San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Going to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been on my Summer To-Do list for a while now.  And with only 3 weeks left before heading back to Seattle, we planned the trip.  It's so great to only live 45 minutes south of San Francisco...it makes it easy to get to Giants games and make fun trips to the city during the holidays.  The museum is so incredible.  It's crazy to have taken an art history course last quarter where I learned (& memorized) a multitude of famous paintings and then walk in the museum, only to see them hanging on the wall.  Seeing them on the wall makes my professor's (who I loved!) description of them so much more real.  I could finally see the epic proportion of Mark Rothko's famous painting done in 1960:

The actual size I'm not quite sure of, all I know is it's HUGE.  Probably around 20-25 feet tall.  I love the inspiration behind this painting.  He was inspired by a poem by J.D. Neilson and the last line reads "Life is simple and messy and pure".  I feel the emotion of this line is the essence of the painting.  It's simple to the eye, with only 3 pure colors, but at the same time, the edges are messy.  Don't you kind of feel like that statement sums up your life sometimes?

Here were some other favorites:

Matisse's Woman with a Hat, 1905.  This was a truly a controversial painting, because no one had ever portrayed a woman, much less Matisse's wife, in this bright of a palette before.

Picasso's Jug of Flowers, 1937.

Mondrain's abstract oil paintings, 1935-42.

I love how this painting is so simple, but yet a lot of thought went into it.  He was known for his paintings being well proportioned.  It takes a few stripes of red and blue to balance the amount of yellow in the top right corner.  Having the colors at opposite sides of the canvas also achieves that.  Although the stripes are larger on the right side, the thicker lines of the stripes on the left side also balances the canvas.

I also really enjoyed this:

 

A velvet cake with chocolate ganache filling in the shape of Mondrain's painting.  So delicious!

They also had some really neat chairs, entirely made of wood.

And I'll end with what reminds me of any interior designer's color swatches:

I'm so glad I was able to go to the SFMOMA yesterday. It was a great experience and even someone who's not as into art/design can appreciate it! (My mom and dad came also, and totally loved it.)  It just makes you into a more well-rounded person, because behind the paint is a person.  And that person made history.

Love and Simple, Messy, & Pure,