White Bears Can Jump --- Day 12/62

 

Walk: Mailbox

Distance: 1 mile, yoga

Irish Lament --- Day 12/61

Walk: AMC Kabuki (The Quiet Girl)
Distance: 2 miles, yoga

So today Ciwt completed her viewing of  the Oscar Nominees for Best Internaitonal Feature.  Another Irish Oscar nominee, another well acted lament filled with wandering roads, emerald hills, dirty sad homes. But mercifully no lost fingers or dead pets......

Out the Window to Your Right You Can See... --- Day 12/60

Walk: No!  Cold, Windy, Wet, Snow, Hail, Etc.

Distance:30 miles driving around San Francisco

So today Ciwt's sister brought her husband to sightsee in San Francisco.  Ciwt was tour guide and chauffeur.  I think they could see a few things through the driving rain, thick clouds - if they looked really, really hard.  He probably needs to come back another time...

182 Years Old and Going Strong --- Day 12/59

Walk: SF Ballet (Giselle)

Distance: 5 miles, yoga

Albrecht and Giselle

Of all the Romantic ballets still performed, “Giselle” is the oldest, and its staying power lies in the romantic grief that has inspired poets, songwriters and storytellers for centuries.

The ballet is 182 years old and still fresh today.  And demanding!  Giselle and Albrecht are two of the most complex, difficult, downright scary roles for any ballet artist.  Today Ciwt was lucky to see Esteban Hernandex and the ethereal, exquiste Jasmine dance those centuries old, still new (and exhausting even to watch) parts.  She thinks a couple of the people around her were in tears by the end.

Esteban Hernandez (Albrecht) and Jasmine Jimison (Giselle) in rehearsal

Well, I'll Be.... --- Day 12/58

Walk: Hoods

Distance: 4.5 miles, yoga

2023

So to loyal readers who live in the ususal snow regions this picture might seem ho hum.  But those of us in the Bay Area look in wonder because this accumulation is just 60 miles south of here.

It missed us, but the forecast is for more ahead, so we'll see.  If it does snow, it will join the few exceedingly rare times snow has fallen in San Francisco. 

1976

1887

Don't Mention the Hands --- Day 12/57

Walk: Hood

Distance: 2.5 cold, windy miles, yoga

Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792),  Portrait of Omai, 1776, oil on canvas 

So Ciwt was reading a Financial Times article on the present Brtitish effort to keep Sir Joshua Reynolds' Portrait of Omai in their country.* It triggered a memory of  an encounter with another  Reynolds' portraits here at our Legion of Honor.

 Sir Joshua Reynolds, Anne, Viscountess (then Marchioness) of Townsend, ca. 1780

Several years ago Ciwt was standing near a group of museum docents in training listening to one of the trainees give an early presentation of the portrait above. The trainee mentioned all the important things about Reynolds: that  he was the dominant 18th century English portrait painter and first president of the Royal Academy of Art.  That he had steeped himself in antiquity and presented his subjects - all elites by the artist's intention - as timelessly ideal, imperialistic expansive. That he was revered as an artist and neatly all of London wept upon learning of his death.

But then...the trainee proudly pointed out that Anne's lower body way out of proportion and her hands looked like claws. Hearing this the trainer pounced! "Why did you say that?! "You can't say that?!" on and on.  The poor and mystified trainee kept politely defending herself: "Because, it's true." Which only angered the trainer more but which Ciwt could see was an accurate description.  

The trainer never did get around to explaining what the trainee had done wrong.  But Ciwt got it with a shudder: As a docent you are Not allowed to mention anything negative about the museum's works.  Even when true, mum's the word.  

From that day onward Ciwt's eyes go instantly to the hands whenever she encounters a Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait. And often they are claws or entirely out of scale or just weird.  But shhhhhh... 

Lady Bampfylde by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
c.1776

Lady Christian Acland, 1771

* https://www.ft.com/content/bfa30b2c-b1bc-446a-89ad-03b558f37ba5#comments-anchor

Let Me Tell You..... --- Day 12/56

Walk: Trader Joe's

Distance: 4 miles, yoga

So a friend sent Ciwt an article profiling some current high profile Art Advisors, and it put her in mind of a member of that unregulated, wide open field from her past.

One day years ago Ciwt was working as manager of an art gallery when a newly divorced woman with a large settlement from her doctor husband came in.  She did not know one thing about art - pink from purple, Manet from Michelangelo, etc. so Ciwt and the two owners spent a few hours informing her as best we could.  It is doubtful she retained much as she just kept exclaiming "Art is so wonderful!". Other gallery owners we learned had had similar experiences and we all shook our heads.  

Well, two weeks later the woman showed up again - with a client!!  She shamelessly and brashly paraded this unwitting client through the gallery regaling her with complete but authoritative nonsense about the works before her.  The owners and Ciwt stood by with our mouths agape at this ego and ambition.  Ciwt doesn't remember if the newly minted Art Advisor sold her client anything that day, but she does know that advisor is still in business 40 years later.

The topic of Art Advisors is complex, and there is a lot to talk about.  Certainly somewhere in the conversation would be : Collectors be advised!  The 'business' of art is wild and often not particularly pretty. 

Absolute Oscar Shorts Winner --- Day 12/55

Walk: No!  Even grown men were grabbing onto something to stay standing in today's ferocious wind.                Plus it is cold. 

Distance: 0, yoga

Nawelle Ewad in Cyrus Neshvad's excellent short film The Red Suitcase

Stand back Alfred Hitchcock.  Another master of suspense was at work in the Best of the Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action.  His name: Iranian born, Luxembourg based director, Cyrus Neshvad.  His movie: The Red Suitcase.

At the start of this film the audience doesn't quite understand what is happening.  A young woman in a burka headscarf is reluctant to cross the bridge into the airport from the arrival area.  She keeps peering beyond but pulling back.  Eventually this catches the eyes of two security guards who ask to see her passport.  We then learn she doesn't speak a word of the language where she has landed and our knuckles tighten.  When the guards find a way to communicate with her, they grab for her suitcase.  She hugs it tight and our knuckles tighten even more.   From then on the audience white knuckles through nearly every breath this young woman takes as she thinks on her feet from moment to moment until the movie ends in a way that keeps the viewer engaged for days after.  At least if that viewer is Ciwt.

The Red Suitcase is a masterful, highly intelligent short movie on an ancient, important, universal topic by a passionately caring and skilled director. Ciwt has learned Neshvad is at work on his first full length movie, and she plans to be one of the first in the theater when it is released.