General comment: August First Thursday is low-key here in artland with many galleries showing selections from their inventories and others showing quietly closed doors, but the night is not without delight and certainly not without winners. As always, there's plenty to size up and sort out, but before we do that, I gotta share a little moment with you.

I don't recall exactly when or where, but I'm having this chat-up with a confirmed local artster of some repute when I commence to carp on one of my abiding beefs-- the boundless barrage of bombastic blather that pretenders relentlessly drub the public with in order to validate and sustain their art. So the artster looks at me and says something like, "We have to do that in order to maintain credibility and justify value." So I'm thinking, wait-- an established Union Square or Fisherman's Wharf gallery sells more art on a good opening night than many of San Francisco's non-commercial galleries sell in a YEAR. And I can assure you, they don't do it by confounding the client base. The good news is that the unintelligible gibberish approach to "explaining" art appears to be on the decline.

OK. Enough. Ready to hit the artyard and milk the creative cow? Of course you are. Let's do it...

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Gallery Paule Anglim: Andrew Masullo, Richard Overstreet.

Comment: In the main room, Andrew Masullo shows bright upbeat fundamental abstracts, ownable for low to middlin' thousands of $$$. They're nice and everything, but I can't figure out whether the punch line is "less is more," "less is less," "less is more or less more unless it's less," none of the above, or all of the above. I want my Mommy!!

In the anteroom, you'll find palatable Richard Overstreet soft abstract wax drawings on paper.