Oskar Fischinger. Rhythmic Tapestry, 1952; oil on canvas; 17 1/4 x 22 1/8 in. Courtesy of the Harriet and Maurice Gregg Collection of American Abstract Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Full disclosure—I have embarrassingly little education in abstract art. In fact, I chose to review Shaping Abstraction in order to remedy this ignorance. However, when I stepped inside the exhibition room, I panicked. I was surrounded by a glut of squiggly lines and shapes, and I had no clue what they meant, let alone how to write about them.

Then I saw my savior in the center of the room: a drip painting by Rolph Scarlett. The colors were mostly unassuming grays and browns, and the design visually pleasing yet utterly chaotic. There were no symbols to parse or patterns to analyze. There wasn’t even a title. Strangely enough, this inscrutability drew me in. It gave me permission to approach this work and others in the exhibition from an aesthetic standpoint.

I examined a collection of lithographs by Frederick Hammersley located on one side of an architectural column. Each square in the eight-by-eight grid of the work Value Line, September 11 (1949) was a different shade of gray. The uniformity of shape, size, and color forced my attention to the lone variable. My eyes played tic-tac-toe with the squares, comparing values I hadn’t realized were distinct.

My mind clicked. This wasn’t a random assortment of boxes—this was an experiment. Hammersley was taking an element and pushing it to its limit, like how free verse poetry will forgo form to focus on language. I glanced at the other works. Most weren’t as formally restricted as Hammersley’s lithographs, but I could see a focus in them—intent I hadn’t noticed before.

I felt confident enough now to circle the room. The pieces became more formally complex as I walked; bright, minimalist shapes gave way to subtle gradients and busy compositions. Toward the end of my route, I came across Oskar Fischinger’s Rhythmic Tapestry (1952). The piece displayed a series of overlaid translucent shapes that gradually grew brighter in color as they became more centrally located. The collage culminated in a golden figure resembling a nautilus shell. Without the visual context gained from viewing the other works, I would have obsessed over the piece’s meaning and would have made dubious inferences about nature, repetition, and color theory, only to arrive at the conclusion that the piece was about deism.

Instead, I enjoyed how the colors interacted, made note of the arrangement of lines, and moved on. When I was done, I looked around the room one last time. What I had initially taken as experiments in chaos was now a diverse collection of pieces, each with its unique approach to the elements of visual aesthetic. I didn’t discover a message in them, but I did find sense in the meaninglessness.

Shaping Abstraction is on view in Gallery 11 at the de Young Museum through August 30, 2015.

Emily Swaim is a freelance writer based in San Francisco. She has a BA from Kenyon College and is currently pursuing her MFA from the California College of the Arts.

Anthony Friedkin. Jim, East Los Angeles, 1972; gelatin silver print. 14 × 11 in. Courtesy of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Anonymous gift in honor of Sheila Glassman.

The first question a show about documentary work made more than forty years ago should ask is, “Why now?” Ripe with current significance, if lacking in self-awareness, Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay misses such an opportunity to address its own contemporary relevance while trying to establish the work’s historical significance.

The Gay Essay was conceived between 1969 and 1973, when a then-19-year-old Friedkin was building his career as a photographer. Through friends, he gained access to gay communities in San Francisco and his native Los Angeles that he wasn’t a part of, but identified with as someone who felt unfairly marginalized by mainstream society. Friedkin noted at the press preview that he chose his subjects based on their willingness to celebrate an “obvious” gay identity—those who were out and proud. His photos advocate for as much, as they capture the idea of power through visibility, something underscored by the reflective title he gave the series from which the exhibition takes its name.

The portraits of Jim, a young Latino from East L.A., for example, are where Friedkin’s personal connection to his subjects is most palpably conveyed. Jim’s gentle, androgynous face reflects Friedkin’s desired intimacy with his subjects that is otherwise too literal in some of the other photographs (like that of a naked lesbian couple kissing). Other portraits—of hustlers waiting on a street corner, couples posing together, or drag queens putting on makeup—are technically strong but less compelling. Their lack of candidness underscores Friedkin’s position as an outsider to his subjects, which in turn makes the photos look that much more generic. Friedkin’s intent may have been sincere, but, four decades on, the photographs reveal the inborn limits of his project.

The de Young does try to make a case for Friedkin, beyond the exhibition’s timeliness. (Its run coincides with the 45th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.) But contextualizing Friedkin’s photographs via the influence of Lewis Hine (whose documentary photos catalyzed the passage of child-labor laws at the turn of the 20th century) doesn’t make them any more legible as documentation of a social-justice movement. After completing The Gay Essay, Friedkin shopped it around to various galleries, but ended up running excerpts of it in gay publications such as The Ladder and The Lesbian Tide, issues of which are included in three small vitrines in the exhibition. Those magazines, along with other ephemera from the time (on loan from the GLBT Historical Society), tell of the lives and struggles behind Friedkin’s now-familiar images. Outside the museum walls, those struggles continue, including for LGBT individuals to preserve their history: The GLBT Historical Society just announced that due to a 30 percent rent increase, it will have to relocate its archives in the coming months to an as-yet undetermined location.

Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay is on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco through January 11, 2015.

Susannnah Magers is a writer and curator. Currently, she is a co-director of The Royal NoneSuch Gallery, a North Oakland project space, and contributes to SF Arts Monthly.

Left: Spin (C-818), 2008. Chromgenic paper, exposed/embossed/abraded. 10 13/16 x 8 1/2 inches. Center: Untitled (Study for Tremors), 2000. Silver gelatin paper, burned. 18 x 14 inches. Right: Untitled (E-30), 2005. Cyanotype on Fabriano paper, exposed. 13 1/16 x 9 3/4 inches. All images © Marco Breuer and courtesy of Von Lintel Gallery, New York.

As part of our ongoing partnership with Art Practical, Daily Serving is republishing Brian Andrews‘ article Marco Breuer: Line of Sight, featuring work on view now at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Installation of Marco Breuer: Line of Sight from FAMSF on Vimeo.

In 2005 when the de Young museum opened their new Herzog & de Meuron‑designed facility in Golden Gate Park, the museum endeavored to update their engagement with contemporary art practices. Most visibly, five large-scale works were commissioned from blue chip artists to be featured at the building’s opening celebration, including an immense print by Gerhard Richter, a meditation stupa by James Turrell, a glass installation by Kiki Smith, an outdoor sculpture and crack in the landscaping by Andy Goldsworthy, and a series of paintings by Ed Ruscha. Less sensational but potentially more impactful, the de Young also initiated their Collection Connections program with a series of work by local photographer Catherine Wagner. The program debuted with the objective of integrating contemporary practices with the de Young’s eclectic general collection holdings by asking artists to create a body of work both inspired by and displayed with objects from the de Young’s permanent collection. Marco Breuer: Line of Sight is the latest installment in this program.

Read the full article at Art Practical.