Turner

Yesterday a friend drove up from Aptos and took Susan and me to the Turner exhibition at the de Young.  This was in honor of what would have been our friend's sister's birthday. We had lunch at the de Young. All three of us ordered gazpacho, but only Susan could get it down (hers and mine). My salmon salad was okay--all of the food had been fancied up with extra ingredients that provided just enough disappointment to make the meal mediocre. San Francisco cuisine at its worst.

The show was large and interesting. My favorite was "Burial at Sea," which was no doubt very popular. There were many small watercolors Turner had painted as samples to show wealthy patrons in case they wanted him to complete a similar oil. Even I could see that Turner took a big step toward the major art movements just ahead of him. What most impressed me, though, was a huge video screen, maybe 18 by 24 feet, that dominated the entrance. On it gray waves under a gray sky kept rolling toward my feet. It was like standing on the beach at Avenue C. You know how mesmerizing that is, just watching waves break over and over, never the same twice. I stood there for a long time.