Think, Look, Make

Self-propelled internal combustion. Vehicles of Expression. Still to be found in San Francisco. near 3rd street 24th street 24th and Mission near 3rd street near Cortland, on Bernal Bayshore and Cortland, Baby. Near Harrison street Florida Street at 24th Harrison Street  near 3rd street Embarcadero

In 2013, the Basque director Oskar Alegria introduced his film " The Search for Emak Bakia" at the 56th San Francisco International Film Festival. An exceptional experimental film, it weaves documentary, storytelling, and history while revealing aspects of Man Ray's time in the Basque Country that are difficult to appreciate otherwise. Emak Bakia means "leave me in peace" in Basque and it was also the name of the house that Man Ray lived in. In this movie there are scenes of women sleeping whose eyes are captured just at the moment of awakening. These reminded me of some of my favorite Man Ray photos, such as the one of Kiki de Montparnasse.  http://emakbakiafilms.com/fotos/?pid=1 Kiki and the African Mask, by Man Ray 1926

The “Beauté Congo” exhibit at the Fondation Cartier in Paris was so successful that it was extended until 2016.   Famous men such as Congolese politicians, Barak Obama and Muhammed Ali were the subjects of many works. I rarely saw the image of a woman- even then, they were provocatively dressed or a showcasing a car or pregnant with a male writer/artist.   Most wall labels indicated the artists were men. This is not unusual, in any part of the world.   According to the Guerrilla Girls, in 2012 less than 4% of artists in the modern art section of the Metropolitan Museum of New York were women. Ken Johnson wrote about this same issue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  51 Contemporary Artists, but Just Three Women In 2016, in a major art capital like Paris, at an exhibit representing an entire country and spanning a century, I had hoped for more.  I asked someone working at the museum if there were any women artists in the exhibit. One assistant said: “Ther...

Kizomba at the Viaduc Paris, 2015 Every encounter with a person or a place has the potential to change us. The person who changed my way of seeing, as a photographer, was Robert Clarke-Davis. I was lucky to have spent moments wandering with him in Chicago and San Francisco, watching him take photos. And, he sent me camera equipment and photographs of his to look at, nearly every week, for years. My eyes perceive the world differently because of him.  Joel Meyerowitz quit his job and decided to become a photographer on the day he met Robert Frank, even though they barely exchanged words. I enjoyed watching this video, in which Joel describes watching Robert take photographs of two children and the effect that hearing Frank press the shutter had on him.  Little snippets: “The small gestures seemed to have meaning, or potential for meaning. I felt the rhythmic flow. They were visual revelations. When I left the location, suddenly, everything on the street seemed dynam...

"Art does heal: scientists say appreciating creative works can fight off disease." is the headline of a Feb 2015 article in The Telegraph. It says that experiencing art is associated with the following positive emotions: "amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, joy, love and pride." I know this is one of the reasons I love getting a text like this from a former student. Even better is seeing students post pictures of themselves with art, like the one below. All photos were taken in Paris, except the Barnett Newman, taken in NY. Musee Picasso- I loved their outfits, her tattoos, that she is taller than him and how she was so affectionate. Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson. Hardly anyone goes here. Again, I was drawn to her tattoo, the way she held herself the whole time she was looking at the art, and she looked very, very slowly. Centre Pompidou- Yves Klein. This jovial woman from Spain didn't realize that there was anything in common betwe...

Paris, 2015 When people are asked which historical figures they would like to meet, answers like Jesus and Mother Theresa come up. For me, it is Man Ray. I made a pilgrimage to photograph his grave at the Cimetiere de Montparnasse this summer, and read his epitaph: "Unconcerned but not indifferent." He is buried with Juliet Browner, whom he met in Los Angeles when he was 50 and she was 29. Of Romanian descent, she was strikingly beautiful in an unconventional way and besides posing for many photographs she would just hang around so that Man Ray could be inspired by her "presence."  Juliet Browner, by Man Ray But, I’ve always been more interested in one of his previous lovers, Lee Miller. At the age of 22, she traveled from the US to learn photography from Man Ray in Paris. Man was nearly 40 and already had a formidable reputation as a Surrealist, painter and photographer. When she landed on his doorstep, he initially refused her but she left with him ...

I come to Paris to be reminded that art and love are one and the same. Both are driven by a desire for wholeness, creativity, truth, surprise. At the Centre Pompidou, I saw a Balthus that was just donated to the museum. I haven't seen a reproduction of it anywhere and, standing there, I felt that coming all the way to Paris was worth it just to see this one painting.   A new Balthus at the Pompidou, Paris Art, like love, sometimes involves transgression. Balthus said, "  I want to proclaim in broad daylight, with sincerity and feeling, all the throbbing tragedy of a drama of the flesh, proclaim vociferously, the deep-rooted laws of instinct." I learned to love Balthus as a student in Wayne Thiebaud's painting class in college.  From the perspective of the painter looking at a Balthus, one quickly sees past the erotic elements and is struck by his masterful technique, a method based on years spent on one painting, using paints hand mixed each morning by his wife,...