Perspective --- Day 9/82

Walk: Presidio
Distance: 3 Miles, Yoga

San Francisco National Cemetery, July 4, 2020

Red at the Library --- Day 9/81

Walk: Presidio
Distance: 5 miles, Yoga

Everywhere Puce --- Day 9/80

Walk: No
Distance: Yoga


Perhaps she is facile, but bright colors to Ciwt are happy colors and dark ones aren't.  There's a particular dark color that she finds gloomy bordering on alienating.  Puce.

By definition puce is a dark red or purple brown, a brownish purple-grey color.  Ick!  It gets worse: Puce (according to an online source) means 'flea' in French, and (the source goes on) its use as a color is said to refer to the color of bloodstains in your sheets due to flea bites.

So why oh why did Mark Rothko have to use puce throughout his Rothko Chapel (and put an end Ciwt's unqualified love of his art)?

Rothko Chapel, Interior, Houston

Perhaps his Houston patrons who commissioned the Rothko Chapel, John and Dominique de Menil,  had the same question. Reportedly Dominique's first reaction when she saw the paintings was "Frankly, I expected color."  (Yes!  Those beautiful stirring colors from earlier in the 60's - and yesterday's CIWT). Actually, Rothko had an answer to that question: It took him a year to decide what the paintings should be: Something you don't want to look at. 
 
Rothko's health, state of mind and, likely, spirit were deteriorating as he painted the Chapel paintings in a New York studio in 1967.  In late 1970, a year before the Chapel opened, he committed suicide, and the story of the Chapel became complicated and controversial.

Perhaps the main controversy surrounds the beauty and feeling of the Rothko Chapel.  There are many, locally and internationally, who adore the paintings and come in solitude to meditate, reflect, be with their private thoughts. As Carol Mancusi-Ungaro, a conservator for the Whitney Museum wrote in 2001, "The Chapel ..leaves you alone with yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, your vulnerabilities..The artist did not want the paintings to come out to you; he wanted them to draw you in." 

Then there is the other camp.  One Texas artist is quoted as saying bluntly of the chapel, "It is a place where art and life and imagination go to die." And, one of Rothko's greatest art critic defenders described the Chapel as "at worst a well-designed crematorium." 

Rothko Chapel Exterior

Sight unseen, Ciwt has a pretty good sense of where she positions herself in this debate.  If he just hadn't chosen PUCE.....

Let There Be Light --- Day 9/79

Walk: Hood
Distance: 4.4 miles, Yoga

So, Ciwt is a longtime fan of Mark Rothko's art.

Rothko was at heart a musician; classical music was rarely off as he painted.  He immersed himself in the sounds, particularly Mozart's, the way Mozart's musical textures gave way to emotionality.  Joy, tragedy, ecstacy.  That power of  'going beyond' into spirit was Rothko's near impossible quest for his canvasses.

And so often it is what he achieved with his softly bleeding blocks of rich color.  In the 50's and 60's, his heyday, his works were titled simply - the year, a number, sometimes mention of the colors - but their effects were huge. At MoMA in the 1960's Ciwt remembers  numerous people dissolving into tears within moments of encountering his canvasses.  It was unexpected and spontaneous for them; something about his large expanses of subtly applied color tapped into their emotions and spirit in a profound, sensory way.

Orange Red Yellow, 1961

And there was inner light.  His colors were so compressed, the many washes so skillfully layered, the depth so deep that the best - and there were many - emitted a glow.  Like a very muted sun, even the dark ones.  If some of those were put together in an unlit room, they would literally light the room of their own accord.  Ciwt saw this for herself in one room at MoMA filled with several of his blue and black works.  The room was transporting; it felt as if she was bathed in moonglow.

It was magical and remarkable.  Ethereal, and Ciwt certainly wasn't alone in feeling this.  One of Rothko's curators for a London exhibition captured the effect of this genius:  “[Rothko] asked me to switch all the lights off [late afternoon, when daylight had practically gone], everywhere; and suddenly, Rothko’s colours made its own light: the effect, once the retina had adjusted itself, was unforgettable, smoldering and blazing and glowing softly from the walls – colour in darkness… the world Rothko had made, in those perfect conditions, radiating its own energy and uncorrupted by artifice or the market place.”

But, as deeply as Rothko's art speaks to her, she has questions about about  how she would respond to visiting the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.   More on that tomorrow.

Still Standing --- Days 9/76, 77 & 78

Walk: 1. No  2. Hood 3. Presidio
Distance: 1. Yoga  2. 3.5 miles, Yoga  3. 4 Miles, Yoga

Blackened Spire way in the distance

Framed between the tree trunks, Ciwt was happy to see the charred presence of Goldsworthy's Spire still standing today. 

Her (perfect 👍 - and happenstance) centering of Spire between those trees would make the French artist Claude Lorrain (1604/5-1682) proud.  Well, probably not; Lorrain, who invented this 'split tree' framing technique had plenty of proud ego which he wasn't in the habit of sharing.  Witness the fact that he went by and is still known by his single, first name, Claude.

In his time such nomenclature was exceeding rare and allowed to only the most gifted: Michangelo, Leonardo, Rembrandt - and Claude.  What Claude did to earn his exalted contemporary reputation and place in artistic history was elevate landscape scenes from the bottom rung of the hierarchy of subjects to a genre that was avidly collected by patrons on the Grand Tour of Italy where he painted.

He did this primarily by applying to the lowly landscape the classically ordered and harmonious techniques taught by the all-powerful Academie Royale.  And then he populated his paintings with mythic, idyllic or bibilical figures and architectural elements in the ancient Greek style.  And, voila, with him, landscape began its ascendancy to the most beloved and sought after form of painting it is today.

Claude, Landscape with Dancing Figures, 1648, oil on canvas

Home Yoga --- Day 9/75

Walk: No
Distance: 0, Yoga (x2)

Some people have elaborate yoga/meditation spaces.  Not Ciwt; hers is pretty simple, mat on top of area rug, props available.  The great thing about yoga mats is they fit just about anywhere - even bathrooms if that is only place you can find privacy and peace for your practice.

Home Deck --- Days 9/73 & 74

Walks: 1. No  2. Trader Joe's
Distance: 1. 0, yoga   2. 2 miles, yoga

Finding Home is often a near mystical experience.

In Ciwt's case, her home has split feelings.  You come to the front or street half after climbing 70 (!) stairs.  This half is classically Victorian, and, when Ciwt first followed the For Sale sign up those stairs and saw it, her reaction was 'Very nice, but ho hum.  Not home.'

Then she turned the other direction, headed down the hallway and came into a library type room (now her 'everything room') that felt decidely more modern.  Wood cased windows but lower, very light, cozy.  At the end of that room, through a glass door in a traditional frame, she saw Home! in the form of a huge deck, or a deck as large as the living room and much larger than most residential city decks anywhere.  It was instant access to the outdoors, from the top floor, safely 70 stairs up from the street.  It was nature, freedom, sanctuary, and from the moment she saw it, it became all hers.  All that was left was the paperwork as far as she was concerned.

That was forty years and several Ciwt, cat and planting lifetimes ago.  During all those times she has loved and appreciated her deck, and, certainly never more than now during our present prolonged shelter-in-place times.

Ex Spire (?), cont. --- Day 9/72

Walk: Spire, Breck's on Arguello
Distance:  4 miles

Ciwt visited the damaged Spire* today and found it meditative and peaceful in its charred state.  She is hoping the Presidio Trust can find a way to keep the sculpture standing.  

* Here is the SF Chronicle report