Conditions: Magnificent and Intolerable --- Day 4/333

Walk: Sundance Kabuki (The Revenant)
Distance:2 miles and yoga




Back in the day when she spent time with her aunt and uncle at their ranch in Montana Ciwt read several historical books about mountain men, especially Jim Bridger because he is associated with the Livingston area.  From this reading, she got a truer sense of the actual day to day lives of these men - (trappers, military, guides) and their (often psychotic or bordering on it, certainly sociopathic) psychologies.  Rugged and desperate is an understatement.

But her mental picture from this reading wasn't even close to the actual the bleak, stark, tortuous grimness of their lives. She learned that from three hours in her seat watching The Revenant today. The 'untouched' Rocky Mountains are magnificent, a co-star throughout the movie, but no man - or beast - in them is sitting around admiring them or stopping to enjoy any views. Life and survival are synonymous. Leonardo DiCaprio does a riveting job communicating that in an intensely physical performance which grabs your attention and never lets go. And, if you ever wondered about the deeply disturbed humanity of some of the mountain men, look no further than Tom Hardy's performance.

The Revenant is a real Western about the real mountain west.  And really grisly.  And long and certainly not for everyone.  Truth be told, it was almost too much unadorned (often horrifying) brutality for Ciwt who has a sort of penchant for well-made suspense (and Tarantino-like) violence. Ciwt would have liked a storytelling or something break from catastrophe/struggle/survival followed by catastrophe/struggle /survival for three straight hours.

Essential Nature --- Day 4/332

Walk: Clement Street
Distance: 1 mile (Marin driving day)


Claude Monet (French 1840-1926), Haystack, sunset, 1891, oil on canvas

Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese 1760-1849), South Wind, Clear Dawn, ca 1830-5, Woodblock Print

Revisiting yesterday's theme of the influence of Japanese prints on Claude Monet's art, Ciwt finds many fine, illustrative comparisons.  Perhaps the finest of all is that between the two works above.  

The first, Hokusai's luminous, geometric, asymmetrical South Wind, Clear Dawn, is arguably one of the most recognizable Japanese woodblock prints.  Completed ten years before Monet's birth and when Hokusai was in his seventies, it one of his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Popularly known as Red Fuji, the image containing no people or animals and simplified to near abstraction captures the elemental power of Fuji and, beyond that, the mystery of nature.

Monet, who liked to present himself as the artist who brought the Western world's attention to Japanese prints* was clearly sitting at Hokusai's metaphorical feet in his Haystack series. In fact, Red Fuji was hung prominently in his 'small salon' at Giverny.  Both Haystack, sunset and Red Fuji, express a unique vision of the deep structural forces of nature, but, at the same time, one senses a profound affinity between the works.  

*Living in the Netherlands, first crossroads of the art market with the Far East, thanks to the Dutch East Indies Company, Vincent van Gogh, was actually the earliest prominent artist to discover Japanese woodblocks and engravings.  He was fascinated, loved the daring compositions immediately and bought his first Japanese works around 1855 and shortly after wrote his brother Theo: "My workshop is rather bearable, especially since I pinned to the walls a whole collection of Japanese engravings which I like extremely."

Take One --- Day 4/331

Walk: Asian Art Museum
Distance: 1.6 miles and small yoga


            French meadow with small haystacks

Ciwt attended the Asian Art Museum's current show about the effects of the Japanese artistic aesthetic (particularly its woodblock prints) on the Western art world, especially the heart of that world in the 1850's, Paris.  She decided to take a docent tour and ended with that incomplete feeling she sometimes has after such tours.  To really get a fix on art, Ciwt needs to view it alone and form her own connections.  The show will be up until February 7, so she will return.

All that said, it did appear to be an interesting, informative, broad-based exhibition illustrating Japanese influence on print making, furniture, crafts, textiles, even embryonic photography besides painting.  Occasionally though the show (or perhaps just the docent tour) became facile or a stretch. For instance, it included one of Monet's iconic Haystack paintings   
                              Claude Monet, Haystack (Sunset), 1890-91, oil on canvas
and informed exhibit viewers that Monet most likely got his idea for the shape of the stack from a Japanese woodblock print  of a famous Japanese tea shop by the artist Utagawa Hiroshige*. Huh?  Ciwt has never heard anybody, any art person at all in any capacity suggest Monet was doing anything but painting the haystacks he saw around him in the French countryside.

*Utagawa Hiroshige, Mariko: Famous Tea Shop, second state from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road, 1833-34, Japanese Wood Block Print, ink and color on paper.

Perspective, My Dear --- Day 4/330

Walk: Fillmore
Distance: 1 mile, small yoga

Tomorrow Ciwt will join two docent friends (Ciwt isn't a docent) at the Asian Art Museum for its exhibition:  Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh and Other Western Artists.

The 'How' is essentially through its prints which began entering Western Europe as trade with Japan opened up and which, it is safe to say, blew the minds of many artists. Western art, the art artists like Monet was steeped and trained in, relies primarily on realistic perspective, drawing objects on a flat surface in a way that captures how they look (and vanish) to the human eye. How to portray three-dimensionality was one of the great artistic discoveries of the Renaissance and the basis of Western art since then. 

So when Whistler, Gauguin, Cassatt, Degas and a host of Western artists encountered the Japanese prints that flooded Europe with the opening of Japan in 1850, they were stunned and stimulated by the Oriental flatness that characterized them as well as its effectiveness - and Popularity in the West.  
Fujikawa Tamenobu, Kanagawa from Shank's Mare Series; The Shank's Mare Tokaido, ca 1980's, Japanese Woodblock Print, image size 8 1/2" x 13 1/8"

It is truly difficult to underestimate - or entirely grasp - the effect of flattened perspective to this day in an enormous variety of fields.    More to come after tomorrow's museum visit....

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Rugged Promenades --- Day 4/329

Walk: Clement Street
Distance: 4 miles and small yoga




Norman Garstin (Irish), The Rain it Raineth Every Day, 1889, oil on canvas

The year begins here with grey and rain.  Ciwt is glad(ish) for the necessary rain but also happy she doesn't live on the English Coast near Penzance Cornwall where apparently the title of the painting above is also the reality.  To give it credit, the Penzance Promenade definitely looks to be a more civilized affair than our Cliff House/Ocean Beach Promenade of approximately the same era.  Not much fun, either one Ciwt thinks.

  

Cliff House from Ocean Beach, ca 1900

Holiday Mop Up --- Day 4/328

Walk: Hood Theaters
Distance: 4 miles,  home yoga

Today the last official holiday stretch ends.  People were busy taking advantage of their moments of extended free time.  No need for walking services today, they could walk their actual dog and socialize with other dog owners .  And play pick up basketball with no need to be home for homework or at the office .
Some were catching their last holiday movie  and even finally donating those items .

As for Ciwt, she reviewed the possible Oscar contenders she hasn't seen.  There was  Jennifer Lawrence in  , Michael Caine in , and Eddie Redmayne in  .  But none of these three really called to her.  So, instead of seeing one, she walked to each theater    
and paid her respects to everyone who is involved in making and bringing movies to her hood.  Then she came home and made an early 2016 donation to SF Neighborhood Theater Foundation.

Now let the real 2016 begin.....

Not Hanging Around in 2016 --- Day 4/327

Walk:  Trader J's
Distance: 2 miles and small yoga

So 2015:

  >>>>>>
From Ciwt's Home
                                                 
                                                 To Sports Basement   Bye, Bye
2016:



Beautiful, thin, matching, Huggable hangers  (See CIWT Day 4/321)

Always Ciwt's Favorite Holiday Card --- Day 4/326

Walk: Opera Plaza Cinema (Mustang)
Distance: 4 miles and moderate yoga