Low Kickin It --- Day 13/294

Walk: Monday errands

Distance: 5 miles

So there are usually a few of these 'dames' kicking around Ciwt's Halloween neighborhood and she always gets a kick out of them herself.  Maybe because she has a friend who.much to the delight of those who know her, is famous for her socks and completes every outfit with a pair ranging from outrageous to tasteful

Fleet Farewell --- Day 13/293

Walk: Up and down bringing art out of storeroom

Distance: 1.5 miles

Bye Bye, Blue Angels.  Incredible precision flying, amazing machines, outstanding air show.  But oh the noise and relief that your Fleet Week visit was again accident free as you soared just a few feet above many of our homes.

Really Creepy Entrants --- Day 13/292

Walk: Hood, scouting for contest entrants

Distance: 3 miles

Let Them Tell You --- Day 13/291

Walk: UCSF for Mohs surgery

Distance: 1 mile

Since Ciwt is an inadequate spokesperson for Tamara de Lempicka, let's let the people who champion her art speak for her:

The youtube link below takes you to a short documentary that opens a window into the life and art of Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka. Featuring interviews with curator Furio Rinaldi and the artist’s great-granddaughter, Marisa de Lempicka, as well as archival footage of the artist herself, this film traces Lempicka’s life and career, from her childhood in Russia to her burgeoning art career in Paris to how she became an Art Deco icon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCoQ8ej4a2Y

What to Say? --- Days 13/289 &290

Walks:  de Young Museum Press Preview; Fisherman's Wharf; Greens Restaurant; Hood

Distances: 3.5 each

Tamara Lempicka ('dba' Lempitzky, aka Tamara de Lempicka), Her Sadness, 1939, oil on canvas

So Ciwt has a problem telling her readers about the de Young's new exhibition, Tamara de Lempicka.

Here it is: Ciwt doesn't respond to the art styles cubism, art deco or futurism; she doesn't particularly resonate to the color grey; or to glamorous, flamboyant, lustful but seemingly cold women who take on different identies and seem to live always in their own superiority reality.  And all of these apply to Tamara de Lempicka, the Polish born, Russia raised artist whose work is having its first retrospective in this exhibition.

So don't listen to Ciwt on this.  There were many members of the press in attendance at the preview most of whom seemed captivated by and admiring of Lempicka's art and probably of her courage and wilyness in so successfully surviving times when it was not safe to be Jewish.  These people will likely write glowing reviews.

Ciwt did find it interesting that the mostly grey painting above of one of Lempicka's lovers (this one female and a long time one), also beautiful, glamourous, larger than life, was once owned by Barbra Streisand.  It captures Ira Perrot, who was wealthy and wrote poetry under the 

pseudonym Ira Verte.  At the time she painted it, Tamara de Lempicka, was working under the male name Lempitzky.  

She was also interested to learn that Lempicka played Wagner full blast while creating much of her art.

Photo: Tamara de Lempick (1894-1980)

Five More Barrels --- Day 13/288

Walk: Hood 

Distance: 3.5

So when Ciwt was out scouting for entrants to her Neighborhood Halloween Decorating Contest last weekend, who should she run into but one of those neighbors spending his weekend decorating.  As you can see, it isn't kids in this contest.  Really to a neighborhood, every house decorator is a full fledged adult and fully into the decorating.  And it isn't even an October event for them; many think about what their homes will look like for a good part of the year and collect decorative objects.  

Some collect wildly.  Like the neighbor at his garage door above. He has already hung a few ghosts and creeped up his patio entry But he has FIVE MORE BARRELS of decorations waiting to be stood, hung, whatever around his home.  He has to wait until after October 19 to do that for reasons Ciwt didn't totally understand.  But he said "Come back after the 19th.  That's when it will all be up"  And Ciwt definitely plans to.   

He also told Ciwt that another grown up neighbor told him their block had TWO THOUSAND trick or treaters last year.  Maybe she'll will go back just for that scary spectacle.

Entry Vignettes --- Day 13/287

Walk: Wrist Therapy

Distance: 3.5 miles 

Still Hot, Still Hanging --- Day 13/286

Walk: Early in Hood scouting for Entrants

Distance: 3.5 miles

ANHDC Entrant status to be determined

Hanging Around in a Heat Wave --- Day 13/285

Walk: Not much in the heat

Distance: 2 miles

Annual Neighborhood Halloween Decorationg Contest (ANHDC) Official Entrant

What Black Houses Are Good For --- Day 13/284

Walk: Dr., Kiehls, Carpet Store, Basically all over the hood

Distance: 6 miles

Black houses are particulary good at showing off white skeletons. 

All over Ciwt's hood neighbors have called professional installers or blocked off weekends and gotten their laddes ready to put up their decorations for San Francisco's favorite holiday.  Early in October Ciwt sees multiple crews with many workers or entire families carrying skeletons, witches, ghouls.  And there are some dragons and other enormous eerie creatures that probably require forklifts.  Other  installations are done at night so unsuspecting neighbors are terrified when they pick up their newspapers or leave for work.  The competition and just old fashioned Halloween energy is intense.

Right on October 1, four trucks and numerous men spend a good part of the day making sure this black house was among the first to enter the unspoken but clearly real Halloween decorating contest.  And also to officially open and become Entry #1 in  the 2024 CIWT Neighborhood Decoration Contest.   

Framed --- Day 13/283

Walk: Legion of Honor (press preview of Mary Cassatt at Work)

Distance: 1.8 miles, As little as possible in current heat wave

Mary Cassatt, Woman in a Loge, 1879, oil on canvas

At last, after nearly 150 years, a Mary Cassatt exhibition that doesn't focus on the sentimental darlingness of much of her subject matter

and examines instead Cassatt's seriousness as an artist, technical inventiveness, experimentation, and proficiency across many art mediums from oil, to pastel, to printmaking.

A quick way to get a glimpse at how revolutionary Cassatt was is to look at the frames around the paintings and pastels in the show.  All of them are ornate and gold with one exception: the green one above that frames Cassatt's Woman in a Loge.  

The gold ones were framed by dealers.

Mary Cassatt, In the Loge, 1878, oil on canvas

Which, truth be told, was a necessity in order to sell them to a Parisian public who were, if not scandalized by the new, impressionist art, highly resistant to taking it seriously as art.  But, gold frames, the more ornate the better, they did understand.  Anything in them could be considered art and hung without embarrassment on home walls.

Cassatt knew this but still persisted in creating her own frames.  She felt they were an extension of the art, not just ornate boxes.  She painted them in various colors - lilac, yellow, green like above, whatever shade she felt enhanced and carried the feeling of her work.  And for this she was punished in print by reviewers who called the frames garish and 'modern.' 

That last, modern, was of course meant as ultimate condemnation at the time.  But today thoughtfully framing a work in a way that enhances it is exactly how it is done.  It is modern and a prime example of how far ahead of her time Cassatt was.

"I'm Bored" --- Day 13/282

Walk: Beloved Hood

Distance: 4 miles early before height of heat wave

Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in the Blue Armchair, 1877-78, oil on canvas

So today Ciwt will go to the press preview of our Legion of Honor's much anticipated Mary Cassatt at Work which opens tomorrow.

Ciwt is not often drawn to cute paintings of women and children, domestic scenes or just children.  So why for so many years is she always captured by the work of Mary Cassatt, the premier portrayer of the airless daily lives of  late 19th century haute bourgeois women and children?  Well, precisely because Cassatt took her subjects seriously, gave them intelligence and subtly laid bare that airlessness. 

In so many of Cassatt's works you can sense the women's private thoughts and chafing at the public demands of perfectly pressed dresses, high collared coats, complete with gloves.  Modernism was bursting out in men's lives throughout Paris.  And Cassatt captures the brewing modernity that was simmering for women - just before they began to be engaged in professional work and were able to vote. 

When that happened you just know know that little girl in the blue chair (Cassatt's niece) - in one of the world's favorite paintings - was leading the charge through the door and away from claustrophia.. She's full of pent up energy,  realistically squirmy, bored, and his no interest in being modest and proper in her perfectly ironed dress.

To date much has been made of all the places and opportunities Cassatt was denied as a woman - bars, nightclubs, folies and, of course, art training at the Ecole.  Ciwt is looking forward to hearing the new respect art historians are now giving to the masterful and workmanship way Mary Cassatt presented the world she was a part of.

What summer? --- Day 13/281

Walk: Hood, natch

Distance: 4 miles

Mount Norwottuck on an Indian summer day in western Massachusetts, October 2008   
@Andy Anderson

So, yesterday Ciwt described the current San Francisco weather as 'Indian summer.' Over the years she has done the same countless times about the weather in the Midwest, the East Coast, certain parts of the West.  It is a descriptive phrase she picked up sometime in her youth for balmy, summer-like weather that occurs later in the cold, frosty Fall.  But, until today, she never wondered 'why the term?,' 'where did it come from?,' things like that.

On researching, it looks like most people have the same understanding of the term, but no one is exactly sure of its origins.  

The earliest known reference to Indian summer is in an 1778 essay by the Frenchman, J. Hector St. John de Crevecouer.  It reads in part and in French: Great rains at last replenish the springs, the brooks, the swamp and impregnate the earth. Then a severe frost succeeds which prepares it to receive the voluminous coat of snow which is soon to follow; though it is often preceded by a short interval of smoke and mildness, called the Indian Summer.  Apparently that essay didn't reach the States until 1920.  Make of that what you will; to Ciwt it means it couldn't have had much influence on our use of the term here.

Whether the 'Indians' referred to are Native American (probably) or from India (maybe) is also up for grabs.  What isn't though is the universality of the phenomenon.  In Western and Middle Europe a warm period in autumn is called - get ready - 'old woman's summer.'  Likewise in Slavic-language countries.  In Bulgaria it is called 'gypsy summer, or 'poor man's summer.' The Irish refer to it as 'little autumn of the geese' while those in Spain enjoy 'little autumn of the quince tree.'  

In Turkey they call it  pastirma yazi, meaning 'pastrami summer' since the month of November at some point was considered the best time to make pastirma, or modern day pastrami.  Like that meat, the names and countries are a big mix from Saints names to Greek mythology.

Wherever it is and whatever it is called, Ciwt bets that, like her, most people consider these days the most gorgeous of the entire year.  Especially in New England, which she misses deeply during 'Indian summer.'