Halloween Grand Prize Winners!!! --- Day 14/315

Walk: Hood

Distance: 4 miles

2025 CIWT NEIGHBORHOOD HALLOWEEN DECORATING CONTEST WINNER

GRAND PRIZE:  All Neighbors Who Contributed

Dedicated daily walker, Ciwt, feels such delight ambling through her neighborhood during Halloween decorating month.  Every decoration, from the tiniest offering to the most enormous, the simpliest to the most elaborate, perks up her day.  And over the years they appear to be doing the same for others - whether sometime walkers, drive-by visitors, even people from out of town.  She used to be the only person (she noticed) walking with camera out taking entry pictures.  But, this year especially, she noticed many more - husbands and wives, moms with children, friends.  Her neighborhood becomes a feel good experience for many during Halloween season, and Ciwt wants to acknowledge and thank each one of her neighbors who contributes to that scare sparkle.

All this month CIWT readers have been treated to pictures of other entries.  Here are just a few more of the many, many, many, many up and down the neighborhood blocks.  Please come visit if you are in the neighborhood.  You'll see:

Tiny Cute Creatures

Witches with Bizazz

Huge Creatures

Vignettes all over the place

Even Balloons

If you get to Ciwt's hood, please enjoy hanging around

Winner: Whole House --- Day 14/314

Walk: Hood Last Days Contest Entries Scouting

Distance: 4 miles

2025 CIWT NEIGHBORHOOD HALLOWEEN DECORATING CONTEST WINNER

WHOLE HOUSE 

Ciwt also considered Emeritus retirement for this Exceptional whole house repeated winner.

But then she reconsidered for two reasons (beyond how extraordinary it is!).  One, the logistical arrangements the owners make to create it.   She lives near it, and on the very last day of  September trucks and workers rolled up, blocked the streets, clearly there for an important unnamed project.  Then, the next morning, promptly on October 1st, Halloween month, we woke up to this fright site!  Perfect, and she's sure tricky, timing!

Secondly, over the years she has watched interest in the house grow.  The first years the house was decorated there was no indication it was being noticed (by anyone other than Ciwt for her her contest).  Interest seemed to grow slowly after that but it was barely perceptable.  This year, though, cars were stopping or doubling back with people getting out to take pictures and there were often individuals or small groups with cameras standing in front of it.  The Black House being taken over by skeleton for Halloween has created its own buzz around the city (and beyond?).  

Congratulations, neighbors. Well deserved!!

CIWT Halloween Contest Winner Announcements Begin! --- Days 14/311 - 313

Walks:  Hood (Final Entry Scouting)

Distance: 3.5 miles

2025 CIWT NEIGHBORHOOD HALLOWEEN DECORATING CONTEST WINNER

WHOLE HOUSE AND YARD

Once again this year, this wonderful Halloween house and grounds creation is our winner.  When Ciwt first went scouting for entries the yard was empty and her heart sank.  But when she returned, the scary assemblage had begun and she saw many familiar frightening treasures.  So, assuming no one was ever going to be able to top this perennial winner, she thought about giving it an Emeritus title and retiring it to give other whole house and yard a chance in the future.

BUT!  As she kept returning, she saw New 2025 Additions! and realized these 2025 neighbors had actually bested themselves this year!!!!

The Dragon Parent has a new child 

An entirely new scarecrow has been added

The witch at her hideous cauldron is in a new creepier place

The skeleton behind the Dinosaur Teacher with Students is completely new

Congratulations Once Again Winners!  Wishing you lots of visitors on darkest halloween night.  Thank you and looking forward to next year!!!

Manet & Morisot, Part 3 --- Day 14/310

Walk: Legion of Honor

Distance: 3.5 miles

Wherever works by Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot are hanging in the same gallery, you can be quite sure someone is thinking "Were they having an affair?"

Edouard Manet (1832-1883), The Balcony, 1868-1896, o/c

Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets, 1872, o/c

So, Ciwt is curious if her readers have any thoughts about how the artist of the two painting above felt about his subject - and she about him.  

Manet painted her and Morisot sat for him for 11-12 works in various mediums from 1868 to 1874 when she married his brother.  During those years and beyond he mentored her early artistic development and gradually became influenced stylistically by her as she perfected her skills and became a renowned leader in the Impressionist movement. 

Money was not the reason for their artist-model relationship. Manet was firmly ensconced in the Parisian upper class and Morisot was only slightly below him socially. So he could afford to pay any number of models and did.  Morisot did not need the modeling income.

Morisot properly stopped modeling for Edouard after she became the wife of his brother Eugene. But their time together did not stop. She and Edouard continued a prolonged, intense artistic collaboration in which they were strongly influenced by each other's works until Manet's death in 1883 at which time Morisot and her husband became Manet's biggest collectors and champions.  

From Impressionist times until today it has been widely believed Manet and Morisot had an intense and passionate love affair. Morisot's letters to her sister describe feelings of strong and sad longings for the attractive, charming Manet.  And his bedazzlement with her is beautifully recorded on canvas. But art historians argue otherwise. Manet was married, Morisot was known for her social propriety, Morisot's mother or sister was in the studio during all her sittings for Manet.  So, certainly there was prolonged and close intimacy over many years, but (so far) there is no evidence that the relationship went further.  Sigh....

• • 
    

Manet & Morisot, Part 2 --- Day 14/309

Walk: Hood (always in seach of Halloween Contest entries)

Distance: 4 miles

Emily A. Beeny, chief curator of the Legion of Honor and Barbara Wolfe Curator in Charge of European  Paintings

Ciwt invites her readers to enjoy some of the wonderful paintings in the Manet & Morisot exhibition conceived and organized by the Legion of Honor's Chief Curator, Emily Beeny.*

Edouard Manet, Boating, 1874/79, o/c

                                         

Berthe Morisot, Summer's Day, 1879,o/c

                                         

Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1873, o/o

Berthe Morisot, In a Villa at the Seaside, 1874, o/c

L: Manet, View of the Exposition Universelle 1867, R: Morisot, View of Paris from the Trocadero, 1871-73

Berthe Morisot, Young Woman Dressed for a Ball, 1897, o/c 

Edouard Manet, At the Milliner's, 1881, o/c

Berthe Morisot, Woman Sewing, 1879, o/c

https://www.famsf.org/stories/manet-morisot-side-by-side

Manet & Morisot, Part 1 --- Day 14/307 - 308

Walk: Hood

Distance: 5 miles

Manet & Morisot Side by Side: The first major exhition dedicated to the artistic exchange between these two strong willed, compelling and revolutionary artists is now at our Legion of Honor*, and it is a feast for the eyes with many of their canvases either side by side or staring at each other across rooms.  It is also eye-opening.  Usually scholars have presented Manet, the great pioneer of modern painting, as teacher and Morisot, the only woman to exhibit under her own name in all eight Impressionist group shows, as model and student.  But the Legion exhibition shows Manet bcoming more of a student himself as he was increasingly influenced by Morisot's choice of subjects, colors and brushwork.

Arguably the strongest example of Morisot's artistic style on Manet is in the two gorgeously sensuous portraits of a woman at her toilette.

Berthe Morisot, Woman at Her Toilette, 1875-1880, o/c

Edouard Manet, Before the Mirror, 1877, o/c

Manet's work is usually characterized by definite, broad bushwork, beautifully clear outlines, darker colors (Goya was his idol), yet in the painting above he makes looser use of his brush and plays with pastels and whites, very 'Morisotian' techniques.  This represents a huge softening somewhere in Manet's mind.  He was known to be supremely self-assured in character and artistic endeavors.  In fact his first artistic 'partnership' with Morisot consisted of nearly completely repainting her  submission to one of the important Parisian salons.  It was hours before the submission was due, Morisot was struggling with the work so she invited the great Manet to give her suggestions.  He took brush in hand and nearly remade one side of the painting.  Morisot was horrified, so much so that she became increasingly determined to work alone and develop her own style. So, inadvertently, Manet likely gave her the impetus to rise to the level of prominence and success she achieved.

* Manet & Morisot Side by Side

You Can Make it! --- Days 14/303-306

 Walks: Hood

Average: 3.5 miles

More Girls in Black --- Day 14/302

Walk: Hood

Distance: 4 miles

The Girls: White and Balck --- Day 14/301

Walk: Hood

Distance: 5.5 miles