Circling Berkeley: New BAAM* Exhibit

Nice brushwork

from gone times

So

another edifying not to say a little ho hum

visit to the East Bay's premier art edifice

Through the orange stair well

Wild incoherent

letters as art

Metal cast letters

spell nada though

This was a printing plant

where the UN charter was printed

Nice velocity

A contemporary

language tablet

recalling cuneiform

writing

The floor

is extraordinary

huge stone slabs

with joins

Invisible Man

Frankly, I had expected

a more substantial show

What was here was interesting

but it wasn't very much,

A single typographic work

by a remarkable

modern artist

say Jasper Johns

might have saved it

Ah, the glories

of Penmanship

There's a lost

language

Next we enter

a decidedly more tawdry

realm

Mondo Primitivo

Martin Wong

New York street artist

finally makes it over

20 years after his death

Asian Puerto Rican

and queer

he nets a vast

sprawling retrospective

Not entirely without

signs of his subjective

astronomy

and bookishness

The street worn

as a badge

full-size

In contrast to

his predominant tendency

to go fantastic

beyond the baroque

Life-size street life

has an undertow

Rent free

loss of freedom

can follow on

Where one presumes

on finds a great deal

of time on one's hands

You go rococo

on yourself

Sometimes

masturbatory introspection

 leads to phallus worship

It's all a bit

visceral

for my taste

In addition to Wong's show,

 and the Asian art

in the letters and type show,

there was a show by

painter named Ito,

the PFA hallway exhibition

of Chinese film posters

and the permanent

Buddhist gallery

*

Back out again
the way we came in

through the

David Lynch passage

* Reflects proposed name change to
Berkeley Asian Art Museum


5 October 2017