Friday, June 17, 2005
TXPTLMS #5: California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Top Ten Places That Leave Me Slackjawed
Fast Fact: I hate museums.
Slightly-Slower Fact: Being from San Jose, I disdain San Francisco and its snooty, better-than-the-South-Bay ways.
Uncomfortable Reckoning: I love the California Palace of the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco.
Usually when I go to a museum, I wander around looking at the art briefly and then move on. Lots of nice things to see, but rarely does it have any impact. The Legion of Honor isn't like that. For me, it's like Yosemite again. A pinecone in Yosemite isn't just a pinecone, it's a Yosemite pinecone. I have a piece of granite that I picked up while "grooming a trail" in the park. To you it may look like any other rock you've ever seen. To me it's more.
The art at the Legion of Honor is like that, too.
A Rembrandt at another museum is a nice painting, but I can stare at Joris de Caulerii at the Palace of Honor for five, ten minutes before moving on to the next piece (be sure to zoom in to appreciate the detail: the skin looks like skin, the armor looks like armor, the snozzberries look like snozzberries--okay, strike that last one).
The thing that dropped my jaw the first time Dina and I visited the museum was really the first thing we found out about the museum itself. As you enter the museum, you pass through a long courtyard with a statue of Rodin's Thinker (which is cool in its own right), then you enter and buy/present your ticket for admission. As we were transacting this business, a tour guide took a group through and pointed up at the marble ceiling, commented on how great it looked ... and then said it was fake. "What?! Stucco?!" we all thought. Actually, it's cloth painted to look like marble camoflauging the pipes of a huge pipe organ. From that moment on I was prepared to find surprises everywhere I looked. And while I never encountered anything quite as cool as the fake marble ceiling, I discovered that art can be given more than a cursory glance ... even in San Francisco.
My favorite painting in the museum is Michel-Francois Dandre-Bardon's Diana and Endymion. I love the pre-Art Deco look of the moon and the overall lighting of the piece. Diana seems to have left her shirt at the laundromat, so sensitive viewers beware.
And while my reverse snobbery prevents me from listing "The Cit-ay" itself as a jawdropper, the first skyline view when driving north on the Bayshore at night is quite impressive.
- Yosemite
- Whiskeytown Dam
- Santa Cruz Giant Redwoods
- Disneyland
- California Palace of the Legion of Honor
Fast Fact: I hate museums.
Slightly-Slower Fact: Being from San Jose, I disdain San Francisco and its snooty, better-than-the-South-Bay ways.
Uncomfortable Reckoning: I love the California Palace of the Legion of Honor museum in San Francisco.
Usually when I go to a museum, I wander around looking at the art briefly and then move on. Lots of nice things to see, but rarely does it have any impact. The Legion of Honor isn't like that. For me, it's like Yosemite again. A pinecone in Yosemite isn't just a pinecone, it's a Yosemite pinecone. I have a piece of granite that I picked up while "grooming a trail" in the park. To you it may look like any other rock you've ever seen. To me it's more.
The art at the Legion of Honor is like that, too.
A Rembrandt at another museum is a nice painting, but I can stare at Joris de Caulerii at the Palace of Honor for five, ten minutes before moving on to the next piece (be sure to zoom in to appreciate the detail: the skin looks like skin, the armor looks like armor, the snozzberries look like snozzberries--okay, strike that last one).
The thing that dropped my jaw the first time Dina and I visited the museum was really the first thing we found out about the museum itself. As you enter the museum, you pass through a long courtyard with a statue of Rodin's Thinker (which is cool in its own right), then you enter and buy/present your ticket for admission. As we were transacting this business, a tour guide took a group through and pointed up at the marble ceiling, commented on how great it looked ... and then said it was fake. "What?! Stucco?!" we all thought. Actually, it's cloth painted to look like marble camoflauging the pipes of a huge pipe organ. From that moment on I was prepared to find surprises everywhere I looked. And while I never encountered anything quite as cool as the fake marble ceiling, I discovered that art can be given more than a cursory glance ... even in San Francisco.
My favorite painting in the museum is Michel-Francois Dandre-Bardon's Diana and Endymion. I love the pre-Art Deco look of the moon and the overall lighting of the piece. Diana seems to have left her shirt at the laundromat, so sensitive viewers beware.
And while my reverse snobbery prevents me from listing "The Cit-ay" itself as a jawdropper, the first skyline view when driving north on the Bayshore at night is quite impressive.
Mikesell
