Engineer's Daughter

orchidaceous

"One wants to be an honest man, one is so, one works as hard as a slave, but still one cannot make both ends meet; one must give up the work, there is no chance of carrying it out without spending more on it than one gets back for it, one gets a feeling of guilt, of short-coming, of not keeping one's promises, one is not honest as one would be if the work were paid for at its natural reasonable price.  One is afraid of making friends, one is afraid of moving, like one of the old lepers, one would like to call from afar to the people: Don't come too near me, for intercourse with me brings you sorrow and loss; with all that great load of care on one's heart, one must set to work with a calm, everyday face, without moving a muscle, live one's ordinary life, get along with the models, with the man who comes for the rent, with everybody in fact.  With a cool head, one must keep one hand to the rudder to continue the work, and with the other hand try to do no harm to others."

Vincent van Gogh: letter to his brother, Theo, November 1882

See also:

• Irises
• Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

reclaimed

The de Young might have its flashy Impressionism show right now, but I recommend you avoid the crowds and make a beeline instead for the Contemporary Jewish Museum and their gem of a exhibition of paintings drawn from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker.  Mr. Goudstikker (ask a Dutch person to properly pronounce his name for you) was a very well-to-do art dealer in Amsterdam before WWII, so famous that Göring with his taste for Old Masters headed straight for Goudstikker's gallery when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and was even photographed carrying an unindentifed stolen painting out under his arm.  That photo and a wealth of other supplemental material is on view at the CJM including Goudstikker's "little black book," a typewritten, alphabetized list of all the works in his collection at the time he and his family had to flee their home.  That book has become invaluable to Goudstikker's heirs in their ongoing efforts to reclaim the paintings that were looted by the Germans and landed in many major holdings around the world.  The paintings in the exhibition represent a fraction of those that have been returned to the family (in 2006 the Dutch government turned over a small treasure trove of 200 pieces that had been absorbed into the national collection), but there are some real masterworks on display in the museum.  The St. Mary Magdalene pictured here is being used to advertise the show for good reason; in person she is a stunner.  But also don't miss the portraits of rich patrons and young women, elaborate Biblical tableaux, and the strange Dutch still lifes that are a perennial favorite of mine.  Many paintings still remain missing, and I wish the family veel geluk and continued success in retrieving them.

See also

• Contemporary Jewish Museum
• Jacques Goudstikker's notebook

sooner or later they will find you

Recent Netflix:

• The Others (Alejandro Amenábar, 2001) - I have such an overactive imagination I can only watch about one scary movie a year, but this one is well worth the risk of night terrors.  Devastatingly beautiful direction by Amenábar is the perfect complement to the story of a mother who keeps her two children enclosed in a (possibly) haunted house, and Nicole Kidman impressively treads the line between authority and insanity in her role.  Amenábar also wrote the script and fills it with plenty of old-fashioned twists and turns and a heaping helping of suspense without ever resorting to cheap gore.  Many thanks to my friend Tammy for keeping me company while I watched too, because otherwise I would have jumped clean out of my skin several times. 
• Better Off Dead (Savage Steve Holland, 1985) - Such a dorky movie, but it makes me laugh every time.  John Cusack is so young and cute, and Curtis Armstrong steals the show every chance he gets as his learning-challenged best friend.  Of course then there's the demonic paperboy...
• Séraphine (Martin Provost, 2008) - Based on a true story about the self-taught painter Séraphine de Senlis who was discovered in the French countryside by renowned art dealer Wilhelm Uhde just before WWI.  As a biopic the film's trajectory follows a familiar arc, but I found myself very moved indeed by how Séraphine's drive to paint is depicted, the importance of art to her life.  And her work itself...holy wow.  Do yourself a favor and Google it right now.  Bonus: Séraphine is played by the marvelous Yolande Moreau, who you might remember from her role as the lovelorn neighbor lady in Amélie.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episodes 1-8 (various, 1997-1998) - I was a huge Buffy fanatic back in the day, but it's still almost shocking how well this series holds up...and how easy it is to watch four episodes in one sitting.  I skipped going through Season 1 again (too monster-of-the-week for me) and jumped right into the good stuff here in Season 2.  Spike and Dru!  Oz!  Willow in an Eskimo costume!  Giles backstory!  With its blend of hilarious writing, real-life teenage drama set against fantastical crises, and one of the most kickass female leads ever, the show is getting me addicted all over again.  I'm sure I'll rip through the rest of the discs in no time flat.  Take that, stupid Twilight.

impugn

Snow Dancer: Budd Williams, USA, 1992

See also:

• Snow foxes
• Snow day at the SF Zoo

wic wack

I just managed to squeak in to see the Ed Moses show at Brian Gross Fine Art last week before it closed for the holiday, and even having heard the paintings on display were fairly different from the abstract work Moses is known for I was still blown away.  There were five large canvases in the gallery, each one a dizzying concoction of stenciled patterns and animals that varied slightly from work to work in color and repetition.  I was fascinated by the '70s-bedspread amalgam of elephants, tigers, zebras, and giraffes that form the base of the paintings, which Moses has then interrupted with patches of flowers and butterflies.  Visually it was almost as if sections of wallpaper had been peeled off a wall and revealed hidden histories underneath.  More than anything I found the paintings utterly joyful as the colors in them appeared to shimmer and dance, their blurred layers creating the illusion of movement.

See also:

• Brian Gross Fine Art
• Ed Moses

show 181

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public service announcement

I'm DJing tomorrow:
9am - noon PST, Sunday, December 26
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm

quixotic

Self portrait by Gaetano Donizetti drawn in Paris, 1841

See also:

• Soundbites of Donizetti's String Quartet no. 18 in e minor
• Donizetti cylinder recordings

due by

It was at Johansson Projects last fall that I first saw and fell in love with Jennie Ottinger's work, and now she's back at the gallery again with a gobsmacker of a new show.  While her paintings often have something of a vintage feel to them, at least in her choice of subject matter, she has gone one step further and themed this entire show around classic literature, excerpting scenes from books like Madame Bovary, Of Mice and Men, Gravity's Rainbow, and many more.  Her sparse painting style with its isolated blocks of color and unfinished details is a natural fit for the moments she chooses to illustrate: funerals, court hearings, soldiers at war.  I like that she doesn't necessarily paint the most famous parts of the books either, and instead the images acquire a sort of universality only heightened if like me you've read only a smattering of the Great Novels.  In addition to her paintings Ottinger has also repurposed a series of hardbacks, wrapping them in painted jackets and excavating the pages so to insert her own blunt, laugh-out-loud synopses of the stories.  I particularly recommend her version of Orlando, and of Moby-Dick (only three pages long!).  Further hilarity ensues on one wall of the gallery where Ottinger has grouped stacks of books by theme.  If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say Come Sit By Me was one of my favorites, consisting of Vanity Fair, Medea, and of course The Portable Dorothy Parker.  Wicked.

See also:

• Johansson Projects
• Jennie Ottinger

show 180

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