Señor Grant came up from LA for the weekend, the whole weekend. It was like Christmas, my handsome package delivered via Virgin Airlines Friday night. We saw Beach Blanket Babylon at Club Fugazzi, Double Indemnity and La Casa de mi Padre, the Rineke Dijkstra retrospective and Mexican photography show at SFMoMA, and soaked in the baths at the Kabuki Hot Springs.
I enjoyed Beach Blanket Babylon a bit less this time around, feeling like only one number connected with current pop culture, or, rather, the not-too-distant pop culture of my own youth, but that number was a doozy, with Snow White stripping off her familiar outfit to reveal a Madonna cone bra ensemble, then flying out over the audience as she sang about “surviving gravity,” perfectly over the top. The show outside was just as entertaining, with heterosexuals everywhere, dressed in green, gurgling green beer and stumbling into the street, tottering drunk girls sent home in taxis by boys who wanted to continue partying, one couple drunkenly breaking up on the sidewalk…
The Rineke Dijkstra retrospective is pretty fabulous. Her photographs present people formally almost always in the center of the frame, looking directly at the viewer. The references to place are minimal—a beach, a room. The subjects aren’t engaged, they’re observed, revealed. There are also videos on view, of club kids dancing for the camera, single static shots that last so long that the initial awkwardness of the dance movements gives way to something revelatory and intimate about each subject. Another multi-channel video piece focuses on kids who are shown responding to one of Picasso’s weeping women. They discuss what the painting could mean, in raw, unguided engagement with the work. Their speculations about why she’s sad range from the, well, childlike, to incredibly insightful.
I remember before I moved to San Francisco, seeing some hysterical documentary about earthquakes and plate tectonics, about how Los Angeles and San Francisco are slowly moving towards each other. I wish it would hurry up. I really like this guy.
Christmas is over, back to work. Thank you, Santa.