San Francisco Summary

Anonymous Photographer
City Hall and Hall of Records, San Francisco
(completed 1897 - destroyed 1906)
ca. 1900
hand-colored albumen prints (stereograph)
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Colin Campbell Cooper
Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
1916
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Rinaldo Cuneo
The Embarcadero at Night
ca. 1927-28
oil on panel
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Roy Strong
Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco
1934
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Charles Surendorf
San Francisco Doorstep
ca. 1935-37
wood-engraving
(WPA Project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Giacomo Patri
Life Drawing Class taught by Giacomo Patri at California Labor School, San Francisco
1944
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Andreas Feininger
San Francisco
1947
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Anonymous Designer
San Francisco via TWA
ca. 1952
offset-print (poster)
National Air and Space Museum,
Washington DC

Dorothea Lange
San Francisco
1956
gelatin silver print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Victor Moscoso
Otis Rush at Matrix, San Francisco
1967
lithograph (poster)
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Lisa Law
Downtown San Francisco - March 27, 1967
1967
Kodachrome print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Irving Penn
Hippie Family, San Francisco
1967
platinum-palladium print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Carlos Loarca and Rupert Garcia
in Balmy Alley, San Francisco
1972
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Designer
Shopping Bag from I. Magnin, San Francisco
1982
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Designer
The Democratic National Convention, San Francisco
1984
offset-lithograph (poster)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Mark Hess
Democratic Kick-Off, San Francisco
1984
acrylic on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

George Tscherny (designer)
San Francisco Clothing
1987
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Wayne Thiebaud
San Francisco - West Side Ridge
2001
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Epigram

Go softly past the graveyard where

Hipponax is asleep: take care!

Don't wake that spiteful wasp, who stung

Even his parents with his tongue.

In Hell itself, where now he lies,

His red-hot words can cauterize.

– Leonidas of Tarentum (early 3rd century BC), translated by Fleur Adcock (1975)

Love Beads

Topman Design showed menswear for Spring/Summer 2015 at London Fashion Week in the middle of June 2014. Having observed the omnipresent Seventies revival (as here, and here), I had been wondering how long it would take somebody to bring out Love Beads again, that once-universal accessory. Topman had them – along with many remarkable facsimiles of the blue jeans I wore in high school.

Maybe boys in 70s London were wearing pink jeans (as above) when they were not wearing blue jeans. I did not see any pink jeans that I remember in California in those years. The high waist I do remember. The no belt I remember. The suede track shoes in sorbet colors – another possibly imaginary reference that seems to ring true.

1967

In 1967 English Pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) published a new series of screenprints called Moonstrip Empire News. Samples chosen here (from the Tate) are intended for happy comparison with the later (and less polished) Paolozzi screenprint series called Bunk, featured here.

1974

Gerard Depardieu and Patrick Dewaere made a French road movie in 1974 with director Bertrand Blier. It was called Les Valseuses. "Uneven" is one of the kinder words I have seen in print to describe the deliberately disorganized narrative, with its occasional amazing outbursts of misogyny scattered among scenes of seemingly genuine hippie idealism. Production values high as well, even lofty – with music by Stephane Grappelli, cinematography by Bruno Nyutten.
 

Isabell Huppert (below) appeared in this movie at the age of 21. She played a 16-year-old schoolgirl vacationing unhappily in the Midi with her parents. She abandoned them in order to join up briefly with the roving petty criminals, but remained an outlaw only long enough to accomplish the joyful task of losing her virginity.

However, the true female lead was the actress Miou-Miou, partner in crime and partner in bed – an embodiment of the old-fashioned fantasy-girl conjured up by male imagination.

Jeanne Moreau (below) also anchored an isolated, disconnected episode – with the distant manner of a character on the wrong set.

Both Depardieu and Dewaere became stars with this movie (though Patrick Dewaere would commit suicide a few years later). Moreau and Miou-Miou were, in their own ways, each already consigned to the permanent status of legend. And Isabelle Huppert was beginning her steep and rapid ascent to the success-peak she continues to inhabit now, 40 years later.

Reading Happiness

On Friday afternoon Mabel Watson Payne spent nearly five minutes going page by page on her own through the 72 pages of Happiness is a Sad Song, a small square hardcover book by Charles Schulz in hippie typography printed on purple paper. It has Peanuts characters on every page with a caption about Happiness. But no plot. Mabel was entirely engrossed. This is the copy her Grandma bought brand-new when it was published in 1967.