more magical when taken in at a slower, more contemplative pace. I wish I didn’t, but I too am guilty of senselessly rushing through all sorts of experiences — it’s the curse of having endless access to information and ideas, and seemingly thing after thing to rush off to. We joke about “FOMO” [Editor’s note: “fear of missing out”] but it’s a real and problematic plague for our generation! We want to see it all, do it all, and share it all. Slow looking is a way that we can re-learn how to think critically and be patient with ourselves and our minds.

Slow Art Day: We couldn’t agree more! Finally, what are you most looking forward to on Slow Art Day itself?

Willa: I’m closing my eyes and imagining Slow Art Day at SFMOMA… in my mind, I see myself smiling a lot and enjoying a rewarding day filled with compelling art, perceptive people, and intriguing conversation. Stay tuned for my tweets on that Saturday — I’ll be using the #SFMOMAslow hash tag!

And, before I sign off, I want to extend huge thanks to Alie, my interviewer, and everyone who volunteers to help spread the ideas of Slow Art Day to people around the world! You guys are doing a terrific job.

Slow Art Day: Thanks, Willa! We very much appreciate all the hard work you are putting in to spreading the idea of slow art as well.

[If you’re in the San Francisco area, make sure to check out SFMOMA’s Slow Art Day event and learn more about SFMOMAslow through their tumblr, SFMOMAcrowd]

That Which We Call “The Rose” – Slow Art with Jay DeFeo

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Slow Art Day has asked its 2013 college interns to write short summaries of their own experiences looking slowly at artworks of their choosing. 

I recently went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), to visit their currrent exhibition “Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective,” which I’ve been wanting to see for a long time. While there, I did a compressed version of a Slow Art Day event with one of my friends; we spent about 15 minutes looking at DeFeo’s piece “The Rose,” and afterwards sat in the (excellent) SFMOMA cafe to discuss the work.

My familiarity with DeFeo’s work is fairly recent. I attend Mills College in Oakland, CA, where DeFeo taught for several years in the 1980s, so when the retrospective at SFMOMA went up it was heavily promoted on the Mills campus. In November, when the exhibition opened, I attended a lecture that art and music critic Greil Marcus gave at Mills called “Jay DeFeo and All That Jazz,” about the relationship between DeFeo’s art-making process and contemporary jazz music (Marcus was also a contributor to the exhibition catalogue accompanying the DeFeo retrospective). While the lecture was certainly eye-opening, when viewing the exhibition I found myself wishing that her work was entirely new to me, so that I could experience it without any preconceptions.

Jay DeFeo, “The Rose” 1958 – 66, image via the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

DeFeo’s piece “The Rose” is a colossus at more than 10 feet in height and weighing in at over a ton; the paint on its surface is more than a foot thick in places. DeFeo spent over seven years working on the painting but never considered it finished. Her work on the painting was interrupted in the 1960s when she was forced to move out of her apartment in San Francisco, where she had worked on the painting (according to Greil Marcus’ lecture, she was evicted because neighbors complained of her and her husband’s eccentricity). Her new apartment didn’t have space for such a large painting, so it went into storage for several years. When DeFeo was moving, a construction crew had to be called in to pry the painting from the walls and take it out of the building via a crane and the fire escape.

In the retrospective, “The Rose” is presented in such a way that it seems almost diminutive at first glance. Set apart from the rest of the exhibition in a sort of alcove, with unusually dim lighting, the staging is supposed to mimic how the work would have looked when in its original location, a wall in DeFeo’s apartment. From a distance, “The Rose” looks small and unimpressive, but up close, its sheer bulk is overwhelming. The many layers of paint that make up the work cause it to protrude so far out from the canvas that it appears to be free-standing, blurring the line between painting and sculpture. My only problem with the SFMOMA’s presentation of the work was that the separate room it was in prevented much freedom of movement around the work, so that I couldn’t view it from as many different angles as I would have liked (that didn’t seem to discourage creativity among other viewers though – a museum guard told me that she had once seen a man try to stand on his head to see the painting from a different perspective).

Even after spending over 15 minutes with the painting, I’m still not sure what to make of it. As the most famous of DeFeo’s works, it was the one that most of the viewers were flocking to, and they all seemed to be suffering from the syndrome that occurs when you encounter any famous work of art in a museum, where you’re drawn to a work of art simply because it’s famous, and not for anything inherent in the piece itself (I call this the Mona Lisa syndrome). I felt the same way at first too, excited to be seeing the one work of DeFeo’s that is regularly featured in art history textbooks. But after a few minutes it made me sad more than anything else. The layers of cracked and fractured paint dividing the painting, once white but turned gray and black in places, brought to mind the ruins of a once-great cathedral. I couldn’t help but think of how DeFeo had spent over seven years of her life working on “The Rose,” and she never even got to finish it. She also didn’t live to see the work find fame – it was exhibited only once during her lifetime, at the Pasadena Museum of Art, and subsequently bought by the San Francisco Art Institute, where it was installed in the wall of a conference room. There, it sustained such damage that a false wall was built to cover the painting, obscuring it from view. In the 1990s, a decade after DeFeo’s death, it was bought and restored by the Whitney Museum in New York.

I thought it was apt to do a slow art viewing experience with “The Rose” given the extraordinary amount of time that DeFeo devoted to it. However, this was an instance where spending 15 minutes looking at a single work of art didn’t feel like enough time. I kept thinking about how DeFeo spent every day for seven years in front of this piece, and so it felt like a disservice in a way for me to only spend 10 or 15 minutes. I’m planning on returning to the exhibition soon, to spend more time with “The Rose” but also with the other works in the exhibition, a couple of which caught my eye. If you’re around San Francisco (the retrospective will also be opening at the Whitney in late February), I highly recommend checking it out to form your own impression of DeFeo’s work.

[Jay DeFeo’s The Rose (1958-66) was viewed in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective.]

– Maggie Freeman, Mills College