Let's Get Real --- Day 9/289

Walk: No, doesn't call

Distance: n/a, Yoga

Ivan Kramskoi (Russian, 1837-87), Portrait of an Unknown Woman, 1883, o/c

So, here again is a work by Ivan Kramskoi, the Russian painter featured in yesterday's CIWT.  The woman he depicts against a St. Petersburg palace has sensuous lips, hazy eyes, thick curved eyebrows.  If you look closely she also has skin imperfections, freckles, maybe a pimple on her nose.  She's not so much beautiful as impressive and 'chic,' dressed in the latest fashion of the time.  Demi-monde fashion to be exact.  Not without reason critics at the time called her "the courtesan in a carriage," and "an offspring of big cities." And these assessments must have pleased Kramskoi because it was his full intention to bring a real life prostitute, as she really looked, onto the canvas.

Does she in any way remind you of this woman, another, ah hem, odalisque?

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867), La Grande Olalisque, 1814, o/c

The artist here has made his courtesan or prostitute acceptable by portraying her as an exotic from the Far East.  He has also turned her into a statue of sorts with flawlessly unrealistic skin, and a body that is too long and lacks all signs of joints. Essentially, he has purified her and brought her out of private male salons into the public.  

The 'he' in this case is Dominque Ingres, a French neo-classical painter who was so influential in Paris, Rome and later Russia, that he could do whatever he wanted. The St.Petersburg Academy of Arts embraced him whole-heartedly sending some of its most notable painters abroad to France and Italy to learn his "statuesque" style.  Those who didn't go abroad were taught their art by studying and copying the Academy's sizeable collection of neo-classical artworks.

This until Kramskoi and some of his young fellow students challenged the Academy, asserting their freedom to paint realistically.  Unable to effect Academic changes and led by Kramskoi, they publically  broke with (and/or were expelled from) the Academy and began their own movement which became known as peredvizhniki or itinerants. Classically trained but now dedicated to portraying real life and bringing art to the people, they organized their own exhibitions, traveling from town to town across Russia.  

In the process, men went from looking like this: (Ingres, Male Torso, 1800)

to looking more like this 1867 Self-Portrait by Ivan Kramskoi.

Gradually Kramskoi's aspirations to portray the true expressiveness and real circumstances his images took hold with folowing generations of Russian artists. By the end of the 1800's portrait subjects were being painted with personalities and complex human emotions, and our 'unknown woman' and her ilk were out of their carriages and seen on the walls of Russian galleries, museums, dachas and some of those St. Petersburg palaces.

TBR (ie, To Be Read) --- Day 9/288

Walk: Presidio Pickleball

Distance: 2.3 miles, 1 hour pickle, yoga

Ivan Kramskoi, Woman Reading/Portrait of Sofia Kramskaya, ca. 1886, 

                Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

How are You doing with that pile of books somewhere near your bed?  Ciwt thinks she's making a dent, then sees or hears of another title, and.....you know.

Lights, Water, Man --- Day 287

Walk: Day of Rest and Reading

Distance: n/a, Yoga

Carl Svantje Hallbeck (Swedish 1826-97), Waterfall Harspanget, 1856, chromolithograph printed by Julius Hellesen, 7.7" x 10.7"

So, mindful that the East Coast is in the midst of a blizzard today, Ciwt is back to winter and early artistic accomplishments. She has never seen the aurora borealis (northern lights)* but can't imagine it could be much more spectacular than this 1856 print.  What a fine, almost chilling, image!  

If Ciwt had been sitting on a rock cliff with eerie lights flashing and dancing above her and waterfalls and white rapids thundering around her, she doubts she would have been chatting with friends around a campfire.  Guess people were much more courageous back then....Or - and probably - the print is an artistic statement about man's relationship with nature.  What do you think Hallbeck is saying about that?

*Great video of what the artist (and these men) saw

String! --- Day 9/285 & 286

Walk: 1. Presidio Pickleball  2. Trader Joe's

Distance: 1. 2.5 miles, 2 hours pickle   2. 2.5 miles, Yoga

So, Ciwt thought she'd take a quick look at the history of fabric and clothes, then report on CIWT.  

That turned out like taking a quick glance at the entire worldwide history of art.  In other words, it includes virtually everything.  First off,  everyone was naked for who knows how many tens of thousands of years or whether they had become humans yet.  Along the long, long way, discoveries were made or invented at different times in different parts of the world depending on myriad circumstances.

The more she researches, the happier she is (and you too!) that she wasn't one of our (pre) people ancestors. For instance, there's not a chance that she would have pulled fibers from the inside of tree bark and begun rolling and rolling them on her thigh.  And then! after weeks of rolling when she had enough strands, no way would she have thought to twist them around each other until she'd created string.  So, with Ciwt in charge there wouldn't have been fishing lines and nets, bows for hunting and creating fire, bags to wrap and carry bundles, straps to carry babies close to the chest and so much more that our civilization relied on.  Oh, and clothes!   

And the blue in those jeans we all - worldwide -  have multiple pairs of and wear for everything from work to fashion?  You can't imagine how much artifice and effort it took to produce that indigo dye from certain types of green plant leaves.  Once that stable pigment was figured out, it was terrific for ink or paint.  But getting it to adhere to cloth, well that was cave person rocket science.  Then there's all the, you know, factories, trading routes, money and banking and other things that needed to be invented before we could all step into our daily jeans.

The other day Ciwt was writing about Super Kids as if they are something new.  But, come to think of it, our ancestors were the original Super Kids.  They may have been 'primitive,' but boy were they smart, resourceful and creative.

Make Way for Super Kids --- Day 9/284

Walk: Presidio Pickleball

Distance: 2.5 miles, 90 minutes pickle, yoga stretch

Ella Emhoff                           Amanda Gorman

Juat when Ciwt was thinking about writing an entry or two about fabric and fashion she remembered the images of these two brilliant young fashionistas.  Icons already!  

She'd also been thinking of a friend's grandson who is applying to colleges.  He has never seen a grade much less than 4/A, is an accomplished woodworker and photographer and who knows what other achievements. In Ciwt's day, colleges would have been competing to recruit him. But, these days, as her friend points out "...if he had the cure for cancer he’d be able to take his pick, but short of that, it’s kind of a crap shoot."

It's like a super race evolving.  The kids seem to be nice, normal, taking it amazingly in stride and Ciwt finds it is uplifting to see and hear about.  Go kids!!

**Capital Knowlege --- Day 9/283

Walk: mailbox in the rain 

Distance: 1 mile,  yoga

So the other day Ciwt wrote a whole entry about art in the U.S. Capital Building.  She wrote it, proof read it, posted it and went about her Blursday.   

Maybe you caught it.  Luckily one of her most faithful readers did and sent Ciwt a gentle message pointing out that the building our representatives occupy in our nation's Capital is the U.S. Capitol Building.  It sits on Capitol Hill in the Capital.

Thank you, alert, supportive reader and editor!  Ciwt rushed to replace all those capitals (except the headline) with capitols.  

As if she knew that but had just overlooked the misuse of the word. But actually it was just a cover up. Sometimes/Always honest, Ciwt must confess that she'd proofread just fine. The mistake lay in the fact that she has apparently been playing fast and loose with Capital/Capitol for quite a while - even though she lived in the Capital and worked on Capitol Hill.  Were it not for her reader/editor, the Days 9/280 -281 entry would have stood as is forever.

Capitol now joins a couple of other words Ciwt simply doesn't retain or something.  Knowledge is another. Throughout her schooling, she was dinged consistently for: acknowlegement, knowledgable, etc.  Several times one teacher had her copy the correct spelling 50 times each so she'd get it right. Then back she came with foreknowlege.

For some reason she's a whiz at (or only has to think a moment about) some of the most misspelled and misused words like:  Practice/Practise;  Affect/Effect;  Discrete/Discreet;  Enquiry/Inquiry.  But then there are those days she tries to figure out how to spell 'the' by sounding it out. T-u? T-u-h? Th-a?

Maybe you have a few of those word confusions yourself.  If not, Ciwt hopes you'll forgive her and keep reading CIWT.  

Yes you say?  Oh, Capital!

  

Tuesday Yet? --- Day 9/282

Walk: Nails! Haircut!!🙆

Distance: 2.8 miles

This afternoon Ciwt saw a man wearing a "Is It Tuesday Yet?" tee.  Guess he's just as confused as  Friends' Joey - and the rest of us these days.  Ciwt just knows its the day she got her first haircut since a brief non-lockdown window last May. 

Capital Art** --- Days 9/280 & 281

Walk: 1. Presidio Pickleball, Monday Errands  2. Recycling stair trips

Distance: 1. 5 miles, 90 minutes pickle   2. just 1 mile

United States Capital Building Rotunda, Washington, D.C.

So, in her youth, when she worked for a U.S. Congressman, Ciwt would walk down the corridors of the House and Senate Office Buildings and through Statuary Hall and the Rotunda multiple times a day. Maybe giving a tour to visitors or delivering a message or just walking around during her lunch hour.


In all that time, how much of the over 300 pieces of art in the Capitol Building did she notice? It is safe to say virtually none beyond a passing glance at the statues. Such can be the obliviousness of youth or of Ciwt's youth, or the way we travel in and out of offices without paying much attention to the surroundings. And also the fact that Ciwt's art taste at the time was mostly modern (from the Impressionists on at the Phillips Collection) or she thought of the National Gallery as the only real place to look for more traditional art.


Or something. But when she gets back there, she will look up at Constantino Brumidi's* rotunda mural of George Washington ascending to heaven, The Apotheosis of Washington, (1865) : . And she'll walk around until she locates Howard Chadler Christy's painting of the Signing of the Constitution (1940)


And she'll certainly spend some time with the rotunda's Frieze of American History (ca. 1859-1961). Allyn Cox's The Birth of Aviation (1903) looks to her to be especially charming:




Or maybe some of her readers will get there before her and not make young Ciwt's mistake of overlooking the Capitol Building's art.

* Italian born Constantino Brumini emigrated to the U.S. at age 44 during a tumultuous time in Rome. He settled in New York, became a naturalized citizen and must have had some talent for self-promotion along with his clear artistic talent. He visited D.C. during the time the Capitol dome and rotunda were being completed, was introduced to the man in charge of the project and commissioned to paint a mural in the House Agricultural Committee meeting room. It was so favorably received, he was commissioned to decorate many sections of the Capitol and to do his chief work: the dome ceiling and segments of the American History Frieze. The hallways of the Senate are now known as the Brumidi Corridors, and in 2008 the President posthumously awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal.

** See Day 9/283 Ahead