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)