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.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 293 (Santa Rosa)

A recent collage. This is Untitled Collage No. 293 (Santa Rosa) from May 13 this year. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, collage. Image size: 17.6cm x 15.0cm (6.9in x 5.9in). Matted to 20 x 16 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 will be October 19–20 and October 26–27 this year. This year, I'll be Studio 40. Hope to see you in the studio! 

Plants I'm Growing: Aloe Polyphylla

The comparatively rare Aloe polyphylla in the garden, with its spirals of leaves, bloomed this year for the first time. The seed pods are now mature and I've been able to collect hundreds of seeds. I'm looking forward to raising some babies.

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 292 (Santa Rosa)

This is Untitled Collage No. 292 (Santa Rosa), among the first pieces I completed in 2024. It dates from May 11 this year. It uses one of my favorite colors "Chinese Orange," made by the French paint and ink brand Sennelier, offset by a copper-patina green. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, collage. Image size: 40.2cm x 27.9cm (15.9in x 11.0in). Matted to 24 x 20 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 will be October 19–20 and October 26–27 this year. This year, I'll be Studio 40. Hope to see you in the studio! See less 

Books I'm Reading: The Collected Works of Robert Motherwell

I've been on a reading spree lately – reading focused on New York in the 1950s, the abstract expressionists, and, in particular, the women that were associated with the New York School – that was my starting point at least. One book has led to another, most recently to The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell (Oxford University Press, 1992, edited by Stephanie Terenzio). It's been on a bookshelf in the living room for years. I don't recall when or where I purchased it. I saw it somewhere used and thought it might be interesting to read. I finally started it a couple of weeks ago as it suddenly seemed particularly appropriate to do so in the context of the other reading I'd been doing and I've just finished it. As it's a collection of shortish pieces, it's ideal for dipping into for short spells as time allows, but I found myself reading it for long stretches. 

This recent reading has been educational. Most of the artists I've been reading about have long been familiar to me and I've seen their work in person numerous times in museums all over the world, but I realize that, until now, I've known little about their personal lives, about who they associated with, about their views on making art or what they thought about the art of others. Motherwell, it turns out, was an erudite man who, over a long career, wrote quite a lot about making art and about the art of others. For the most part, he writes very clearly, although his use of a few terms took some getting used to (more about that below). The book includes writings from 1941 through 1988 (he died in 1991). It includes essays, contributions to exhibition catalogs, scripts for and transcripts of public talks, introductions to volumes that he was involved in publishing, miscellaneous notes, and letters. Each selection is introduced by editor Stephanie Terenzio to give context and these introductions are often detailed and as enlightening as the writings they precede.

I didn't know that Motherwell had been a philosophy student at Harvard before becoming a painter, that early in his career he associated closely with the surrealists that fled Europe in the lead-up to Word War II, that he was active as a teacher and an editor, or that he is such an excellent source of information and deep thought about the early years of the abstract expressionist movement (he came to be seen as the intellectual of the movement, although he doesn't appear to have liked that label). 

Throughout his writings he emphasizes how important the ideas of the surrealists were in the early days of abstract expressionism and focuses on the concept of "psychic automatism," which he sees as the seed from which abstract expressionism grew. In his famous manifesto of 1924, André Breton coined the word "surreal" (above real, or beyond real) and first articulated the idea of psychic automatism, if my understanding is correct. He defined surrealism in terms of psychic automatism, saying surrealism is "pure psychic automatism through which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought," the idea here being that the surreal emerges directly from some pre-conscious realm and the idea of "action painting," a term that came to be used as a synonym for abstract expressionism, developed out of this kind of idea. Action painting emphasized the physical act of painting itself from which the art that emerged was understood to be primarily a record of the action. Jackson Pollack's drip paintings were the quintessential action paintings. Abstract expressionism developed ultimately in many directions, but, reading Motherwell, I've understood for the first time this early connection between surrealism and abstract expressionism. Motherwell notes, importantly, that surrealism itself was anti-abstract art. 

Another idea Motherwell repeatedly emphasizes is that modern art (he is speaking in the 1950s here) is international and historically inclusive. He says the modern artist stands apart from community and tries to connect directly to the universe in contrast with the traditional artist; traditionally, he says, the artist has been part of the community and expressed the values of the community from within. He says in one piece that modern art is universal, drawing on the entire history of art and that it seems radical (that is, it seemed radical at the time of its emergence) only because most people know only the tradition of realism handed down "from Greece and Rome and the Renaissance and modern modes of illustration." Much of his early writing is aimed at trying to help a baffled public understand what modern (= non-representational) painting was.  

Several terms, I must admit, I had a little trouble with. I lacked confidence at first (and to some extent still do) that I was precisely understanding his intended meanings. "Plastic" is one of these. As an adjective, "plastic" has always meant to me something close to "formable" or "malleable" (aside from the more obvious meanings "made of plastic" or, figuratively, "cheap.") By the time I had finished the book, I decided he was using it more or less to mean "creative" and I am somewhat relieved to see that the Oxford English Dictionary lists that as among the meanings of the word when used as an adjective – a usage that first appears in 1662 – although it was unfamiliar to me.  

Another of these is "feeling." Naturally, I know the word, but Motherwell uses it in a specific way, to mean "sensitivity" or "ability to feel" and he goes to some trouble in one of the selections collected in this volume to contrast it with "emotion" and to say the two are not synonymous, although they commonly are used interchangeably.  He says feeling is "the objective response to what externally is" (his training in philosophy is frequently evident in his writing), while "emotion" is something internal. His view is that most surrealist work is emotional as is the work of German expressionists like Ludwig Kirchner. He seems to think "felt work" is superior to "emotional work" while admitting at the same time that he loves the emotional work of Goya. 

In addition, his writing has adjusted my understanding of the word "abstract." I see now that when I have used it, I probably really meant "non-representational." He points out that "to abstract" means "to select" and that that implies referencing reality; an abstraction is a selection from and simplification of the real. If we say "non-representational" we can eliminate the idea of starting with an image (a mental image) of reality and arriving at a simplified form of that image that emphasizes its essence. A non-representational work bypasses the selection and simplification – the selective emphasizing of aspects of – a reality-based image. There's a great deal of confusion even among artists about the meaning of words. I imagine that's why visual artists are visual artists and not writers. 

In a nutshell, The Collected Writing of Robert Motherwell is a rich collection of primary source material related to the world of art in the US, particularly New York, between the 1940s and the 1980s and of thinking about art. There's really too much here to absorb in a single reading. This is a book I may have to re-read in a year or two. Before I do, however, I have several others to read on the subject of modern art – books I've become aware of through reading the present volume. The first of these is The Dada Painters and Poets, an anthology edited by Motherwell himself. Then there's The Imagery of the Surreal (by J. H. Matthews) and  Abstract Expressionist Painting in America (by William C. Seitz and Dore Ashton with contributions also from Motherwell). By the time I finish those, I'll probably need a break to try to digest it all.

Art I'm Looking At – "Woodcut: Primary Printmaking" at the Legion of Honor

On a recent visit to The Legion of Honor in San Francisco, I saw two good shows – "Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World" (which closed August 18) and "Woodcut: Primary Printmaking" (which runs through October 20). I recently posted some comments about the first of these. Here are some highlights of the Woodcut show. 

On the basement floor at the Legion of Honor there are a couple of small side galleries that are easy to miss, but they are almost always rewarding. One of these often presents works owned by the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts (originally independent but now part of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), which has a fabulous collection of more than 90,000 works on paper. The Woodcut show is one such show.

The current show focuses on one printmaking process, the woodcut. "Woodcut" refers to a specific type of relief printing. A relief print is made from a surface from which the non-printing areas have been removed with a sharp tool leaving the original surface to carry the ink that forms the image (in this case the surface is a block of wood). The Japanese prints in the show mentioned above are an example of relief printing that uses multiple blocks, one each for each different color in the final image, but a woodcut may be made from any number of blocks or just one. 

This show now on at the Legion of Honor is not extensive but it draws on the Achenbach Foundation collection to give some idea of the range of expression woodcut allows. Here I post a few of my favorites from the show, but several others that I liked very much were virtually impossible to photograph because of the way they are framed – in particular, what is perhaps my favorite piece in the show, a large print by Carol Summers in rich, deep blues and blacks (at the bottom here I've added an image of the piece, entitled "Stromboli Dark" that I found on a Smithsonian website). 

As noted above, Woodcut: Primary Printmaking runs through October 20 at the Legion of Honor. The Legion of Honor is at 100 34th Avenue (at Clement St.), San Francisco, CA 94121, generally open from 9:30 to 5:15, closed on Mondays.

Art I'm Looking At: Japanese Prints in Transition, at the Legion of Honor

I recently visited The Legion of Honor in San Francisco and saw a couple of worthwhile shows – "Japanese Prints in Transition: From the Floating World to the Modern World" (through August 18) and "Woodcut: Primary Printmaking" (through October 20) I'll write more about the latter in a separate post. 

The first of these two shows, As its title suggests, is a survey of Ukiyoe with an emphasis on how the medium responded to the very rapid changes that occurred in Japan with the opening of the country after about 250 years of self-imposed isolation and the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Visually, the most obvious change is from the use of natural pigments to the harsh reds, greens, and purples that suddenly appear with the introduction of synthetic aniline dyes. These garish colors became available with the opening of the country in the early 1860s and had become widely used within a decade or two. They were popular because they were inexpensive and vibrant, but I find it hard to avoid feeling that prints using these dyes are mostly inferior to the subtler work of earlier periods, although they are of historical interest. That said, the show has many examples of prints of this period depicting "modern" subjects, which to a large extent meant foreigners and the foreign artifacts and inventions that began to stream into the country along with the aniline dyes. In a complete reversal, the newest prints in the show, by Masami Teraoka (made starting in the 1970s) revert to the more subtle palate typical of the Edo Period, which is being parodied in his work. 

The aniline dyes were at least color-fast. An interesting earlier print shows a scene with an odd olive-yellow sky. The accompanying label notes that the sky would originally have been blue, but, printed with a fugitive, naturally-derived pigment made from Asiatic Dayflower (露草 Commelina communisa), the blue has completely faded away. 

There are some nice early prints, including two by Sharaku, whose work is scarce, although one of the two is not in very good condition. The best examples of his work I have seen have been in shows in Japan – although not necessarily from Japanese collections. The best-preserved examples of Ukiyo-e of any kind I've seen in Japan have been on loan from the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 

The Legion of Honor Show includes examples of some of the most recognized Ukiyo-e images – notably The Great Wave, by Hokusai, which has been called the second-most famous work of art in the world after the Mona Lisa. The show also includes two prints that appear in paintings made by Vincent Van Gogh. Also of interest are  prints depicting places and events far from Japan that the wall labels point out were known to the print designers only from newspaper reproductions that were coming into the country. Exposure to foreign images is also evident in the way that Western perspective creeps into some of the later prints. 

At the end, I was a bit surprised to see that shunga (erotic prints) had been completely neglected until I exited through the inevitable gift shop to see that there was an entire, separate room devoted to these, including top-notch examples by Utamaro and Hokusai.  

As noted above, the show continues until this Sunday, August 18. The Legion of Honor is at 100 34th Avenue (at Clement St.), San Francisco, CA 94121, generally open from 9:30 to 5:15, closed on Mondays.

Miscellaneous: Goodbye to Eric the cat

Over this past weekend (August 12), we said goodbye to our cat Eric (also known as Gon), who expired  after an illness. We still don't know what happened, but he wasted away over the course of about eight weeks until he was so weak he could no longer walk. He was only eight years old. It's a mystery.  

We gave him a grand send-off, buried in the garden, his lifeless body set in the ground on a bed of flowers. We'll miss him. Here are some photos of him in happier days. (Yes, he was born with no tail).

Places I'm visiting: Mendocino (July 2024)

A couple weeks ago, we made a short trip up the coast to always-photogenic Mendocino for an overnight stay at the Agate Cove Inn. It was my first visit to the town since well before the pandemic. After checking in at Agate Cove Inn, had an excellent evening meal at Italian restaurant Luna (grilled prawns and smoked salmon penne were the highlights along with live music in the gardens). 

The following day had an equally good lunch at Trillium Café (on Kasten St., at what used to be The Mousse Café) where the pumpkin seed pesto and vegetable gnocchi were outstanding, as were the crab cakes (washed down with a local  Gewürztraminer). 

We spent the morning kayaking on the ocean, which afforded good close-up views of oystercatchers and loons. I'm always surprised by how alive the plants look in Mendocino. The coastal weather is so much milder than the weather in Santa Rosa, about two hours to the south and considerably further inland. Plants that struggle in Santa Rosa (either because of frost in the winter or the dry heat during our summers) grow luxuriantly in Mendocino. The whole place looks alive. 

Before heading home, we made a stop at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens (much more extensive than I remembered) just north of the town where the heaths and heathers in bloom were particularly beautiful.