Email Author Jonathan Curiel

2012 Stories by Jonathan Curiel

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  FEATURED STORY

  Street Artist Apex on the Haight/Masonic Mural and Art Thriving on Neglect

  published Dec 20, 2012

  Born and raised in San Francisco, Apex has been doing street art since 1992, when he was just 14. Now, at age 34, he's one of San Francisco's veteran practitioners -- someone whose spray-paintings are... More >>

• Wayne Thiebaud: Recovering the Classic in American Culture

  published December 19, 2012

  The label "pop artist" was first applied to painter Wayne Thiebaud in the early 1960s, when his everyday items — cakes, pies, and gumball... More >>

• Jay DeFeo and Jasper Johns: Rarely Seen Work at SFMOMA

  published November 21, 2012

  It's Nov. 9, 1965, and Jay DeFeo is smoking a cigarette as she sits on the ledge of her San Francisco apartment. Her feet dangle over the side,... More >>

• Rich Impurities: Claymation and Photography at YBCA and MOAD

  published October 24, 2012

  On a recent Sunday afternoon, a girl no older than 8 stood inside a gallery at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and watched Nathalie Djurberg's... More >>

• Animal Matter: Get Close to ROA and Chinese Calligraphy

  published October 10, 2012

  In this golden age of street art, where JR and Banksy are embraced from the slums of Brazil to the Hollywood Hills, we've gotten spoiled by the... More >>

• "(re)collection": Personal Photos Connect Us to Life and Death

  published September 19, 2012

  At least 15,000 people died in the March 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan. Vestiges of those lives — portraits of happy couples, kids... More >>

• "Indian Circus": Mary Ellen Mark Sees the People at the Margins

  published September 19, 2012

  The girl named Rajni performs in stockings that are torn and tattered, a sign she's from the lowest rung of India's economic ladder. The other... More >>

• Fall Arts: This Year, S.F. Galleries Are World-Class

  published September 5, 2012

  Vik Muniz: "Pictures of Magazines 2" Sept. 20-Nov. 10 at Rena Bransten Gallery, 77 Geary (at Kearny), S.F. Free; 982-3292... More >>

• "N.D.N.: Native Diaspora Now": Artists Reveal the Humor in Native Life

  published August 29, 2012

  Let's say you're watching a documentary about Native Americans, or reading a book about Native Americans, or attending an art exhibit about... More >>

• Lee Miller and Man Ray: Partners in Surrealism, Reunited

  published August 15, 2012

  "Who is Lee Miller?" The words echoed from the mouth of a twentysomething clerk in a Mission District bookstore. I'd just asked if his store... More >>

• "Cindy Sherman": Three Decades of Disguises at SFMOMA

  published July 18, 2012

  In the late 1980s and early '90s, Cindy Sherman created a series of photographic scenes that challenged even some of her most ardent fans.... More >>

• "Portrait of George (Moscone)": Finally on Display at SFMOMA

  published June 13, 2012

  The passage of time makes major art controversies seem almost petty. So it is with Robert Arneson's Portrait of George (Moscone), which... More >>

• "Choose Paint! Choose Abstraction!": MoAD's Alluring Exhibit

  published June 13, 2012

  The de Young Museum's most perused painting might be Robert Colescott's A Taste of Gumbo, which anchors the central corridor that... More >>

• "Dead Men Don't Look Like Me": Paul Schiek's Arresting Images

  published May 9, 2012

  At Stephen Wirtz Gallery, prison mug shots from the 1950s offer a striking counterpoint to the tense portrait of a closed-eyed Ross Mirkarimi.... More >>

• "Absence of Being": Susan Burnstine's Photography Explores Loss

  published May 9, 2012

  When Susan Burnstine was 4 years old, she began experiencing night terrors. To deal with these overwhelming nocturnal visions, Burnstine would,... More >>

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  FEATURED STORY

  San Francisco's 10 Best Public Sculptures

  published Apr 24, 2012

  At its best, public sculpture is stirring and inspiring. At its worst, it's an assault on the senses -- a visual blight that prompts passers-by to avoid eye contact or (in extreme cases) attack the ar... More >>

• Great Artists Steal: Gaultier and "The Cult of Beauty"

  published April 11, 2012

  Twenty years ago in New York City, as the wind tossed wrappers about in the street, the French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier spied a... More >>

• Iraqi Filmmaker Visits San Francisco With Drama About a Hired Killer

  published Apr 03, 2012

  Qarantina is about a ruthless hit man in Baghdad who lives in the same house as a dysfunctional family. Violence is everywhere beyond their windows, symbolized by the overhead sounds of wartime helico... More >>

• "Mark Bradford": Artist Exposes the Wounds Beneath the Beauty

  published March 14, 2012

  In the spring of 1921, white residents of Tulsa, Okla., burned down the city's black district and murdered scores of African-Americans —... More >>

• SF Retrospective: Mark Bradford Takes Complex Issues and Makes Them Beautiful

  published Feb 17, 2012

  When the MacArthur Foundation gave Mark Bradford one of its genius grants in 2009, it confirmed what Bradford's fans had known for years: The abstract artist was doing work that mattered far beyond th... More >>

• "What Suits Us": John-Mark Ikeda Deconstructs Menswear

  published February 15, 2012

  The business suit has gone through different epochs and will always have cachet, but artist John-Mark Ikeda says that it's lost its "mythic"... More >>

• "Matter + Spirit": Stephen De Staebler's Angels Don't Fly

  published February 15, 2012

  From the dark and mangled Stephen De Staebler sculpture that stands at attention near 251 Third St., just 20 seconds of walking will bring you... More >>

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  COVER STORY

  Masterminds 2012: Honoring 10 Extraordinary Bay Area artists

  published February 8, 2012

  Illustration by Andrew J. Nilsen. Artists are everywhere we look in the... More >>

• Taha Belal: Egyptian Artist Brings Arab Spring to S.F.

  published January 18, 2012

  What could art possibly say about the Arab revolutions that hasn't already been said? It might seem that the upheavals that deposed three... More >>