I’m going to say it…ArtPoint does some of the most memorable parties ever. I’ve visited the Legion of Honor numerous times, but to hold such a huge party inside was one visit I will never forget. The halls were filled with ghouls, goblins, and a whole bunch of women who were trying to pass off lingerie as costumes.

When I first entered I knew that it was going to be an interesting night with the museum awash in a spooky glow and scary music. The one part of the party that took a little getting used to was being able to drink and party next to antiques, but fortunately the ones that would  have been easily breakable were under glass. The food wasn’t too impressive, or maybe that’s because I filled up before I got there. I did help myself to the pounds of jelly beans scattered throughout. Too bad there wasn’t a larger selection of candy though. I was really hoping for some mini-Reese’s Pieces.

I was able to do my usual volunteer gig and that meant manning the tarot card and palmer readers. I’ve never talked with either of these people, so being able to do it for free was an opportunity that I wasn’t going to pass up. The Tarot card reader said a lot of good things, but I’m still waiting for them to come true.

After the volunteer shift I was able to roam the museum, stare at art, and dance to the PopRocks down in what would usually be the cafeteria. This was seriously one of the greatest places to hold this amazing event. I have to say that dancing  it up in museums is my party place of choice. You’re able to have fun and dance the night away, but if you want a quite moment to yourself you can sneak away to check the exhibits. Just make sure to leave your food and drinks outside.

W H A T : John Abercrombie at SF JAZZ
With Mark Feldman, Drew Gress & Anthony Pinciotti
W H E N : Sunday, November 8, 2PM
W H E R E : Florence Gould Theatre, Legion of Honor

M O R E : SF JAZZ Family Matinee Concerts

Wynton Marsalis Legion of Honor Medal Presentation at French Embassy NYC brought to you by Jon Hammond

*WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

photo by Jon Hammond


http://ia341327.us.archive.org/2/items/JonHammondWyntonMarsalisLegionofHonorMedalPresentationbroughttoyoubyJonHammond/WyntonMarsalisLegionofHonorMedal.m4v

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSMA9rEOFMI

French Ambassador Pierre Vimont presents Wynton Marsalis the insignia of chevalier of the Legion of Honor medal, France’s highest distinction, in a very special ceremony at the French Embassy in New York by French Cultural Services. In attendance were Bill Cosby, George Wein, Jean-Louis Gilhaumon, George Avakian and Wynton’s Father Mr. Ellis Marsalis. With a performance by Wynton’s quintet with saxophonist Walter Blanding Jr. and Ellis Marsalis at the Steinway Piano with his son. Brought to you by Jon Hammond © www.HammondCast.com Special Thanks Amaury Laporte

Jon Hammond playing solo cocktail piano at French Embassy photo by Anthony Behar

Wynton Marsalis, Pierre Vimont, Legion of Honor, Amaury Laporte, Jon Hammond, HammondCast, Local 802 Musicians Union, Jazz In Marciac

Wynton Marsalis Legion of Honor Medal Presentation at French Embassy NYC brought to you by Jon Hammond

*WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

photo by Jon Hammond


http://ia341327.us.archive.org/2/items/JonHammondWyntonMarsalisLegionofHonorMedalPresentationbroughttoyoubyJonHammond/WyntonMarsalisLegionofHonorMedal.m4v

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSMA9rEOFMI

French Ambassador Pierre Vimont presents Wynton Marsalis the insignia of chevalier of the Legion of Honor medal, France’s highest distinction, in a very special ceremony at the French Embassy in New York by French Cultural Services. In attendance were Bill Cosby, George Wein, Jean-Louis Gilhaumon, George Avakian and Wynton’s Father Mr. Ellis Marsalis. With a performance by Wynton’s quintet with saxophonist Walter Blanding Jr. and Ellis Marsalis at the Steinway Piano with his son. Brought to you by Jon Hammond © www.HammondCast.com Special Thanks Amaury Laporte

Jon Hammond playing solo cocktail piano at French Embassy photo by Anthony Behar

Wynton Marsalis, Pierre Vimont, Legion of Honor, Amaury Laporte, Jon Hammond, HammondCast, Local 802 Musicians Union, Jazz In Marciac

Today I took advantage of the free museum day to go somewhere I’d never been before, the Legion of Honor. I would highly recommend you go there even if you don’t go inside the actual museum. On a nice sunny day there are gorgeous views of the city and there is actually a lot to see just from outside the museum itself, such as the architecture, the cast of Rodin’s The Thinker, and George Segal’s memorial The Holocaust.

But luckily I was able to go inside for free as well. I was able to catch the John Baldessari exhibit on one of it’s last days, and it had been something I was interested in going to for a while. Probably my favorite series of his were the Person with Guitar because 1) I’m a music nerd and 2) the textuure of the prints. I’ll try to illustrate it:

Person with Guitar (pink)

You can almost see how it looks in person, which is there is a big hole where the guitar is, and is filled in with a color block. You can see in this one how it looks like the finger is floating unattached because it was space not inhabited by the guitar. I really enjoyed seeing these in person.

Besides this there was a lot of fine art I enjoyed, even though I’m much more of a modern art fan. But here are a few detailed pictures I took that I really liked.

Terpsichore, Muse of Music and Dance

Thalia, Muse of Comedy

John Baldessari, "God Nose," 2007, cast aluminum with hand-painting. Object 36 x 37 x 6 inches. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer.

It is rare that the Legion of Honor has a show honoring a living artist who is available to comment on his work, and even rarer when that artist is leading rabble-raising conceptualist.  For the past 50 years, John Baldessari., now 78, has been poking his finger in the eye of the contemporary art world, challenging its long-held assumptions, with the persistent confidence of a visionary.  As a result, he has become one the most influential artists of our time.  His current show at the Legion of Honor “John Baldessari: A Print Retrospective from the Collections of the Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation” closes this coming weekend and is well worth a trip.   

125 prints are included in the exhibition that spans the last forty years of Baldessari’s post-painting period, from the 1970s to the present.  The collection of prints is on loan from the Portland, Oregon-based collection of real estate developer Jordan D. Schnitzer.  Schnitzer, who began collecting in 1974, and now has an almost complete archive of Baldessari’s printed work in his a collection of over 5,000 prints by leading artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Bruce Nauman.  Schnitzer worked with Karin Breuer, Curator in Charge, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, to organize the exhibition, and to support the printing of the catalog.

 The most important thing that someone can take away from a visit to this show is a change in their own attitude about what it really means to really see something.  Baldessari is the quintessential data processor.  Much like what Einstein did for physics, Baldessari has challenged some of art’s lynchpin assumptions by exploring what would happen if they were relaxed, asking WHY is this so?  He is a genius at stripping things of their normality—their context, order of being experienced– and then seeing what emerges.  As a result, he has been able to experience the world in a way that is not preconceived and to see profound connections that others aren’t even looking for.   He separated himself from his herd of artists early on and made a distinctive break from painting in the 1970’s by ceremoniously burning his paintings.  He then began working with paper and photographic images, working through many of the concerns that he wasn’t able to address as a painter.  With his fresh eye, sharp wit and soft spoken ways, he managed to influence an entire generation of artists.  His work can be intimidating for the uninitiated as it is not always easy to understand.  “Sometimes I think people get frustrated with his work because they feel they have to figure it out,” said curator Connie Lewellen, who has worked with him for years, “and that causes tension because they have to decide.  You can look at everything he does on many different levels and I think you are also challenged to make your own stories which will evolve the more time you spend with the work.”

 The press preview offered a guided tour through the exhibition with Baldessari and Lewellen and a chance to hear Baldessari talk about his work and ask questions.  What emerged was captivating—he spoke very simply about complex and powerful thoughts.  The Baldessari comments  that follow (in italics) are all from that day.

John Baldessari, "The Fallen Easel," 1987, color lithograph and screenprint in five parts printed on paper and aluminum plates. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer. 2005.108a–i

 Standing in front of “The Fallen Easle” (1987), a nine part color lithograph and screenprint, that is emblematic of a lot of the issues that his work has dealt with over the years, Baldessari admitted to being a “closet formalist.”  (focusing on the visual elements of the artwork).  There are fragments of different images that were possibly culled from movie stills, magazines, sources from popular culture, sources that are cut up in very idiosyncratic ways.  On a compositional level, the fallen easle is a pointer, an arrow to the rest of the composition.  The space between the images is empty.  One frame holds a pointed gun, an image appearing frequently in his work. Another frame contains three men in suits treated in his emblematic way of handling faces, which is to cover them with bright, primary-colored dots.  “He does this to take the individuality away from the people, so they cannot be identified and are generic types, explained Lewellen.  “It’s never important to John to identify what the source is or where is came from.”

 “This is a period where I am choosing multiple frames,” said Baldessari.  “In early shows I was such a purist that I refused to put my works in frames, I used Velcro and a lot of damage occurred over time.  I refused to think about frames for as long as possible but my gallerist, Sonnabend, convinced me that I had to think about the work and preserving it.  I decided to use the frame as part of the work, to use the frame as architecture and to avoid a single frame and to play around with pieces that had both framed and unframed parts.  A lot of the works also play with what was considered normal height/width ratios that were accepted by museums and that as artists we had to accept… I asked ‘why?’ and started using long rectangles and placed them with other sized rectangles and squares.”  

 Leveling the playing field with colored dots

Circular disks placed over faces figure prominently in Baldessari’s work from the mid-1980’s onward.   “I’d been working with images from newspapers a lot and had a lot of imagery of people shaking hands, the local fire chief, that type of thing.  I was always intrigued by them. It hit me one day that, working in the isolation of your studio, you’re not doing much about the condition of the world but those people are.  I got to feeling there’s something out of whack here.  I was working with other works where I was using these little price stickers and, in a fit of exasperation, I stuck them over the faces so I didn’t have to look at them.   I felt that I had leveled the playing field.

 It later struck me that we have ways of prioritizing our vision that impacts what we see.  If you’re running into a train station and you’re late, you’re going to prioritize the clock but if you’re just wondering about you’re going to look at other things first.  People tend to look at faces and if you can’t see the faces, you’ve got to look elsewhere—at how they’re dressed or standing, the ambience, so forth.  Also in drawing class, you might

John Baldessari, detail from the artist's book "Throwing Three Balls in the Air to Get a Straight Line (Best of 36 Attempts)," 1973, color offset lithograph. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer. 2008.214b

spend two hours on the head alone and the last hour on the rest of the body.  In my class,  I put a drape over the model’s head so they couldn’t do the head.  Then, in the last hour, I took the drape off.  That’s how that all started.  Now, I think in terms of I am master of my universe I can control what people see and pay attention to.”

 “Throwing Three Ball in the Air to Get A Straight Line (Best of Thirty-six Attempts),” (1973) is illustrative of the prankster in Baldessari, who initially set out to trying to upset beauty (a beautiful result) by intervening on a photo shoot.   The series of work is about throwing three balls in the air to make a straight line…an absurdist idea….and underlying that, trying to create order from chaos or to look at non-conventional forms of order, an ongoing interest of Baldessari.

“Beauty is a by-product,” explained Baldessari.  “Each time an artist does something, you get better and better at making beauty, so why work at it?   Why not something else?”

 The majority of the works in the show are from the 1980’s and they all basically address breaking-up the rectangle, which had become the convention that people had become conditioned to accept as normal.   Baldessari asked “why?” and found there was no real reason.  He began working in a new direction, experimenting with various ways of putting together images from varied sources, sometimes adding colors. 

 “Roller Coaster” (1989-90) combines two black and white squares which are formalist tropes we recognize from Malevich but sandwiched between them is something very novel and other—an image of two carnival roller coasters about to hurdle past each other. Your mind looks at what appears to be a very minimalisti piece of artwork in the black work and then processes the roller coaster and then moves on to the white square.  The work has a curving line of white that extends the movement of the photograph and across the black on the left and a similar effect with a green line on the right which extends into the white expanse.

 Baldessari is masterful at word play.  In “Life’s Balance (With Money),” (1989-90), he offers three images that don’t seem to be related at all—a juggler, some people above who are very happy with money and a precarious situation—someone about to lose his balance.  “The point is that you can combine almost any two or three images and come up with a story or narrative,” explains Connie Lewellen.

 Humor is also by-product–a lot of his absurdist ideas are funny and serious at the same time.  His first print using digital imagery– “The Pot with Nine Removals” (1996)—is a bizarre series of ten prints that begins with what appears to be an old film still of several scantily clad blond Marilynn Monroe-like cannibals dancing around a man about to be cooked in a huge cauldron.  People are systematically removed from each successive print in the series until just the empty pot remains.   A frustrated journalist tried to think his way through the piece and asked him what was going on.  “Well, I’m the last person on earth who is going to answer this,” replied Baldessari.  “It’s about being reductive and taking things away, or being additive. “

John Baldessari, "Person with Guitar (Red)," 2004, five color screenprint on Sintra board with hand painting. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer. 2005.272b

 “I sometimes think of myself as writer but, instead of using words, I am using images,” said Baldessari.  “A word and an image I find equal in weight.  In a lot of my work, instead of an image, I am using a word or, instead of a word, I am using an image.  I’m putting them together pretty much like a writer does and, if they are good, they have to have the right placement of words.  If it’s not the right order it’s too flabby or it’s too obtuse—it has to be just right, not so stretched that it snaps, but you want it to pop.”

Repatterning the Color Code
Baldessari has long been fascinated with big questions such as can color in art ever be stripped of its meaning.  A number of his works address color which he tends to use sparingly but in a bold fashion.

I used to do a lot of painting and then I started doing more and more with paper and painting wasn’t foremost in my mind.  I decided I was going change my attitude towards color which has a relational use in painting and most of the time is used to produce something aesthetically pleasing.  I decided that I wanted to get away from that and would use something like color coding, always in some systematic fashion.  I was working in sequences at the time, so I if were working in a sequence of three, I would work in the three primary colors–red, yellow, blue— and if it were six, I’d bring in the secondary colors of orange, violet, green or up the ante by adding black or white.  I had a system going on and I owe that to Sol LeWit who has a system and follows it.   With faces, I used color in a symbolic way, color coding people—red/dangerous, green/safe, blue/platonic, and yellow/crazy. This led me to ask him about how the dot might factor into his interaction with real people.  Does he mentally blot out of their face and focus on the information around them?   He did not answer the question.

 Philosophically, Baldessari has a long-standing fascination with the relation of the part to the whole which he has tackled in many ways.  He often has asked himself’  ”How much can I leave out of something; when does it cease to be whole?

His “Person With Guitar” series (2005) addresses a very clichéd image—the guitar—in a novel way.  There are six images of hands playing guitars—the players are not recognizable as individuals because they are headless and the guitars are hand-painted, each in a different color, so that all distinguishing characteristics are gone. The hands are also painted. “I am always gathering images but I don’t necessarily like them but I am fascinated by them.  I am attracted by things that are ugly, in my mind, too.

John Baldessari, "Noses & Ears, Etc.: The Gemini Series: Two Faces, One with Nose and Military Ribbons; One with (Blue) Nose and Tie," 2006, three layer, fourteen color screenprint mounted on Sintra with hand painting. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer. 2008.19

A lot happens form disliking it so much that I force myself to deal with it. The guitar has a long history…it made such a beautiful shape when you take away all the distinguishing details, so that it’s in perspective and it’s just a shape.  I isolated that and the hands and I decided to paint on the surface to create a different reflectivity.  I got tired of paint and so I decided to have more than one level and had a level above and then another by sinking into it…hands, guitar, clothing”.

 

 Parts of the body is another curiosity.  “Noses & Ears, Etc: The Gemini Series: Two Faces, One with Nose and Military Ribbons; One With (Blue) Nose and Tie,”  (2006) is part of a series in which six three-layer screenprints are mounted on Sintra board and specific facial features are articulated by color and dimension.  There is a high degree of abstraction—the face is a single color, but the tie and shirt are presented in exacting detail.

 I had a retrospective in Vienna and I saw these works that I had forgotten about.  The ear painting came about when I was in San Diego and I had friend in the billboard business and they put them together in sheets—a 24 sheet billboard.  So, any time they were any left over sheets, I would get it from my friend and look at the imagery.  I was very much interested in  philosophical way what was the difference between the part and the whole or is there any difference…this still occupies my think a lot.  I came upon this giant ear and all of a sudden a part became a whole and so I used it as a basis for a painting and that’s how I got interest in body parts.  Going on with it, it became a subject of my work…eyes and lips seemed fairly conventional but noses and ears were rare in visual art, so that’s what I started off with, eliminating nearly everything but the ear and the nose in roughly he same territory that we might expect a head to be.  After that I did a whole other series of elbows and knees. And then foreheads and eyebrows (some of which are here) and now I am working on hands and feet. Hands are pretty easy; feet aren’t. 

 What Baldessari is doing is formulaic—at every instance, he is rejecting the common view and trying to find a new one by stepping out of conventions and assumptions.   Art has the benefit of not needing strong conventions because of its abstract nature–you never have to return to the real world.   Baldessari is also a paradox…he had to achieve a certain amount of success in the real world before his early ideas were accepted and became so influential.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 14, 2009

For more information on this program, contact:
Tom Kaiser
Phone: (561) 276-1796

French Consul Presents Medals at Boynton Beach Veterans Day Program
Program Commemorates Meuse Argonne Offensive

Consul General of France in Miami Gael de Maisonneuve will present the French Legion of Honor to selected veterans who served in France in World War II and received a Battle Star for their gallant service during a Veterans Day ceremony in Boynton Beach. The ceremony will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009, 10:00 A.M., in the City’s Bicentennial Park, which is located at 411 N. Federal Hwy. Parking and shuttle buses will be available from the Bank of America parking lot at E. Ocean Ave. and N. Federal Hwy.

In addition, this year’s ceremony, presented by the Boynton Beach Veterans Council and the City of Boynton Beach, will commemorate the Meuse Argonne Offensive. Also called the Battle of the Argonne Forest, this battle was part of the final Allied offensive of World War I that stretched along the entire Western Front. Part of the Grand Offensive, the Meuse Argonne Offensive, in which 550 men of the 77^th Division broke through the German lines and were then surrounded by the enemy, is credited with leading directly to the Armistice on November 11, 1918. The men were outnumbered 10 to one, but gallantly held out for five days. Their story will be retold at this ceremony.

At the same time, members of the Veterans Council will unveil a permanent monument in tribute to the thousands of young Americans who gave their lives in the First World War. The theme of this monument is “The Lost Battalion,” which remembers the Meuse Argonne Offensive.

For more information, call (561) 276-1796.

The search is off to a great start!  We saw some beautiful locations over the last week (the weather didn’t hurt either!).   I’ll post the information for each venue under the new “venue info” tab.

Our first stop was the Golden Gate Club in the Presidio.   While the inside is not exactly beautiful on it’s own, the GGC finds redemption with its great views, accessibility to the city and it’s budget friendly price tag.   The rooms are all quite bare, but I imagine that with flowers and some nice lighting they would look really special.   The Presidio Main Post Chapel is within walking distance and is a very sweet and intimate ceremony location if you decided not to utilize the GGC itself.  The Golden Gate Club has a very extensive list of approved vendors; which, I am learning, is a real bonus if you are working on a budget.

Second stop was the Legion of Honor.  This is a beautiful and dramatic site.  It is definitely suited for a more formal affair as the space is full of marble and both modern and classic artwork.  We came to look at the Terrace level, which would include the lower level of the gallery.  This level includes the grand hallway full of classic Greek and Roman artwork as well as the Cafe and patio. Until recently the rest of the museum was available only as an entire site buy out and was really expensive.  Happily, the Board of Trustees has just approved rental of the first three galleries as you enter the museum.  They are a stunning setting.   It’s hard not to love the elegance and beauty of the setting here, however, it does have it’s drawbacks.   Namely, the same location that offers the great views and sweeping expanses of lawn with no concern for noise ordinances, is the Legion’s biggest problem.  It is way the heck out there.   We were told that taxi service is nearly non existent meaning shuttles would need to be rented to accommodate all the guests, including locals.   Additionally, while not being the most expensive venue in the city by any means, you would end up having to rent nearly everything.  I found that their list of approved caterers are all on the mid-to high end of the price tag.  The costs could really start to add up.

Next stop was 1 Fort Mason.   Originally the Commander General of the Western Army’s home, the venue is located in Upper Ft Mason – you enter off of Bay at Franklin, not down by the Safeway in the Marina.  The setting is stunning.  The views from the back lawn sweep out over the Bay and towards Ghirardelli square , while the house itself, is tucked back into a little nook with big oak trees in front offering just the right amount of privacy.    Much like the Golden Gate Club, the space itself doesn’t scream elegance, but with the floor to ceiling windows in every room and that view to look at, who cares?  We were lucky to see it being set up for a wedding that was about the same size as what we are expecting, so we got a really good idea of how the venue would look.  1 Fort Mason is a little pricier than the others but the dining room chairs and tables all come with the space, so it’s really more in line with the others than we initially thought.  This is a great venue for out-of-town guests and locals alike.  Taxi service is available and it’s close to hotels.  The one ‘con’ is that they have a very small list of approved caterers and this is a non-negotiable.  Again, like the Legion, their caterers run a mid- to high price tag.

We’ll be seeing a few more sites this week so check back for updates!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 10, 2009

For more information, contact:
Wayne M. Segal
Public Affairs Director
Phone: (561) 742-6025/e-mail: segalw@bbfl.us

French Consul To Present Legion of Honor Awards
Ceremony Part of City’s Veterans Day Event

The French Consul General will participate in a Veterans Day ceremony in Boynton Beach during which he will present the French Legion of Honor Award to those who served in France during World War II. To qualify for this award, veterans must provide their DD214, both sides, and the form must show that they received a Battle Star.

There are a limited number of awards to be presented. For more information, call (561) 276-1796.

# # #

We headed out to the Legion of Honor since we haven’t been there in a while.  I took a bunch of iPhone pics of a lot of the sculptures since they interested me the most – not bad for an iPhone!

Went to the Legion of Honor today with my brothers and cousins. Here are only some of the pictures and these are going up because I feel like posting something on my blog. I do have more.

The Legion of Honor is located in San Francisco and displays a collection of 4,000 years of ancient and European art that sits itself overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

It was built to commemorate Californian soldiers who died in World War I

The Legion of Honor is a three-quarter-scale adaptation of the 18th-century Palais de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris.

The weather was beautiful. A light wind blew that refreshed the soul from the blazing sun that radiated the clear blue sky. The drive to the museums was not too much of a trouble, besides the bridge that had light traffic. When I walked up the gate/entrance to the museum my alluring fantasy of the Rome, Greece, and Europe took hold of me once more. In the open court yard the columns reminded me of the Roman army that would have lined its walls, and in the dead center a man, a boy and a girl whom had stolen bread. Begging for forgiveness, that they have stolen from the market. If I were young, If i were a child, the uniform of a Roman soldier would have won-out the clothes I was wearing then, to my left a sword commonly carried by the soldiers of Caesar. I would stomp my right foot, my left foot, with an imagined group of soldiers. I would leave my world and enter that of the past.

Within the museum they had the mirror used by King Louis XIV of France. I looked into the mirror and I saw a reflection, at first it was that of the king, but once i realized that such a thing to be impossible— the king i saw was no one else but I.

I cannot help but feel like a child wanting to play solider in the presence of these works. Once the idea of being a solider had passed me, it was time to be emperor. The court is filled with members that have my ears, all working for the interest of the empire or that of their well being within the times. Senators, merchants, men of God, and peasants huddle and waited for my arrival, for the emperor was to set on a journey to a land that had been the enemies of these walls for centuries.

***

Back to reality for a moment. It was a free tuesday, for it was the first of the month.

***

Once the dirty politics has been played, once the blood has run free for just and unjust reasons, and the land has become a place of Ideas, commerce– the center of the world, it enters a time for thought, for novel, philosophy and art. Individuals start to think of the heavens, Earth and hell. Wishing, yearning really, to discover the workings of not only the center divine of mankind, but that of the gods

I’ve lived in the bay about three years now and have never ventured up that big ass hill to visit the Legion of Honor museum until now. Boy was I missing out! The Legion of Honor is one of the famed Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and probably gets thousands of visitors a day.

Not only did I not have to pay to get in (every first Tuesday of the month is F-R-E-E) but for the price of nada I got to get within inches of some of the most renowned artistic masterpieces in the history of the WORLD. (Okay so you are supposed to stay a least a foot back, but I’ve never been one for rules. They once tried to kick me out of the Andy Warhol Museum for taking pictures. Bah Humbug, I say!) 

As you walk into the courtyard of the museum entrance you are greeted by the immense sculpture of Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker”. I’m pretty sure this is just a copy, and the original is in France, but very cool anyway. I made my way in, grabbed a map, and began to circulate.

At first I thought these were just prints, but upon closer inspection, you can actually see the blobs of paint and brush strokes of Degas, Goya, Watteau, Rembrandt and many others, that are hundreds of years old . It’s astonishing to me that so many of these works have lasted so long through world wars, and fires, and floods.

Aren’t some of these pieces supposed to be in the Louvre and not in little old San Francisco? Who knew? Monet’s “Water Lilies” (one of my favorites) was stunning up close, and much bigger than I thought.

And talk about big. Rubens’ “The Tribute Money” was so large I put my hand out to get paid.

Take the time out to roam it for a few hours. Since I was pressed for time, I didn’t get to fully enjoy the place, but it is spectacular. Just don’t go setting your notebooks on any tables. Turns out, I was trying to take notes on an 18th century Italian oak table…Oops! (I know, I know, I’m going to be the pariah of museums across the country.)

Check out their website for special exhibitions and ticket prices.

This Saturday, April 4th,  Bank of America customers (that means me!) will be able to visit a number of museums around the country for completely free, just show your Bank of America card! In San Francisco, this means you get to check out The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Museum of the African Diaspora, de Young Museum, and The Legion of Honor. For my South Bay readers, you can get into the Tech Museum of Innovation and The San Jose Museum of Art. What a great way to spend taxpayer’s money on a Saturday afternoon.

Photo: de Young Museum via Flickr

I can’t wait to check out this show at the Legion of Honor. General admission is free on the first Tuesday of every month, which makes the $10 surcharge for this show a great deal.

Cold wet weekends in San Francisco are never fun… especially a three day one and on-top of that one with the big “L word” day smack in the middle of it. So what are you going to do this weekend? Do you have your Valentine’s Day plan together? Perhaps Weotta can help…

Museum hopping with a bit of Burmese

We have some pretty fantastic museums in SF and rainy weekends are the perfect time to do some museum hopping. One of our favorite combos is to start out with the DeYoung and end up at the Legion of Honor. Not only because one ticket gets you into both, but because they really are an ideal pairing of taste and style. Plus, if you go to the Legion of Honor right before closing on Saturday, you may get to hear them playing the organ; it fills every hall, bringing the artwork to life in an amazing way. Afterwards, continue your day of art and culture with a bite of Burmese food at nearby Mandalay or Burma Superstar. For those that haven’t had Burmese, it is like a combo of Indian and Thai, but with its own unique flavor. Some of our favorite dishes are fermented tea leaf salad, samusas soup and curry lamb. Both restaurants do a nice job, aren’t expensive, and are pretty much on the same level, but they are almost always packed. Don’t know what it is about SF residents, but we love our Burmese food. If you still have energy afterwards and it isn’t raining too hard head over to Sutro’s at the Cliff House to watch the rough seas . Last minute V-day addition: Get some flowers in there, dress a little nicer, and go to B-star (slightly upscale Burmese place). After dinner head to Nopa for cocktails and dessert, a 5 min cab ride away. They do amazing mixed drinks, always have great wines by the glass and fantastic unique deserts. Get a gin drink with caprock gin and checkout their sopaipillas (kind of a fancy donut… perfect for cold weather) .

Tahoe

Cold rain in SF usually means lots of snow in Tahoe… so you could get out of town, fight the crowds and the weather, and hit the slopes at Heavenly, Squaw Valley or Kirkwood. Last minute V-day addition: Get a nice bottle of red wine, some fine dark chocolate and a fire can go a long way after an exhausting day in the snow.

Takeout extravaganza

Hunker down (ever wonder what Hunker means?) and have a different type of takeout… pizza, Thai, Chinese, and perhaps sushi each night of the three day weekend. At least do Thai… both Basil Thai and Chai-Yo are good choices. This is the perfect opportunity to snuggle up in front of the tube for some mind-numbing entertainment. Try not to spend the whole day indoors… at least walk out to the restaurant.  Last minute V-day addition: Forget about takeout and cook together Saturday night… experiment and try something new. Perhaps wild mushroom and asparagus risotto or French onion soup with sourdough… both good, cold weather classy foods. Top this off with a nice Syrah and you are good to go. If you want to add a little something sweet touch to the evening with some adult hot cocoa.

Hope this helps you get through this long perhaps quite rainy weekend with a smile

Happy Valentine’s Day from the Weotta team!

On October 10th of 2008 The Job Shop was proud to celebrate our first 10 years in business.  The celebration was held at the newly-refurbished Legion of Honor and we were happy to spend the evening enjoying food, drinks and live jazz with all who attended.

Potter author JK Rowling received France’s highest civilian award on Wednesday–the Legion of Honor. Now the second member of the Rowling family to be conferred honorary knights of France (her French great grandfather had been made a knight of the Legion of Honor for his courage in World War 1), Rowling joins Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand as the only foreign recipients of the honour.

Personally I’m not in the least enticed by Potter-mania. I think it’s good that children are reading more voraciously (if that term can even be applied in the modern world’s dismal reading rates) but it’s puerile and ridiculous that such second-rate literature gets this much attention. I could name twenty-five plus reader-friendly individuals that are just as dependable at producing literary works, but fail to obtain any commercial success. Suffice to say genre isn’t an issue. But perhaps it’s a good thing that my favorite writers remain obscure. I sleep better that way.

Peace.

The 1900 World’s Fair in Paris was the stage for the one of the greatest rivalries in the history of decorative arts, a showdown between Peter Carl Faberge, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Rene Lalique, foArtisitic Luxury: Faberge, Tiffany, Lalique Exhibition at the Legion of Honor The California Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum is bringing this rivalry back in an exhibition opening February 7, 2009 called ‘Artistic Luxury: Faberge, Tiffany, Lalique.’ This exhibit will reunite some of the most elaborate designs produced for the Paris World’s Fair for the first time since the turn of the century.

The exhibit focuses on the glittering objects crafted out of gold, silver, and precious gems reflecting the prevailing styles of the time, the opulent Rococo (historicism) and the exuberant Art Nouveau (modernism). Separate galleries, recreating the ambiance of the Paris World’s Fair, are devoted to the designs of each artist along with a handful of pieces by other well known makers of the period.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1399083/artistic_luxury_faberge_tiffany_lalique.html?cat=2