Accessory

John Constantine Stanley
Countess Canning with Guests, Government House, Allahabad
1858
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pio Joris
Landscape with Figure
1865
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Florence

Félix Bracquemond
La Terrasse de la Villa Brancas
1876
etching
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Georges Seurat
Study for painting La Grande Jatte
1884
drawing
British Museum

Jan Toorop
Woman with Parasol
1888
oil on canvas
Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels

Allen & Ginter (Richmond, Virginia)
Pauline Hall on trade card for Dixie Cigarettes
ca. 1888
albumen print and letterpress
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Paul Signac
Woman with Parasol
1893
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Edward Penfield
Harper's April
1897
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Édouard Zier
Woman with Parasol
ca. 1900
watercolor on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Eugène Grasset
Woman with Parasol
1900
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacques-Henri Lartigue
Woman with Parasol
ca. 1911-12
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Chris Beekman
Young Women with Umbrella
1917-18
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Augusto Giacometti
Graubünden Schweiz 
ca. 1920
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Dorothy Brett
Umbrellas
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Arthur Siegel
State Street
1949
dye transfer print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Nancy Kilgour
Beach Umbrellas
ca. 1950
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Marisol (Marisol Escobar)
Mi Mama y Yo
1968
painted bronze and aluminum
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

from Spain 1937

Yesterday all the past.  The language of size

Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion

            Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;

Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,

The divination of water; yesterday the invention

            Of cart-wheels and clocks, the taming of 

Horses; yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants;

The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley,

            The chapel built in the forest;

Yesterday the carving of angels and of frightening gargoyles;

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;

Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns

            And the miraculous cure at the fountain;

Yesterday the Sabbath of Witches.  But to-day the struggle.

– W.H. Auden (1937)

Symmetrical Cities

I came over to Mabel's on Saturday afternoon and we made symmetrical cities. Block by block, Mabel made the city she is touching with her head in the picture above. It was my job to make an identical city alongside Mabel's city, duplicating every block she placed in her city with a block I placed in my city.

Then on Sunday morning Mabel and I saw wet pavements when we stepped outside the lobby of her building. She decided to run back in and equip herself with rain gear – including pink rubber boots – before we climbed the hill to the playground. On the way up Mabel found a depression in the middle of a sidewalk gas plate that amazingly fit the tip of her umbrella exactly. She was so pleased with this gas plate that she asked me to take pictures of it.

Rain Birds

Mabel and I took a long enjoyable walk in the rain on Halloween morning. She wore her new green padded raincoat printed with cheerful birds, a recent birthday present from Grandma.

Today

There was rain all day in San Francisco.

The spring leaves have started to unfurl on many streets.

Nouns

Kids, Cash, Death, God, Idea, Sex, Self-Portrait – concept-things simplified and stripped of context (while filled with associative meaning, so far as that is possible) by Michael Craig-Martin

The Seven

Anger, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, Gluttony. Michael Craig-Martin invokes the Seven Deadly Sins.

Christmas Bead-Stringing

Mother-daughter bead-stringing sitting at the table with Christmas dinner over and Christmas dessert mostly over. This was the new toy Mabel most urgently and ardently wanted to play with – at that moment. This also is the ONLY photograph out of several hundred where my experimental flash/focus combination worked the way I wanted.

Mabel is wearing a knitted hat at dinner because she prevailed on me to take her out for a walk during the final round of dinner preparations – so that she could try out her new hooded raincoat and umbrella (from Grandma) and her rain boots (from Mamma and Daddy). But when we got out on the sidewalk, it was certainly a dark and stormy night. Mabel enjoyed the drama of the weather, of course, but I decided not to linger. Even with the walk abbreviated Mabel got a bit wet around the edges, and her mother sensibly dried her off and plopped the hat on her head while listening to an excited report on the outside world.

Below, the new raingear worn for going out to breakfast on the morning after Christmas (courtesy of my daughter's phone).

 

Winter Begins

Blustery rain on Friday, and I sat under a cafe awning studying this newest San Francisco weather as it blew in from the Pacific Ocean a couple of miles to the west. Contemplation seemed to confirm what the date (November 15th) seemed to proclaim – nothing less than the (local) beginning of winter.

Tangerine Tango (Pantone color of the year for 2012) reliably turned up (immediately above) as it has done throughout the year – in any and all settings, under any and all conditions.

Sartorial commentary needed for this next photo also. Watching the current episode of Project Runway All Stars, I was pleased and surprised when one of the guest judges turned out to be 16-year-old Tavi Gevinson (of Style Rookie fame). She was articulate (to say the least) and at one point uttered words applicable to the rainy-day fashion statement above – "Even though I'm a dropped-crotch apologist" said Tavi Gevinson.

(I tried saying "dropped-crotch apologist" ten times quickly – and quickly failed.)

Note to Self: color adjustments to camera settings for pictures in yesterday's post and in today's (diminished-light experiment) worked better outdoors than indoors.