Books I'm Reading: Night Studio

Musa Mayer's Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston (Knopf, 1988) has been in my bookshelves for years - more than 25 years. When I took it down recently to finally read it, the sales slip was still in it. I bought it on September 2, 1989 at a store in Nihonbashi, in Tokyo. I paid $5,900 for it, which in those days was about $40 (¥146/$). I tended to buy whatever looked of interest and was willing to pay what it cost because interesting English-language books were comparatively hard to find in Tokyo at the time.  

Musa Mayer, born Musa Guston, is the painter's daughter. While she is not otherwise a writer, as far as I know, she writes very well, painting a vivid picture (unavoidable pun?) of what it was like to grow up in the shadow of a famous man and particularly of her stained relationship with her father who appears to have been more attentive to his painting than he was to his family – which is not to say that he was cruel or manipulative. He was simply devoted to his work. 

Additionally, the book was interesting on a personal level because it turns out that the author left New York and her parents as a young bride and lived and worked in Yellow Springs and Dayton, Ohio – both locations I know well. It's odd how often Yellow Springs seems to pop up. Among my artist friends here in Sonoma County, two have lived in Yellow Springs, and one, like Musa Mayer, worked at Antioch College, in Yellow Springs. According to the book, Mayer became a counsellor and worked with youth patients at Good Samaritan Hospital, in Dayton. I walked past Good Samaritan every day on my way to high school, although my school is no longer standing and I've heard that Good Samaritan is gone too. 

Rain: The week of 16 December 2024

In the past few days, we've had rain off and on. Since last reporting, 5.4 inches of new precipitation has accumulated in the rain gauge at my location. That brings our total for the 2024–2025 rainy season to 20.3 inches as of the morning of 18 December. Some stations have reported as much as almost 22 inches. Both are well ahead of normal for this time of the year. Usually we've had about 8.6 inches by this date. Average annual rainfall in Santa Rosa is around 34 inches. It's clear today, but more rain is in the forecast over the upcoming weekend. 

On the Road – Los Angeles 2024 Day 3

I set aside my third and final full day in Los Angeles last week to visit the Getty Center, which I last saw almost 20 years ago. My son and I headed for Santa Monica early, planning to have a quick breakfast in town before our 10 o’clock ticket time at the Getty, which is a short drive into the hills above the city, but we found it hard to locate a place to sit for a quick bite on a Sunday morning. There must be somewhere in Santa Monica with shops and cafés open early, but we didn’t find it. We eventually located a coffee shop in a mostly deserted business district, ate, and headed for the museum.

So much to see! We started with Van Gogh. One of the most famous objects in the Getty’s collections is one of Van Goghs iris paintings. A small one-room exhibit is currently devoted to an analysis of pigments used in the painting showing how some of them have changed over time through exposure to light. The irises are a violet-blue today, but, based on the analysis, Getty conservators believe the irises would have been noticeably more violet when new because the red pigment the painter used to mix his violet – geranium lake (known to be fugitive) – has faded. The original is displayed along with details of the analysis and a re-created version of the painting that the conservators believe is what it would have looked like when fresh. The irises are more violet in the reconstruction, the earth at the bottom left is a more vibrant terra cotta color, the orange flowers at upper left are more orange.

Another one-room exhibit, Magnified Wonders: An 18th-Century Microscope, focuses on a large gilded microscope made in the 1750s, complete with an elaborate case, various accessories, and contemporary slides prepared for use under its lenses – a beautiful instrument. 

Perhaps the main event at the moment is a large, multi-room show called Lumen: The Art and Science of Light, 800–1600 that examines the human fascination with light from the early Middle Ages to the late-Renaissance/early Enlightenment period. The exhibition presents a wealth of material on the subject from religious, scientific, and artistic perspectives. 

After viewing Lumen, we had a quick lunch and took a break from viewing art as a group of falconers (looking like they had just been teleported from a Renaissance fair) was giving a talk about birds of prey used for hunting in one of the open spaces just outside the museum buildings. I was disappointed that they didn’t let any of the birds fly, but it was fun to see owls (a Barn Owl, a Great-horned Owl, a Burrowing Owl, and a Western Screech Owl), hawks (two Harris’s Hawks), and a Gyrfalcon up close and to hear about how they’re handled. I hadn’t known that owls have traditionally been used by falconers, but not for hunting. They are used instead to stir up birds that get spooked in the presence of owls, such as crows and blackbirds, which are then hunted on the wing by the hawks and falcons. 

After seeing the birds, we looked at a small show of drawings and watercolors focused on how artists have depicted light through history using these media and we also saw the permanent collection, which includes paintings, sculpture, ceramics, and furnishings from various periods. It was a long, tiring, but satisfying visit. 

Between the Getty and dinner, there wasn’t a lot to do. We mostly walked around rather uninteresting neighborhoods back in town until the time of our reservation at a restaurant called Rustic Canyon, which turned out to be excellent. We had an Anjou pear, walnut, honeyed date, and blue cheese salad to start. The pears were extraordinarily fragrant – like perfume. We had a birria of beef with polenta and delicata squash. We had trout with sunchokes and sorrel and we had one other dish, which I can’t recall. Along with the food, we enjoyed a Domaine Breton Bourgeuil Rosé. I’m always happy while traveling when I’ve eaten well and grateful to have the privilege of being able to eat well. 

After dinner, my son dropped me off back at my hotel in East Hollywood before heading back to his own hotel, in Torrance, where he is doing job training. It was a good visit. We had a lot of time to talk.

The following day, after taking the bus back to The Record Collector (as described in an earlier post here), I hailed an Uber to LAX. From there, it was an uneventful flight back to Sonoma County.  When it comes to flying, uneventful is how I like it. 

On the Road – Los Angeles 2024, Day 2

My second day in the LA area started with a visit to The Record Collector on Melrose Ave. in East Hollywood, but the Norton Simon Museum and the Pasadena Playhouse, both in Pasadena, were my main aims on day two. We headed north from the record store in my son’s rented car. The Saturday morning traffic was light. We arrived in less than half an hour.

As we walked from the car to the entrance of the museum, one of several guards in the parking lot (stationed to ensure no one parks and then leaves a car without entering the museum) greeted us and, hearing that we were first-time visitors, enthusiastically recommended a plan to make the most of our time. The Norton Simon Museum building is in the shape of an H, he told us, with the permanent condition consisting mostly of Western painting on the ground floor and Asian sculpture on the floor below. The guard recommended seeing the ground floor paintings in chronological order, which requires starting at the lower-right arm of the H, where pre-renaissance works are housed, going straight to the end of the upper-right arm, going back through the middle of the museum – along the crossbar of the H – to the lower-left arm and then going straight to the end of the upper-left arm to see the most recent works. I immediately thought of driving a four-speed stick shift; essentially, he was saying “start in fourth gear, downshift into third, slide through neutral over and down into second, and then downshift into first." We took his advice. 

I had no idea that the famous Adam and Eve pair by Lucas Cranach the Elder is at the Norton Simon. It would have been worth the trip just to see these, but the collection includes choice pieces from every period through the Post-Impressionists and beyond. I’ve included images here of some of my favorites. Tired after viewing the ground floor art, we looked only briefly at the Asian sculpture collection on the lower floor. It was extensive and clearly top-notch, a collection I’ll look forward to seeing in detail on another visit. Again, a few images are included here. 

Art museums generally close too early for an evening meal to begin, so there’s always dead time between the end of a day looking at art and sitting down to food and drink. After finishing at the Norton Simon, we had about two hours before our dinner reservation. 

My son wanted to visit Yoshan Tea, in Arcadia, about 20 minutes east of Pasadena, a purveyor of fine oolong teas from Taiwan. We had time for a quick visit. The place didn’t look like much from the outside. We entered from the back door, which opens onto a strip mall parking lot. Inside, however, I was reminded of shops like Fortnum and Mason in London and Fauchon in Paris. The teas were beautifully packaged and beautifully displayed, some costing as much as $200–$300 for a small tin. My son bought a very small tin of one of the less fancy offerings. I got a couple of $4 sampler packs. It was a nice diversion.

We then headed back into downtown Pasadena to take a look at the Spanish revival Pasadena Playhouse, which has been the California State Theater since 1937. The place was closed ahead of the evening’s performance with only an occasional staff member slipping in or out from the main entrance doors. Two ticket sellers seated behind glass panels off to one side of the main doors refused to let me even peek into the lobby while preparations were under way. Neither could answer my few questions about the place. The host at the bar housed in a section of the Playhouse complex on the opposite side of the main entrance was equally clueless. I can’t understand working in an historic building and having no curiosity about its past.

Denied entry, we wandered around outside and discovered along a passageway a wall of mounted bricks with names fired into them – hundreds of these bricks. I went back and asked about their purpose, wanting to know whether they were the names of men and women who had studied or performed at the Playhouse, wondering if my father’s name might be among them, but the ticket sellers didn’t know. We examined all the bricks and failed to find my father’s name. We did, however, discover an inconspicuous brick that seemed to indicate that these were the names of deceased alumni. It was then puzzling to find Kevin Costner’s name on a brick and the names of a few other actors not yet dead. Among the dead of note was Groucho Marx, but mostly the names were unfamiliar. Just as we were leaving, I asked a staff member going in if I could have a look inside, explaining that my father had performed there. He kindly let us take a quick look at the lobby but he wouldn’t let us see inside the theater itself. 

We left. We looked around a couple of used record stores – one an inviting hole in the wall called Sibylline Records, another larger and fairly nondescript. Heading back to the car, we noticed a line of bollards that looked very much like lingams we had seen earlier in the day at the Norton Simon Museum (a lingam is a Hindu phallic pillar that represents Shiva and the generative force. These usually have a square base topped by an octagonal section topped by a rounded section. Often the rounded section clearly resembles the head of a penis, sometimes it’s more abstract. The bollards in Pasadena were abstract, but they made us laugh).

By this time, it was time for our dinner reservation at Celestino, which turned out to be something of a disappointment; the service was poorly coordinated, we felt rushed. We did, however, enjoy an excellent 2018 Il Poggione Brunello di Montalcino. 

The Pasadena Playhouse was on our way back from dinner again and, as we headed for the car, we passed the front steps just as intermission was beginning. The front doors were flung open. A crowd emerged. We took the opportunity to slip in. I was happy to finally get at least a brief look at the interior of the theater. It has high, curved ceilings with carved beams. There are faux balconies in white plaster on the side walls. The stage appears more modern than the rest of the interior. The seats, too, looked newer. I tried to imagine my father on the stage. He had worked there with Leonard Nimoy, Charles Bronson, and many others.

Outside again, we chatted with a woman who appeared connected with the Playhouse at a more senior level than the others we had briefly spoken with. She wore a name badge with a title, but I didn’t catch her name. She was very interested to hear about my father. On my phone, I pulled up an obituary I wrote for him shortly after he died largely based on old résumés I found among his papers. One of these résumés mentioned the various actors and actresses he had worked with. When I said that he had worked with Victor Jory, the woman lit up and said “you must come see the bell!” The bell had just been rung to alert the crowd to the end of intermission. “That’s the Victor Jory Bell!” she said excitedly. She led us to a small bell across from the main doors that we hadn’t noticed on our earlier visit and directed our attention to a plaque behind it explaining that Jory had given it to the theater for the purpose of alerting patrons to the start of performances and the end of intermissions – the purpose that it serves to this day. The serendipitous timing of our passing by the theater again was responsible for a satisfying end to the day.

On the Road: Los Angeles 2024 – The Record Collector

Last summer I came across an SFGATE article about an old record store in Los Angeles and its quirky owner. It was an entertaining read. I saved a link to it on the desktop of my computer thinking that someday it would be fun to see the place but with no immediate prospect or plans for a trip to LA. I’d forgotten about it until my recent somewhat impromptu trip to the city suddenly made a visit to the store a possibility. The Record Collector turned out to be about 20 blocks from my hotel but a straight run down Melrose Ave – a fact that would later prove convenient. 

My son and I had planned to spend the day, my second day in the LA area, in Pasadena because I wanted to see the Norton Simon Museum and to show him the famous Pasadena Playhouse, where my father studied and performed between 1948 and 1951. I had proposed visiting the record store the night before and over a quick breakfast we decided to go, despite a little nervousness as the owner of the store is a notorious curmudgeon. Although he offers thousands and thousands of LPs (and LPs only), mainly jazz and classical, he does not allow casual browsing. He expects you to know what you’re looking for when you walk in. 

I had sent the SFGATE article to my son ahead of time, so he knew what to expect. We both made lists of what we were interested in and had them ready on our phones. We parked several blocks away and strolled down Melrose Ave., stopping in thrift stores, used clothing stores, and head shops along the way but eventually arrived in front of The Record Collector. 

When I walked in, the owner, Mr. Chase, probably in his late 70s, was slumped a little in a wooden chair near the cash register, which appears to be his customary spot to wait for customers, giving the impression of a spider in his web. 

The walls of The Record Collector are lined floor to ceiling with records. Most of the floor area is occupied by bins full of more records, many of them new-old stock (old records but still unopened). Movie posters are displayed on the ceiling. At the back of the main sales area a small hallway connects to a much larger storage room with, according to Mr. Chase, five times as many records as in the front of the store. Mr. Chase owns the entire building. 

Contrary to his reputation, he turned out to be quite friendly and talkative – very talkative. Maybe I should say that, in keeping with his reputation, he was friendly and talkative because I announced as I walked in that I had a list. Being a classical listener and collector, I was hoping to find obscure pressings of some favorite releases or releases by particular performers. I had prepared a list of specific discs with labels and catalog numbers noted, but Mr. Chase’s mental inventory of his stock is not built that way; he wanted to know what compositions I was interested in, so I switched gears and started by offering that I was interested in Bartók and particularly a recording of the Violin Concerto in the Bartók Béla Complete Edition series on Hungaroton. He called out to the back and Henry, his assistant, a tiny, elderly man with a full grey beard, emerged. 

When bidden to find and produce the recording I mentioned, Henry disappeared into the back and returned with a ladder as big as he was. Mr. Chase offered no help. Henry, despite his apparent age, seemed to need none. Without hesitation, Henry navigated to a spot in a back corner of the store, planted his ladder and climbed unexpectedly nimbly to the highest level of the stacks. He soon came down with a big handful of records, including the recording of the violin concerto, which Mr. Chase proceeded to claim was a $100 record – rare, and that he would sell it only to someone who would really appreciate it. I willingly went along for the ride, although I knew this particular disc, in mint condition, was available on line for less than half as much. I was buying an experience as much as anything tangible. I decided to buy the record and chose a couple others, similarly overpriced relative to online offerings and what I consistently find in thrift stores. I didn’t mention prices but the mention of thrift stores set Mr. Chase off on a speech about how they offered no selection while he had virtually anything you might need. Mr. Chase clearly does not understand the pleasure of wandering around in a store, the pleasure of a serendipitous find. I didn’t argue with him about any of his opinions. I was in a relaxed, expansive mood.

We chatted as we went from bin to bin, a new bin every time I mentioned another interest. Mostly I listened as Mr. Chase talked on – about the evils of digital music, the evils of streaming music, about how young people today have ruined their ears because digitally delivered music is all they know, about how he has never sold a single CD in the 50 years he’s been in business (The Record Collector is the oldest record store in Los Angeles), about his days as a violinist, about the books written by his concert pianist wife or mother (I didn’t catch which). I didn’t argue. As Mr. Chase and I talked and moved around the store, my son began looking for jazz records, with Henry in tow. Both he (my son) and I eventually settled on a few items of interest and gathered together our purchases. We paid and left and laughed about the experience, which turned out to be more fun than we had anticipated. 

Normally when I buy used records, I carefully inspect them before buying. In this case, the records I chose were still factory sealed (despite being 40–50 years old), except for the violin concerto, which, Mr. Chase assured me, would “play like new.” I took him at his word. When I got back to the hotel, however, I was disappointed to find that the disc was badly scratched. I was willing to overpay for a fun morning and a mint copy of a record I’d been looking for for some time, but I felt cheated. I blamed myself and was prepared to chalk it up to experience, but eventually decided I should take the record back. And so I did on the morning of my last day in the city on the way to the airport to catch my flight back to Sonoma County, although I was nervous about how he would react.

The bus that runs down Melrose Avenue, past the Paramount Studios complex, dropped me in front of the open door of The Record Collector at a bus stop I hadn’t noticed on my first visit. Mr. Chase was in his web when I arrived. He bridled when I complained. He said he didn’t offer refunds. He went on about how the noise was in the original recording, not understanding that I hadn’t yet heard the record, that I had no record player in my hotel room, that I was objecting to the physical condition of the disc not the sound. He demanded to see what I was talking about. He nearly snatched the record from my hands as I pulled it out of the bag I had carried it in. He backed down eventually after peering at the surface of the LP and allowed me to choose a few to take in its place. I made my selections and he somewhat grudgingly agreed to the trade I proposed. Before I left, he offered to let me hear the Bartók disc, but I was on my way to the airport and I couldn’t spare the time. I still overpaid for what I ended up with, but in the end was satisfied enough to let it go. The Record Collector has dozens and dozens of one-star reviews on line. They are rather entertaining to read. I particularly liked one that compared Mr. Chase and Henry to Dr. Frankenstein and Igor. 

On the Road: Los Angeles 2024

I recently had an opportunity to visit Los Angeles for the first time in many years. My son was visiting the city for work, and flying to LA from Sonoma County takes less time (about 58 minutes) than it takes to drive from home to San Francisco (admittedly, an unfair comparison considering the time it takes to get out of the airport on arrival and then into the city from LAX, but it seemed close), so I decided to meet up with him for a couple of days. I’m afraid I dragged him around to a lot of museums, but he didn’t seem to mind and it was good to see him. 

On my first day, I was on my own. I took an Uber directly to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from LAX where I had arrived two hours late because our departure had been delayed. LA was shrouded in fog in the morning. Having done some math, I decided it would be cheaper to Uber than to rent a car for three days, so I cancelled my car reservation and hailed a ride. Oil derricks along South La Cienaga Blvd. near Ladera Heights, part of the Inglewood Oil Field, discovered in 1924 and in continuous production since then (thanks Wikipedia), seemed quintessentially LA.

My driver, a Palestinian who told me he splits his time between a home in Egypt and a home in LA, spent the entire trip complaining about Uber and the people in Los Angeles and their driving manners. While driving, he was distracted by trying to find a nearby Islamic center for his daily prayers, and more concerned about finding an accommodating place to kneel than he was in getting me to my destination, but I eventually found the entrance to the park in which LACMA sits after he dropped me and hurried off. 

I had seen on the map that the museum complex sits right next to the La Brea Tar Pits, about which I have heard since early childhood (I vaguely remember an illustration of a trapped saber-toothed tiger in one of the dinosaur books I had as a child). After seeing the art museum, I strolled around the pits.

With the exception of one large pit known as Lake Pit (a pond of black water rippled here and there by bubbles of methane gas coming to the surface), the gummy pits are easy to miss as their surfaces are covered with leaves, dirt, twigs, and other debris that has fallen into them and stuck there. It’s not hard to see how an animal could walk into one not realizing the danger. According to informative placards in various places around the pits, most of the fossilized skeletons (apparently thousands have been recovered since excavations began more than 100 years ago) are partial because predators like wolves and saber-toothed tigers would commonly approach trapped animals, rip limbs from them, and take the body parts away to eat (sometimes getting caught themselves). People today are preserved from the danger by fences. The Tar Pit Museum looked interesting, but I will have to save that for another trip. It was the end of the day, I was tired, and the smell of the pits (the smell of asphalt) had given me a headache. 

LACMA, it turns out, has a good collection of German expressionist works. I know the work of artists such as Kirchner, Dix, Heckel, Nolde, and Schmidt-Rotluff through woodcuts, but LACMA has several substantial paintings by some of these that were interesting to see (in addition to a good collection of those woodcuts). The museum has a number of good Picassos and I was surprised to learn that Magritte’s famous 'La Trahison des Images', or, in English, 'The Treachery of Images (This is not a Pipe)'. is here. I was very pleased to see in person Lee Krasner’s 'Desert Moon' (1955), a large painting with strips of painted paper collaged into the surface, as 'Desert Moon' is on the cover of a book about Krasner I recently finished. 

After taking in the permanent collection, I looked at a special exhibition called 'Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film', which, among many other things, included small graph paper sketches by Susan Kare for some of her icon designs for the original Macintosh.

As noted above, I was pretty wiped out by the time I finished at the museum and, after my brief stroll around the La Brea Tar Pits, I headed to my hotel in East Hollywood and took a nap ahead of meeting up with my son for a dinner that turned out to be memorable. My hotel room had a view of a billiard parlor, and, through a gap between buildings in the foreground, a distant view of the Hollywood sign in the hills. Turner Classic Movies was showing 'Wuthering Heights' when I dozed off, Olivier's 'Hamlet' when I awoke.

Based on online reviews and instinct, I booked our evening meal at Saffy’s, in LA’s Little Armenia, only about 10 minutes north of the hotel. There was a dense crowd of people outside the place hoping to get tables when we arrived and the restaurant was full inside. I’m glad I had thought the day before to make a reservation. We were seated after only a brief wait.

Cucumber and zucchini with ginger, shallots, mint, chili oil, pine nuts and tzatziki vinaigrette was the opener. Simple but delicious. Next came kabocha and fennel tempura with herb serrano aioli and Kashmiri chili. Again, simple, but perfect – the tempura was as good as any I’ve ever had in Japan or better and the sauces were inspired. A plate of turmeric mussels completed the starters, all of which we shared. The mussels came with carrot, habanero, lime, coconut cream, scallions, and toasted flatbread. We finished things off with the wood-fired schwarma plate, which came with tomato, sumac onions, tahini, red ajika, beet chutney, and laffa. We washed it all down with a solid rosé that I regret I did not record. Both the waiter and the wine server were attentive and friendly. It was a nearly perfect meal. Saffy’s deserves its Michelin Star. The noise was deafening, but the food was worth it – I ripped up a paper napkin from the bar and made earplugs. One of the best meals I’ve had, ever.

 

Art I'm Looking at: Mary Cassatt at Work at the Legion of Honor

Earlier I posted some comments on the Tamara de Lempicka show at the De Young Museum (see below). Also on view right now in San Francisco is a large show of work by Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) at the Legion of Honor (through January 26, 2025) entitled "Mary Cassatt at Work" with, as that suggests, an emphasis on her working process. 

The highlight of the show for me was the great deal of material dealing with her early printmaking and particularly the section explaining her development of a technique to mimic Japanese multi-block woodblock printing using multiple, carefully registered etched and acquatinted copper plates rather than woodblocks. She was inspired by seeing a show of Japanese ukiyo-e. Here I post a few of my favorites from the show.

Art I'm Looking at: Tamara de Lempicka at the De Young

There are two major shows worth seeing right now at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, one each at the Legion of Honor and the De Young Museum, both featuring women who mostly painted women. At the De Young is a show of works by Tamara de Lempicka (1898, Warsaw – 1980, Cuernavaca, Mexico), a painter I've been drawn to in the past for her highly stylized portraits and nudes. The show provides a look at the full arc of her career – with which I had only a sketchy acquaintance. 

I hadn't been aware of her long interest in and study of some of the Renaissance painters. At first glance her strongest influence would appear to have been cubism. In particular, some of her work, with limbs reduced to columns, reminded me of Goncharova, but, the connection having been pointed out, it's easy to see the Mannerist tendencies in the poses and the sometimes hollow-looking eyes right out of Pontormo (I hadn't thought of it before, but Modigliani, too, must have been strongly influenced by the Mannerists - those empty Modigliani eyes).  

De Lempicka's strongest work comprises her early portraits and nudes depicting lovers – both male and female. Later, she started painting religious and other subjects and the work starts to look kitschy. According to the wall text, her last show, in New York in 1941, after which she almost completely gave up art until her death in 1980, was mainly of this type of work, and it is quite instructive to see the seven or eight pieces from that show that have been brought together here. Apparently, the work was not well received (criticized for looking insincere and, again, like kitsch). She had lost her mojo. All things must pass, they say. 

As for me, I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to see so much of the earlier, vital, erotically-charged work from the peak of her career, as well as quite a few interesting photographs of her, although I was a bit disappointed that my favorite De Lempicka and probably her most celebrated image – the self-portrait with her sitting in a green Bugatti (in a private collection) – is not in this show. Worth a visit nevertheless. Tamara de Lempicka is on view at the De Young through February 9, 2024. 

Serendipitous Art: Pavement and pink (November 24, 2024)

A composition with pink found in the street. Unintended art, serendipitous art.  

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 296 (Santa Rosa)

Here's another collage from earlier this year. This is Untitled Collage No. 296 (Santa Rosa), completed May 20, 2024. Image size 22.6cm x 10.5cm (8.9 x 4.1 inches). Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse. This piece was recently in the 2024 Wabi Sabi show at The O'Hanlon Center for the Arts, in Mill Valley, California. 

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website. 

In person, my work can be seen at Calabi Gallery in Santa Rosa, Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay. 

Books I'm Reading: The Imagery of Surrealism

In the past year, my reading has been focused on art history. My interest in art history is nothing new, but this spate of reading was set off by a show at Modern Art West, in the town of Sonoma, back in September of 2022 focused on female Abstract Expressionist painters working on the West Coast in the 1950s and 1960s. Reading about these women (I recommend Ninth St. Women, in particular) led me to reading specifically about Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler. Reading about Frankenthaler led me to reading about Motherwell, which led me to reading the anthology of Dadaist writing he edited and that led me to The Imagery of Surrealism (first edition, Syracuse University Press, 1977) by J. H. Matthews, a dense, difficult read that required concentration and perseverance to get through.  

I suspect that many people think primarily of painting or collage when they think of surrealism, but, as this book makes clear, like dada, surrealism was as much a literary movement as a movement in the visual arts, and, again like dada, true surrealists looked at surrealist imagery (whether verbal or pictorial) as secondary to action, in this case the act of creating while separating the mind from the constraints of convention to tap into what was variously termed "inner need," "the inner model," or sometimes just "desire." Kandinsky, though not a surrealist, called it "inner necessity." Surrealists believed that rational thought was the enemy of the creative impulse and that some means was necessary to bypass rational thought to access the inner model (as a side note, I find it frustrating that it's hard to find practical suggestions as to what that means exactly was or should be). 

As the jacket blurb notes, Matthews "asks why and with what consequences surrealism denies values on which our education in art and literature have taught us to rely." The author points out that because words are our means of articulating our understanding of reality, literary images that defy common sense are particularly confounding and they are at danger of being dismissed as simply nonsensical, while painted or drawn images can be easier to accept if we allow ourselves to hold at bay our instinctive reaction, which is to analyze and attempt to find a rational explanation for what we are seeing based on our everyday experience of the real world. On the other hand, he points out that in painting and drawing, it is easy to fall into hackneyed symbolism, and he accuses Dalí of having done just that. He has high praise for Magritte, Tanguy, and Miró among better known surrealist artists, but the book is remarkable for the wealth of examples it presents by a wide range of lesser known artists, which (again according to the jacket) are mostly from the collection of the author and from other private collections and published in this book for the first time. A challenging read, but worth it if you want to deepen your understanding of surrealist thinking throughout its history, from the 1920s well into the 1960s or 1970s. 

Rain: 2024–2025 rainy season

On November 13 and 14, we had some real rain for the first time so far this rain year. I found 1.3 inches in my rain gauge on the morning of the 15th. That brings our total for the year so far to 2.1 inches. That's not much, but it's a start, and the fire danger feels like it will be remain low for the time being. The photo is of leaves and rain that collected a wheelbarrow in the garden.

[Edit: That was a lot of rain. "Bomb cyclone" and "atmospheric river" were terms we heard a lot in the past few days. As much as 12 inches of rain was predicted for this part of Northern California between November 20 and November 22, and the prediction proved quite accurate. By the morning of the 21st, 9.70 inches had accumulated in my rain gauge (probably somewhat more, as it was overflowing the first time I emptied it), and, on the morning of the 23rd, there was another 2.30 inches, for a total of 12.0 inches in about 48 hours – roughly a third of our total annual rainfall in the past few years in that short amount of time. That brings the total so far this rain year at my location to at least 14.1 inches.]

[Edit: More rain on November 25–26 left an additional 0.8 inches in the rain gauge. That brings our total so far to 14.90 inches. There is now no rain in the forecast for the next ten days.]

Serendipitous Art: Shadows on Fabric (October 9, 2024)

Shadows on embroidered fabric. Unintended art. Serendipitous art. 

Rain: Start of the 2024–2025 rainy season

We've had light rain so far on three days since the start of October. The precipitation was negligible on the first of these. On October 30 we got about 0.1 inches – not much, but measurable. The first real rain of the season came two days later, on November 1. We got 0.7 inches at my location in northeastern Santa Rosa, which brings our total so far for the year to 0.8 inches. That's not a lot, but already the risk of fire feels lower and I suspect we will get through the fire season without a major incident this year. Hoping for the best – regarding both fire and the election tomorrow.  

Serendipitous Art: Gate shadow

I recently saw this shadow of a gate projected by late afternoon sun onto the sidewalk. Ephemeral art. Serendipitous art.  

Books I'm Reading: The Dada Painters and Poets

As one with an interest in art and art history, I have, of course, long been aware of Dada. I had seen photos of the fur-lined teacup and the clothes iron with spikes, and of Duchamp's everyday objects presented as art. I was aware of the Dada celebration of the absurd, but, reading The Dada Painters and Poets (edited by Robert Motherwell; I read the second edition, in paperback by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, published sometime after 1979. The original publication was in 1951), I have gained a much richer understanding of just what Dada was.

I knew that Dada had its start in Zurich around 1916, but I see from reading this compilation of primary source material (apparently still the most complete collection of such material available in English), that while Dada spread quickly to Berlin, Cologne, Paris, other European cities, and eventually New York, Dada was short-lived, having mostly petered out by the early 1920s (one writer here sees Breton's 1924 Surrealist Manifesto as the end of Dada). 

What I didn't understand was how subversive Dada was. It tends to be seen as playful – and certainly there was an undercurrent of humor in Dada with bourgeois aspirations often the butt of the joke; the Dadaists loved to confuse and confound with nonsense, but that aspect of the movement appears to me to have been less central than it's been made to appear. The early Dadaists were hell-bent on creating chaos, happiest when their demonstrations led to riots and when riots and the indignation their antics caused were reported in the papers. Dada was meant to be disruptive. It was anti-art. It was not fundamentally intended to make art out of the ordinary, despite Duchamp's "ready mades". True Dada condemned art, literature, philosophy, and the "high priests" of those pursuits. 

I think it is often forgotten that Dada originally wasn't conceived as an art movement at all. Real Dada, pure Dada, was understood to be an attitude, a state of mind, a perspective for interacting with the world. The art we associate with Dada, both the visual art and the literature of Dada, were seen as incidental. Yet, Dada was nothing if not self-contradictory. While these productions were incidental, the art and literature of Dada were essential to Dada because they were the media through which the Dada sprit was presented to the world. This core contradiction within Dada ultimately led to its, perhaps inevitable, self-destruction from within. 

Years later, Pop Art and the Conceptual Art movements looked back to Dada for inspiration but neither were characterized by the same kind of darkness, it seems to me. 

Plants I'm Growing: From the garden

From the garden today: Several kinds of tomatoes (Black Krim, Better Boy, Sungold), "Gypsy" sweet peppers, jalapeño peppers, Poblano peppers, Swiss chard, chingensai, zuchini, and cucumbers. 

Wines I'm Making: 2024 Harvest

Harvest 2024: I'm not entirely sure why, but our grapes this year suffered badly from damage by yellow jackets. They pierce the berries and can remarkably quickly suck a berry completely dry. This was the smallest harvest from our little backyard vineyard in the 21 years I've been making wine from it. Given that we're running out of room to store wine and we can't drink it fast enough to keep it from accumulating, perhaps an occasional small harvest is a good thing. 

I picked the grapes on Friday, October 10th. We got only 34.75kg (76.45lbs) of Cabernet grapes and 8.44kg (18.6lbs) of Sangiovese grapes – which is about half or less than half of what we usually get. That will yield only about 32 bottles. Normally we get 75 bottles or more. Because of.a couple of spells of very hot weather, the grapes were sweeter than they usually are at harvest, but partially because of desiccation. 

The Cabernet measured at 25.3º Brix. About 24º Brix is ideal for the style of red wine I like. More sugar means more alcohol. Too much sugar results in a hot, unbalanced wine. So, for the first time since we started making wine here in 2004, I reduced the sugar level slightly, to 24º Brix by adding 1l of acidulated distilled water (adding 7g of tartaric acid/l). After a three-day cold soak, I inoculated the must with Rockpile yeast. The fermentation is now well underway. 

The Sangiovese was pressed after 12 hours on the skins to make a rosé. The Sangiovese grapes measured at 23º Brix, which is perfect for a rosé. Normally, if anything, I have to slightly adjust the sugar level in the Sangiovese grapes upward. This year I made no adjustment. The Sangiovese, too, is fermenting, but there will be only enough to make about 7 bottles of finished wine. Normally we make about 15 bottles of rosé each year. 

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 295 (Santa Rosa)

With Art Trails, Sonoma County's premier juried open studios event, coming up next weekend (October 19–20) and the following weekend (October 26–27), here's another collage from earlier this year. This is Untitled Collage No. 295 (Santa Rosa), completed May 18, 2024. Image size 25.5cm x 16.6cm (10.0 x 6.5 inches). Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website. 

In person, my work can be seen at Calabi Gallery in Santa Rosa, Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay. Better yet, visit me during Art Trails, which, as noted above, will be October 19–20 and October 26–27 this year. This year, I'll be Studio 40. Studios are open 10AM to 5PM all four days. Hope to see you in the studio!

Rain: First rain of the 2024-2025 rain season

The forecast called for light rain in the morning of October 12 with a 35% chance of rain. It did rain, but it ended up raining pretty much all day, which was a welcome surprise. The rain was indeed very light – a mist most of the day – but we got maybe a tenth of an inch. I didn't have the rain gauge out yet, but any amount of rain is welcome at this time of the year.  

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 294 (Santa Rosa)

Ahead of our Art Trails open studio event this year (October 19-20 and 26-27), here's a small collage from this spring. This is Untitled Collage No. 294 (Santa Rosa). May 15, 2024. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, collage. Image size: 8.6cm x 13.1cm (3.4in x 5.2in). Matted to 11 x 14 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/ or you can purchase my recently published book commemorating ten years of working in the collage medium – Colin Talcroft: Abstract Monotype Collage: 2103–2023 (ISBN 979-8-218-37717-5). Available on the website. 

In person, my work can be seen at Calabi Gallery in Santa Rosa, Hammerfriar Gallery in Healdsburg, and at the Ren Brown Collection in Bodega Bay. Or, you can visit me during Art Trails, Sonoma County's premier juried open studios event, which, and noted above, will be October 19–20 and October 26–27 this year. This year, I'll be Studio 40. Studios are open 10AM to 5PM all four days. Hope to see you in the studio!

Miscellaneous: Pesto

I harvested all the basil in the garden today and made pesto, a total of about 1.2kg of finished pesto (about 2.6 pounds). I see many recipes for pesto, but I think the traditional one is the only way to go. Real pesto should be made only from fresh basil, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, and parmesan cheese. I know what's for dinner tonight.

Music I'm Listening to: Sayaka Shoji with the San Francisco Symphony

Last night (October 4) I attended a San Francisco Symphony concert at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program were, somewhat unusually, only two pieces (typically classical concerts open with a short piece to allow stragglers to be seated right afterward). Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1 and, after intermission, Brahms's Symphony No. 4, both very familiar pieces. 

The soloist in the Shostakovich was Sayaka Shoji, a violinist I had never heard of before despite all my years in Japan. That said, according to the program, while she was born in Tokyo, her family moved to Italy when she was a small child and today she appears to be based in France. I looked her up. She's recorded a fair amount, mostly for Deutsche Gramophon, but online availability suggests most of what she's done hasn't been marketed much in the US.

I was a bit skeptical at first. In the opening movement, she seemed a bit tentative and I thought she overdid the vibrato a bit initially, but, by the end of the piece I was quite persuaded. Despite her small stature, she plays with real vigor and I noticed that her violin seems to have an inherently powerful voice. I'm no expert in violin acoustics, but clearly some instruments project more than others and this one seemed particularly muscular. According to the program, she plays the "Recamier" Stradivarius (c. 1729), on loan to her from Ueno Fine Chemicals Industry. These historical instruments have become so expensive that it's now quite common for corporate owners or foundations to own them but place them with deserving artists to use, as in this case.  I did a little Internet sleuthing and it appears that the Recamier was once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte and, before Shoji, played for many years by violinist Mischa Elman.

The audience was very appreciative. She received a long standing ovation and was finally persuaded to do an encore that featured rapid variations and some powerful left-handed pizzicato at the end. It was not familiar. Unfortunately, she didn't identify the piece*.

It's always fun to hear a live performance of music familiar from recordings. I enjoy watching the way the music moves physically through the orchestra as different sections take up their cues. The Brahms Symphony No. 4 is particularly good for this as so much is going on simultaneously in different sections – in the strings, in particular. At the end of the performance, Salonen recognized various performers, including the triangle player, who gets quite a workout in this one, but also the entire cello and bass sections – which is quite unusual. It's rare for any of the string players to be acknowledged at the end unless there's been a prominent solo, but Salonen evidently wanted to recognize the heavy lifting the low strings do in the Brahms No. 4. Very enjoyable all around.

*I later asked on her official website and got a reply. The encore on the night I attended was the last variation from Paganini's Nel cor piu non mi sento.