To study in Chile, you need one of those exciting and expensive little stickers in your passport known as a visa. Unlike some countries, it’s also required that you show up in person to get this document. Also unlike some other countries (Spain, for instance) the Chilean Consulate employs people who are helpful, kind, and understandably fluent in English. God bless them.
After flying in from Spokane and a good night’s sleep (finals week will sure take it out of you) I caught a bus from my hotel to downtown San Francisco. I was tickled pink to find that the buses are not only punctual and cheap, but also clean and un-sketchy. I arrived downtown with plenty of time to spare and made my way through the foggy streets to the Flood Building, which I guess is famous.I noticed that everyone seemed to have a thick accent, and that now I was picking up pieces of English, French, AND Spanish conversations. How exciting! After a pleasant hour or so with
Till We Have Faces (by CS Lewis) I exited with the important sticker and several hours to kill.
I wandered towards what my map indicated as a pleasant green square called Yerba Buena Gardens. In person, it exceeded this country girl’s expectations of what an urban garden could be. Some artist had sculpted concrete and turf into a tiered, varied, and visually delightful park. After strolling down Yerba Buena lane, I postponed the wonderful park for a quick stop in St. Patrick’s church. (A confession: I love visiting old churches. It’s free, it’s a beautiful place to sit, and it’s a quiet place to think and pray. What a great way to have a ‘date’ with God). From the greenery of the park, the church’s red brick contrasted well with the soaring skyscrapers around it. I dawdled around the MLK Jr memorial waterfall, and found the quote that inspired it: “until justice rolls down like water”. Justice rolling down sure is loud and impressive. I meandered past some more fountains and flowers before using the sky bridge towards the kiddie section of the park. Such fantastic playscapes, and slides that adults could fit down easily – I almost gave one a try. I found a nice little 50’s diner called Mo’s that sold decently priced burgers and refueled before setting out for another interesting square on my map: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
I had never heard of SFMOMA before, but I found myself impressed once inside. The second floor proved to be my favorite; Picasso, Matisse, Warhol, and others lit up the rooms with a variation of paintings and sculpture. My English professor wouldn’t get out of my head the entire time: how do we decide if a work is ‘great’? How important is it to know the title, artist, and biographical information of a work of art? How does an in-person art viewing contrast with the photos I took? Can a naked woman be anything but on display? (read Berger’s
Ways of Seeing for more on all of this- fantastic and a quick read. It’s also a TV series available on Youtube). I don’t pretend to have complete answers to these questions, but I did enjoy the museum. Sometimes I looked at titles and authors, sometimes I just gloried in the balance or imbalance of colors playing across a canvas. I did play into the capitalist structure at one point by gasping over a discovery amongst the collection: Du Champs’ Fountain, the star of many an English discussion and even the metaphor for the intro of a history paper. (Fountain is a urinal turned on its side with some graffiti on it- pure Dadaism. Titles are important, huh?). It wasn’t directly labeled, and no one was paying attention to it. In person, I noticed how weird the arrangement was; I thought about angels peeing from heaven (or perhaps Manekin Pis, the peeing boy of Brussels) and noticed the aesthetic value of the underappreciated edge and underside of the urinal. It faded pretty well into its white podium, and no one looked at it twice. Du Champ would have thought a gilt frame ridiculous anyway. I was silently very very excited. I also found a conventional female nude – except that she was laughing and looking straight at the viewer. It made the whole thing seem perverse and creepy. I also really enjoyed an interactive computer called Ruby; they had logs of peoples’ conversations with her. Some of them were actually very intelligent and some were plain eclectic and funny. I was also happy to see a Magritte; he’s probably my second favorite artist, after Van Gogh. He explores the relationships of things and people so acutely and from such novel perspectives in an understandable way. I laughed past the quirky pieces and grimaced at the scary ones, and frankly had a ball for several hours before I caught my bus and started out for home.
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