CIWT Supporting Actress Award --- Day 3/7

Walk: Prana, Sundance Kabuki (American Hustle, again), Trader Joe's, Walter Adams Framing
Distance:  3 miles

Yes, I do believe Jennifer Lawrence should get the Best Supporting Actress.  At first I thought it was such a juicy part and she's so popular, awarding her was a giveaway.  But seeing the film again today (to get the plot entirely straight and give the film another chance), all contingencies aside,  she knocked it out of the park.  Such incredible comedic timing and physicality, as one reviewer put it, 'impossibly magnetic.'  Plus so key to the plot which needed her genius-'stupidity' segments for, again, impossibly magnetic comedy and to give the viewer got some break time to fathom the ever-evolving caper.

Anyway, Yay amazing Jennifer Lawrence, age 23(?!)!!  (Not to be too snarky, but ...all she needs now is a dresser.)*



(Totally Riveting; nominated for Best Actress Oscar)
  

  
                                       (Won Oscar for Best Actress)
                     

                   

(Golden Globes & CIWT Best Supporting Actress)

*http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2538626/Jennifer-Lawrences-puffy-white-dress-gets-slammed-Twitter-by.html

Museum Encounters -- Day 3/6

Walk: Mindful Body, de Young Museum, Trader Joe's
Distance: 5 Miles and take yoga class

CIWT went to the de Young today for an Au Revoir spin through the Hockney show that closes day after tomorrow.

Well....


Membership Line (specially want to see the show next to the coughing man with his friend in the surgical mask).


Lines Outside the Main Entrance



Waiting in the Lobby Under one of the de Young's Least Favorite Art Works.  (Among other things it makes many people dizzy and nauseous).

Happy that I'd seen the show quite a few times (and never having seen the museum this busy), Ciwt decided to check out an installation by James Turrell, a famous genius she had just become aware of.  Maybe more about him another day; for today, continuing the theme of strange museum encounters she'd stumbled into.  The small installation was conceived by the artist as a space to meditate/focus on the essence and effects of pure light.  When Ciwt arrived it was filled with people chattering away with each other as if they were sitting around a lounge.  Another woman sitting alone with her laptop computer open picked up her ukulele and began strumming.  After a while she began singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow at top voice.  
Like this was her private rehearsal hall. The computer must have contained lyrics and musical notes.

Museums have been working for the past decade or so to redo their images, become 'public friendly' instead of the removed bastions they had the (deserved) reputations for being.  It might be working beyond their wildest dreams...

Getting to be Time to Wash the Car --- Day 3/5

Walk: Legion of Honor (Egyptian Lecture), Nico Restaurant
Distance:  1 mile is all


Great weather, but not so easy to enjoy it...

Landscapes: Back to the Masters, Pt. III -- Day 3/4

Walk: Mindful Body, Balboa Cafe

Distance: 2 miles and take yoga class

Claude Lorrain (nee Gellee), known and signed as Claude
ca 1605-1682, French painting in Italy

Pastoral Landscape, oil on canvas, 21.26"x16.54"

View of Tivoli at Sunset, 1644, oil on canvas, 39.5"x53.9" (Legion of Honor, San Francisco)

It could be said that Claude Lorrain was every bit the Romantic that his friend, Poussin, was the Rationalist.  He was a superior draftsman and his landscapes are rooted in recognizable nature around Rome, Tivoli and Genoa primarily.  But his overwhelming interest was in atmosphere and the effects of light.  He Adored light, and, virtually without exception, a distant dawn or sunset is the actual centerpiece of his work.

His natural world is poetic, idealized, beautifully poignant.  Next in order of Claude's loves was animals, particularly cows. People were painted with respect - and probably to ensure patronage because, in his time, the thought of a painting simply about nature would have seemed ludicrous to the art world.  Not to Claude; he knew he was painting landscapes even if his patrons did not.  And thus, with him, quietly began the landscape genre which wended its way through England (Constable, Turner), France (Millet and the Barbizon School painters, the Impressionists), America (The Hudson River School, Homer), the Dutch of course and to the many other important landscape painters that followed Claude.  

John Constable (Premier English landscape artist, 1776-1837) described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude's landscape "all is lovely - all amiable - all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart."

    
Imaginary View of Delphi with Procession                Enchanted Castle                                     Seaport at Sunset


        

Landscapes: Back to the Masters, Pt. II -- Day 3/3

Walk: Mindful Body
Distance: 10 blocks and teach yoga class

Continuing from Day 2/365...Poussin and Lorrain (or Claude, the name by which he signed his artworks) are both pioneers (in Claude's case, one would virtually say, 'inventor) of the idealized landscape painting style. Friends who spent many days walking through through the Italian countryside observing and sketching, their works can appear similar - particularly in Claude's mature years when he, like Poussin, employed strong classical elements such as ancient ruins and figures in antique togas. Ciwt at least was a little vague on their differences at first, so in case you are like her - or just interested, here are a few things to know.

Nicolas Poussin (Fr. 1594-1665)

Landscape with Polyphemus, 1648, o/c, 59.1"x 78.3" (Hermitage)

 

Landscape with St.Matthew and the Angel, ca 1645, 49"x 59.1"

 Landscape with the Ashes of Phocion, Collected by His Widow, 1648, 

Poussin was first and foremost a rationalist who obsessively planned every aspect of his style from line to appropriate color.  The amount of thinking and theory that informs Poussin's paintings is truly impressive.. Often using ancient and philosophy as his inspiration, he felt the only subjects worthy of being painted were grand, epic stories from ancient mythology and early Christianity. Even in his landscapes; though they are beautiful and carefully executed, nature is secondary to the story of the painting which takes place in the foreground and commands the most attention.  The landscape itself is 'rational,' working its way back in the painting/away from the story in receding horizontal tiers.

Interestingly it is Poussin's classical balance and stability as well as his emphases on harmonic geometric forms that attracted and greatly influenced Cezanne centuries later. And, through Cezanne, Poussin would also have an indirect impact on later artists like Picasso, who claimed Cezanne as his artistic father.


Tomorrow his friend and fellow landscape pioneer, Claude Lorrain....

Fewer Obstacles for 2014 --- Day 3/2

Walk: Town School Consignment, Friends of the Library, Apple, Best Buy
Distance: 5+ miles and lots of heavy lifting

Remember these books from Day 2/364?

         

They went to the staging place during yesterday's 49ers game. (Yay team!)

                              

And today they're all donated for the next readers to enjoy.

                             

Giving 2014 energy clearer passage.....

                         

CIWT Year Three Begins!! --- Day 3/1

Walk: No
Distance: 0 but lots of book moving and small home yoga practice

Wow!  What a gift to have a place where writing doesn't start with a Capital W and Ciwt can be herself out loud.

Many thanks to Andrea and Rich for nudging me until CIWT came into being and to those who have made comments or read silently.

Back to more of the same tomorrow....

Landscapes: Back to the Masters --- Day 2/365 (Year 2, That's a Wrap)

Walk: Legion of Honor
Distance: 1 mile

Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain were contemporaries and close friends and both perfected the relatively new genre of idealized landscape. Can you tell one's art from the other?  What differences do you see?

NICOLAS POUSSIN (French, 1594-1665)


Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Calm, 1651, o/c

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with Diogenes, ca 1647, o/c

Nicolas Poussin, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake, ca 1648, o/c

CLAUDE LORRAIN  (born Claude Gellee, signed art 'Claude', French, ca 1605 - 1682)

Claude Lorrain, Pastoral Landscape, 1644, o/c

Claude Lorrain, Pastoral Landscape, ca 1648, o/c

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Shepherd, ca 1657, o/c

Seems fitting to honor the past on this last day of CIWT, Year 2.  To be continued tomorrow in CIWT YEAR THREE.......