In the mood for a spectacular pair of carved 10-foot-high Baroque Italian 17th-century columns? What about huge works by acclaimed photographer Henry Wessel depicting empty hallways of Las Vegas hotels--views as provocative as they are unsettling? Perhaps something a little more accessible, like a lithograph by someone you studied in art history? Whatever your art penchant, San Francisco offers it all.

There are some 75 art galleries in the city, the majority clustered near the downtown Union Square area. Generally, Union Square galleries come in different aesthetic flavors. There are the stimulating, ones favored by cutting-edge collectors and critics and, generally speaking, located a few steps beyond the most popular tourist havens. Then there are the "commercial" galleries, which, in general, are located not far from large hotels. Some sell works that might be classified "tried-and-true-now-but-radical-then." Picasso, Miro, Chagall and Dali, for example, are all over, especially in etchings and lithographs.

If it's an original Dali you're considering, Weinstein Gallery, 253 Grant Avenue, has a number of ink drawings at disparate price ranges ($28,000- 95,000). Female surrealism is represented here, too, especially in paintings by Leonor Fini: In "Cariatide Delivree" ($295,000), two people unravel an armless woman. Across the street at John Berggruen Gallery, 228 Grant, walls may be covered by works of the wacky but respected Roy De Forest. Meyerovich Gallery, 251 Post Street, has intriguing mixed-media works by Helen Frankenthaler.

At 250 Sutter Street, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, seems to have a split personality. Its "contemporary" half features work created after 1960. This fall, shows will include landscapes by Paul Resika ($15,000- 60,000), still lifes by Jeffrey Ripple ($20,000-25,000) and black-and-white photograph-like paintings by Steven Graber ($4,000- 6,000). Hackett-Freedman Modern, the other half, generally features work by established modernists created before 1960. This fall, a big treat is in store: drawings and oils by Max Weber, who died in 1961. His works start at $30,000.

Richard Thomas Galleries, 465 Powell Street, is one of several on the block bursting with styles. A more tempered atmosphere, especially when realistic American landscapes ($1,000-48,000) are in residence, is John Pence Gallery, 750 Post Street. Other works are $650 to $150,000.

If you are curious and/or serious about cutting-edge art, Patricia Sweetow, 49 Geary, 4th floor, Rena Bransten, 77 Geary, and Paule Anglim, 14 Geary, should be high on your list. Sweetow is featuring simplicity that may bowl you over: black watercolors that appear to be layers of wide strips of chiffon ($2,800 framed) by sculptor Joachim Bandau. He will stage a one-person show there of sculptures and much larger watercolors in October.