The Oyster Eater --- Day 2/26

Walk: Mindful Body
Distance: 18 blocks and take yoga class (yea!)

This gem is tiny standout in the current Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Maritshuis show at the de Young.  The pictures below don't capture it's exquisite clarity and perfect details.  Only a bit less than 6 x 8 inches, it exudes energy like a brilliant diamond.






Jan Steen, The Oyster Eater, 1658-1660, oil on canvas, ca 6"x 8"


http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/exhibitions

That Girl --- Day 2/25

Walk: de Young (Girl with a Pearl Earring and Rembrandt's Century Exhibits)
Distance: 2 miles and short home yoga practice




Johanees Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, ca 1665, o/c

No matter how many times you look at her - on book covers, posters, various prints, she really is perfectly pleasing to the eye.  She's presently at the de Young if you have an opportunity to get to 'her' exhibition.

http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/exhibitions

Recovery Mode --- Day 2/24

Walk: No; still not 100%
Distance: 0 but short at home yoga practice

Back at it.  Basically, everything from yesterday had to be reprinted.

CIWT, V 1 Stet --- Day 2/23

Walk: Laurel Village+
Distance: 2.8 miles

I believe the last (ie, first) page of CIWT, Year One is now printing!  Began at 10 a.m. and it's now 5:46.

Completely underestimated both the time and the size notebook I'd need to put it in.  So my printing time was interspersed with trips to various office suppliers for bigger and bigger binders.  Tomorrow hole punching. 

I have a student who is a big time professional printer.  I don't know how she does it...




PS - I made a change in CIWT settings which might make it easier for you to post comments.  Maybe give it a try when you feel like it.

No, the movie --- Day 2/22

Walk: Sundance Kabuki (No)
Distance: 2 miles

No, a Chilean film up for an Academy Award is a yes.

And its star - as always - is a total YES!!!

Gael Garcia Bernal

Again, Derain Pre-"Fall" --- Day 2/21

Walk: No

Unfortunately the fumes did do me in and I'm taking a sick day, but this colorful Derain from the Paley collection is cheerful. The painting is considered Cezanne-like: 'constructive' brushwork, block-like buildup of some of the images, cooler, cool and earthy palette. 

Andre Derain, The Seine at Chatou, oil on canvas, 1906

*(See Days 344 and 345 of CIWT)
 

Huge Life, Unfettered Spirit ---Day 2/20

Walk: Grace Cathedral
Distance: 2 miles



Spring, 1794
Maruyama Okyo (Japanese, 1733-1795) 
6 fold screen; ink, gold and silver on paper (detail)
From the George Gund III Collection at the Cleveland Museum

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sfgate/obituary.aspx?n=george-gund&pid=162412266#fbLoggedOut
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2013/01/22/george-gund-iii-unconventional-businessman-who-pursued-wide-range-interests/gkbh2ZGHWpsw2fxo5VVzfO/story.html
Remembering George Gund, 1937 – 2013 | Filmmaker Magazine
http://www.mercurynews.com/mark-purdy/ci_22381923/purdy-george-gund-had-his-own-quirky-style

I like these quotes from the above column on George:.
Owners of professional sports teams are always interesting people. But I have never met one who dwelled in even the same hemisphere of unconventionality as Gund, who died Tuesday at age 75 in Southern California.

...However, Gund was also one of the most sincere and unpretentious people I've ever met, inside or outside sports. He would just as soon chat about hockey with the team mascot or a fan as with a fellow multimillionaire. Ultimately, that was Gund's saving grace.
.

Thiebaud Closer to the Sea --- 2/19

Walk: Legion of Honor Docent Lecture (Printmaking Techniques of the 17th C.)
Distance: 2 miles and take yoga class

To my eye Wayne Thiebaud's palette and perspective has darkened a bit in his early 90's.  Seems appropriate.

A 2006 Crown Point Press print I saw recently at the de Young's Crown Point Press at 50 exhibition seems very poignant.  His whimsy is still there, but he also seems to bring in the fleetingness and eternal passage of life's playground, the lightness of being, and the formless vastness of the beyond.  Maybe none of those things are there, but the print haunts me for some reason.  Can't help but compare it with the robust, tactile, grounded sensuality of most of his work.  Witness the colorful, firm, full-bodied, earthbound bathing beauties below painted around the early 1970's.




And then here is the print that haunts me with its wispy, airy, circus like figures whose birdlike tracks will soon be washed up by the sea beyond.  2006 print, Tide Figures:




Wayne Thiebaud, Tide Figures, printed at Crown Point Press, 2006
http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/exhibitions/crown-point-press-50

And finally here are some retrospective commentaries in video and print:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vI_QJ5D9Qm8
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/Wayne-Thiebaud-is-Not-a-Pop-Artist.html#