Truth and Beauty in San Francisco

I've made a very, very, very quick trip to San Francisco to see the Truth and Beauty: The Pre-Raphaelites and the Old Masters exhibition at the Legion of Honor Museum - a pretty magnificent (if somewhat pompous, for the 1920s) edifice in its own right, with some excellent paintings in its permanent collection.  But I knew I'd kick myself if I didn't get to see this - so my thanks to Alice, above all, for understanding!   

There were some obvious favorites - Millais's Mariana; Rossetti's Lady Lilith and Beata Beatrix and Veronica Veronese; Holman Hunt's Lady of Shalott; some Julia Margaret Cameron photographs; Spencer Stanhope's creepy Robins of Modern Times.  The brilliance of the show is to put these paintings alongside the earlier painters who influence the Pre-Raphaelites: Sandro Botticelli - especially his amazing “Idealized Portrait of a Lady (Simonetta Vespucci);”  Paolo Veronese; Jan van Eyck; and Hans Memling.  It's not so much an x-influenced-y show in the sense of being able to trace clear borrowings (although there are some of these) - which cleverly turns it into an exhibition about PRB style, and line, and color, rather than subject matter.

It was full of surprises, to me: illuminated manuscripts (including one that belonged to Ruskin), and then an illuminated version of Rossetti's short story "Hand and Soul," by Francis Sangorski and George Sutcliffe - done between 1905-1911;

some paintings that I swear I've never seen (these included some watercolors, and Kate Bunce's St Cecilia (c. 1901).

Some well-known paintings were, interestingly, represented by small-scale copies - usually by the original artists - sometimes with assistance - but here is a real revelation: a small copy of Holman Hunt's Hireling Shepherd, with a black dog.  Where did that come from?  Or where did that go to??

Also - it was an exhibition where one could get really, really close to the canvases, and look closely at detail, and paint texture (the same was true in the main galleries - I was really struck by the thick rough paint in John Martin's The Assuaging of the Waters): here's some painted fabric from Evelyn de Morgan's Flora, which seems to be suffering from an overdose of the Botticellis.

If you can get to see this show, do!

Why, though, is San Francisco so chilly and grey??  

lil' stinker (amorphophallus titanum) at the Huntington!

It's a Corpse Flower - or amorphophallus titanum - or titan arum (not to be confused with Rafflesia arnoldii, or the Corpse Lily, which I'd like to see, too ...).  I'll probably miss her when she bursts into twenty-four hours of smelly bloom, but I might prefer her in this beautiful curled but unfurling state.  She's in the big glasshouse at the Huntington - and I was so happy that, by chance, I was at the Library today.  I've always wanted to see (and smell?) one of these notorious plants, which, quite apart from their other attributes, grow a couple of inches in height a day - her height chart, chronicling all her little growth spurts over the last couple of weeks, stands to one side.

(Not visible here are her fan club, the cameras, the cords and lighting, and all the tech apparatus that's waiting for her moment of odiferous glory - Photoshop is my friend when it comes to dramatizing her ...).

for a moment ...

... I thought that I'd caught this cactus in a rare bloom: after all, we're not normally around in LA at this time of the year, and I'm seeing all kinds of flowers (both in the neighborhood, and even in our own back yard) that are new to me.  But of course I looked up ... and some tree above it - looks like a Californian Pepper - was dropping these strands of berries onto the big lethally spiny leaves of the blue agave.  I mean - I knew it didn't bloom like this.  But it was an instant of my over-active imagination hoping for something unusual amid the familiar.

a mystery

So what happened here?  This is on the bank at the side of the house opposite.  What's the danger?  I suppose, conceivably, someone might have thrown a bucket of whitewash into the hedge, but why?  And what would be so threatening about it?  (other than, I suppose, the fact that it might still have been wet - but then, not many people, probably, would have gone clambering into the bushes to find out.  Conceivably, I suppose their dogs might have done).  One more mystery chalked up against the man who lives opposite (something in finance, here and in New York, with a large assortment of cars.  The bargain second-hand Aston Martin that he purchased the other week seems to have been quickly exchanged for a Porsche).  This auto enthusiasm is probably entirely unrelated to dangerous white paint.

an installation

If you ask me - and happily, no one's asked my opinion on this - there's a very great amount of work that's yet to be done in Taper Hall to get it ready for the start of the semester.  The big lecture theaters are being overhauled in some unspecified way.  They currently have a lot of bare walls, and walls with holes in them, and carpet covered with strips of blue marker tape - there are no seats.  There are also no bathrooms working on that side of the building.  And here's an - an installation, where there used to be a water fountain.  Or more precisely, when I stop pretending this is an art work, what's going to be installed is a new sort of water fountain, at which, apparently, one's going to be able to refill one's re-usable water bottle (this is good news).  Ummmm - maybe 12 working days before these will have students in them being Oriented?  Fifteen working days before they are used for teaching ...?  We'll see.

the depressing wall art of Silver Lake

At the end of another (fairly brief) hospital trip for Alice - more blood samples taken; left arm left bruised and lumpy - we thought we'd celebrate the fact that she's got a bit more appetite by going and getting some pho from Blossom, the Vietnamese restaurant on Sunset.   She phoned in the order; she stayed in the car at the dead end of Manzanita; I trotted briskly up the steps and past the lovely tiny community garden there ... but the sad clown caught my eye.  It's not an uplifting contribution to the day.

heron

This was the first morning for a while that Alice has felt strong enough for a walk - but she did! - and with it, a completely unexpected reward.  We were just coming up to the top of Holboro, and this heron flew low and steadily in front of us, and perched in stately fashion on a rooftop at the junction with Lowry.  It then swooped down, the far side - we can only speculate that someone's impeccable designer garden pond is now missing a carp.