Category: Away

Ode to beauty at the de Young

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Timeless Beauty Beyond Gender.

John Koch (1909-1978)
The Bridge, ca. 1950
Oil on canvas

Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935)
Easter Morning (Portrait at a New York Window), 1921
Oil on canvas

Sergeant Kendall (1869-1939)
Cypripedia, 1927
Oil on canvas

Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851-1938)
Elizabeth Platt Jencks, 1895
Oil on canvas

Edmund Charles Tarbell (1862-1938)
The Blue Veil, 1898
Oil on canvas

Henry Brown Fuller (1867-1934)
Ebba Bohm, ca. 1905
Oil on canvas

Robert Henri (1865-1929)
Lady in Black with Spanish Scarf (O in Black with a Scarf), 1910
Oil on canvas

Would you have known this was a bloke, had there not been a title? Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)
Pierre-Edouard Baranowski, ca. 1918
Oil on board

A painting with an interesting background. Nothing to do with the gender-bending figure of Mr. Baranowski, it was its very origin and authenticity that were in doubt.

The artist is present in every stroke, her unique style instantly recognizable: Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986)
Petunias, 1925
Oil on hardboard panel

Treasures of the de Young

░Treasures░of░the░de░Young░

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Skipping the colourful psychedelia of the Summer of Love Experience didn’t mean the time we spent at the de Young would be any less fun – quite the contrary, as the works you are about to see will demonstrate.

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In contrast with the age of freedom and sexual liberation that was being celebrated next door, this is how courtship was done in Thomas Eakins’ time:  Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
The Courtship, ca. 1878
Oil on canvas

Whistler depicted his former patron Frederick R. Leyland as a hideous peacock, surrounded by money bags and sitting astride Whistler’s house, which had to be sold. You see, Leyland had commissioned Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (Freer Gallery of Art) for his London townhouse. All was going according to plan, until Whistler decided to make some unauthorized alterations. Leyland was less than pleased, they argued bitterly and their relationship reached an all-time low when Leyland sued Whistler for the Peacock Room’s over-expenditures. Whistler had to file for bankruptcy but, with this painting, he still had the last laugh:James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)
The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre (The Creditor), 1879
Oil on canvas

A work by the earliest-known African American artist. A freed slaved and self-taught painter working in Baltimore, Maryland, Joshua Johnson portrays the daughter of a wealthy Baltimore merchant. Her Empire gown, stylish Napoleonic bangs, and Turkish shoes (known as ”straights” because the could fit on either foot) reveal the influence of French fashion in America. I do love her ”straights” – I wish all shoes were so soft they could fit on either foot!  Joshua Johnson (ca. 1763-ca. 1824)
Letitia Grace McCurdy, ca. 1800-1802
Oil on canvas

A dress made of glass for a head-to-toe modern Cinderella:Karen LaMonte (b. 1967)
Dress 3, 2001
Cast glass

This explosion of colour:
Richard Mayhew (b. 1924)
Rhapsody, 2002
Oil on canvas

The cool flatness of Samuel Miller’s children: Samuel Miller (1807-1853)
Young Girl with Flowers, ca. 1850
Oil on canvas mounted on board

Samuel Miller (1807-1853)
Young Boy with a Dog, ca. 1850
Oil on canvas mounted on hardboard

Treasures of the de Young

July 7th, 2017
  

 

 

San Francisco is… (re-)living the Summer of Love

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2017 marked the 50th anniversary of the legendary San Francisco Summer of 1967 and the city celebrated it with a number of events, among which The Summer of Love Experience: Art, Fashion, and Rock & Roll at the de Young Museum. We passed up the exhibition because it ran along the same lines as the Counter-Couture: Handmade Fashion in an American Counterculture, on show at MAD in New York City, only a few months earlier.

But we could not, nor did we ever want to, let this slightly bonkers je ne sais quoi, San Francisco’s very own particular character formed throughout its fifty-year long trip from bohemia to hipsteria, from liberation to gentrification, go unnoticed. Love was (still) in the air this Summer of 2017 and we were ready to embrace it. Because, as another American legend rightly said:

”Ultimately you can listen to only one thing, not your president, not your many misguided leaders, save a few… You must listen to your own heart and do what it dictates. Because your heart is the only thing which can tell you what is right and what is wrong.” – Joan Baez, 1965


July 7th, 2017

San Francisco is… the stunning views from Lands End

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As if 4000 years worth of art, a spectacular French-inspired building that resembles the Parisian Palais de la Légion d’Honneur (here’s that ”European” feel again), and interesting exhibitions like the Degas and Paris Millinery Trade we’d just seen were not enough, Legion of Honor sits high on the grounds of Lincoln Park, in a unique setting. To reach it, you have to walk (or drive) through a glossy, perfectly manicured golf course. And on your return, you can – no, you must, take one of the Lands End trails, walk past rocky cliffs, shady cypress and eucalyptus trees, cross paths with local runners, find your way around a stone labyrinth, descent to Mile Rock Beach or just let your eyes rest on some of the most stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the ocean you could have wished for.

Lands End

July 7th, 2017

Don’t try this at home

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Under any circumstances. Lucretia, this is not your fault. Never ever.Joos van Cleve, Flemish, ca. 1485-1540
Lucretia, ca. 1525
Oil on panel

[…”Several days passed. Sextus Tarquinius returned to the house of Conlatinus, with one of his companions. He was well received and given the hospitality of the house, and maddened with love, he waited until he was sure everyone else was asleep. Then he took up his sword and went to Lucretia’s bedroom, and placing his sword against her left breast, he said, “Quiet, Lucretia; I am Sextus Tarquinius, and I have a sword in my hand. If you speak, you will die.” Awakening from sleep, the poor woman realized that she was without help and very close to death. Sextus Tarquinius declared his love for her, begging and threatening her alternately, and attacked her soul in every way. Finally, before her steadfastness, which was not affected by the fear of death even after his intimidation, he added another menace. “When I have killed you, I will put next to you the body of a nude servant, and everyone will say that you were killed during a dishonorable act of adultery.” With this menace, Sextus Tarquinius triumphed over her virtue, and when he had raped her he left, having taken away her honor.

Lucretia, overcome with sorrow and shame, sent messengers both to her husband at Ardea and her father at Rome, asking them each to come “at once, with a good friend, because a very terrible thing had happened.” Spurius Lucretius, her father, came with Publius Valerius, the son of Volesus, and Conlatinus came with Lucius Junius Brutus; they had just returned to Rome when they met Lucretia’s messenger. They found Lucretia in her chamber, overpowered by grief. When she saw them she began to cry. “How are you?” her husband asked. “Very bad,” she replied, “how can anothing go well for a woman who has lost her honor? There are the marks of another man in your bed, Conlatinus. My body is greatly soiled, though my heart is still pure, as my death will prove. But give me your right hand in faith that you will not allow the guilty to escape. It was Sextus Tarquinius who returned our hospitality with enmity last night. With his sword in his hand, he came to take his pleasure for my unhappiness, but it will also be his sorrow if you are real men.”

They promised her that they would pursue him, and they tried to appease her sorrow, saying that it was the soul that did wrong, and not the body, and because she had had no bad intention, she did no wrong. “It is your responsibility to see that he gets what he deserves,” she said, “I will absolve myself of blame, and I will not free myself from punishment. No woman shall use Lucretia as her example in dishonor.” Then she took up a knife which she had hidden beneath her robe, and plunged it into her heart, collapsing from her wound; she died there amid the cries of her husband and father…”] – source

Legion of Honor, San Francisco

July 7th, 2017

San Francisco is… the eclectic Legion of Honor

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A haven for European Art spanning 4000 years; paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, frames as precious as the works they adorn, ancient art from the Mediterranean basin and  mummies from Egypt, all under this beautiful French neoclassical structure, a replica of the French Pavilion at San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, itself a replica of the Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris, an 18th-century landmark on the left bank of the Seine. Michael Sweerts (Flemish, Brussels 1618-1664 Goa)
Portrait of a Youth, ca. 1655-1661
Oil on canvas

Louis Léopold Boilly (French, 1761-1845)
After Clodion (Claude Michel)
Triumph of Amphitrite, ca. 1785-1799 (details)
Oil on paper mounted on canvas

Honoré Daumier (French, 1808-1879)
Third-Class Carriage, 1856-1858
Oil on panel

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, 1824-1904)
The Bath, ca. 1880-1885 (detail)
Oil on canvas

Konstantin Makovsky (Russia, 1839-1915)
The Russian Bride’s Attire, 1889
Oil on canvas

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)
The Broken Pitcher, 1891
Oil on canvas

Jules Bastien-Lepage (French, 1848-1884)
Sarah Bernhardt, 1879
Oil on canvas

John Anster Fitzgerald (British, 1823-1906)
Fairies in a Bird’s Nest, ca. 1860
Oil on canvas

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (French, 1824-1887)
Mary Queen of Scots, ca. 1860-1869
Terracota

Celestial and terrestrial globes, Dutch, ca. 1600
Jodocus Hondius, the elder (Joos de Hondt, 1563-1612), cartographer
Metal, walnut and paper

Table from Italy, Bologna, 17th century
Walnut

Auguste Rodin (French, 1840-1917)
The Three Shades, 1898
Bronze

Paneled room
France, ca. 1680 and later
Painted and gilt wood and mirror

William Blake
”Time in advance… ”and ”Time, having passed on…,” from The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts, by Edward Young

[Night Thoughts was first published in 1742 and its continuing popularity more than fifty years later inspired publisher Richard Edwards to bring out a new, deluxe edition, for which he commissioned William Blake to provide illustrations.]

Legion of Honor

July 7th, 2017

San Francisco is… keeping its hats on

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[In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hats were a social obsession, subjects of acclaim and critique. The Paris millinery industry was at its financial and creative peak between the mid-1870s and 1914, the period between the Franco-Prussian War and the outbreak of the World War I, decades that coincided with the ear of French Impressionism. The women who made and sold hats – milliners, or modistes in French – as well as those who purchased them, fascinated Edgar Degas and other artists in his circle.] Bonnets of the 1880s by Mangin Maurice (left) & Cordeau et Laugaudin (right)

Bonnet, ca. 1894 by an unknown designer, France

Jean Béraud, 1849-1935
Fashionable Woman on the Champs-Élysées, n.d.
Oil on canvas

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Woman Adjusting Her Hair, ca. 1884
Oil on canvas

Hat by Maison Virot, ca. 1900 (with alterations)

Hat by Camille Marchais, ca. 1895

Bonnet by Mesdemoiselles Cotel, ca. 1885 (left) & Capote by E. Gauthier, ca. 1890

Hat by Caroline Reboux, ca. 1904-1905 (left) & by Au Bon Marché, retailer, ca. 1884

Capote by Auguste Poussineau, known as A. Félix, ca. 1880-1885 (front) & Hat by Monsieur Heitz-Boyer, 1898 (back)

Hat by an unknown designer, ca. 1890

Édouard Manet (1832-1883)
Berthe Morisot, ca. 1869-1873
Oil on canvas

Louise Catherine Breslau (1856-1927)
The Milliners, 1899
Pastel on paper mounted on board

Paul-César Helleu (1859-1927)
The Final Touch, ca 1885
Pastel on paper

Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade exhibition ran until September 2017 @ the Legion of Honor*

July 07th, 2017

*If, by any chance, September 2018 finds you in San Francisco, please do make me jealous and go see the current exhibition, Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters!

San Francisco is… a little crooked

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Not only it is host to some of the steepest streets on this side of the Atlantic, but also to some of the crookedest. Lombard Street on Russian Hill between Hyde and Leavenworth Streets, is so steep that it was deemed too dangerous for vehicles to just drive through. Thus its transformation into a switchback with eight sharp turns – so sharp and steep, I thought every household in San Francisco should, by default, include a shrine devoted to the genius who invented automatic transmission.

Lombard Street

July 6th, 2017