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Friday Slide Show: Urs Fischer At The Legion
19 May 2017
On our recent visit to the Legion of Honor to see Monet, we were startled by an army of what appeared to be clay figures melting in the bright courtyard of the entrance.
They were not, however, clay. The work of Urs Fischer, they are bronze and the hottest thing at the Legion.
Through July 2, Urs Fischer: The Public & the Private provides "a contemporary perspective to our understanding and appreciation of the Museums' permanent collection, specifically the acclaimed collection of Rodin sculptures," which are celebrating their centenary installation.
"Contemporary perspective" is putting it mildly. Fischer's 30 installations are more like wisecracks, jokes and visual raspberries. Irreverent and humorous. Tiny. Large. Popping up when you least expect them.
There is a short figure in the Court of Honor, for example, who leans back and sticks his tongue out. And we've already shown you the hat perched on a pile of melted cowboy.
If you haven't been paying attention to all this on your way in, you will certainly notice the huge eyeballs staring at you from the Peterson Gallery.
Melting seems to be a theme. There's a giant wax figure called Adam in the central gallery with a wick in his head that is lit every day. Rodin's Three Shades can be seen just beyond him.
Then there's the skeleton under the rotunda with a garden hose turning the bones into a fountain.
And the strange little white chair in one of the French rooms that sits among the dowdy upholstered pieces like a 12 year old girl, all legs and arms.
If you haven't been paying attention to all this on your way in, you will certainly notice the huge eyeballs staring at you from the Peterson Gallery.
Charles Desmarais reviewed the show for SFGate recently in The Legion Goes Engagingly Modern.
The engagement may be more with the permanent works than with viewers but we did notice a few people stopping to look and comment on the unusual figures.
Most were concerned about damage. The little bronze train tracks looked stepped on, worried one woman, who must have mistaken them for clay. The melting head would soon disappear another fretted.
But there were a few laughs, too. Particularly around the eyeballs.
What we particularly appreciated about the exhibit is that the figures are all posing for the camera. And we were all eyeballs for that.
