Ineptly Awful Office Building

Ineptly awful? That's the Bellevue, Washington office building pictured above.

To my possibly warped mind, it isn't truly awful: most anything Frank Gehry touches fills that bill. No, it's just a pedestrian hash, a stew (to mix culinary metaphors) of recent highrise architectural clichés.

Note the silly slanted roof. A fairly recent federal courthouse tower in downtown Seattle has the same treatment. Maybe this sort of thing is justified by citing our rainy climate, admitting that flat roofs might not be all that practical. But whatever drainage system might be employed, it strikes a casual viewer that rainwater should pour off the lower edge onto a sidewalk or street below. Similar roofs are on lower parts of the building mostly hidden in this view.

Then there's the "slanted structure" cliche -- clearly here a combination of offset stacked floors on one side and mild cantilevering on the other. And to what purpose? Whatever happened to the modernist mantra of functionality and form following it? What I see is a cheap-looking display of an architect striving for notoriety by attempting the transgressive route. (Hey gang, this isn't strictly functional so I'm doing a brave thing even though I'm not too far off-reservation 'cuz of all that glass, steel and reinforced concrete I used!)

But the real blame falls on the architect's client. Were there no adults in the room when this joke of a project was approved?

Painting Types on Offer in Carmel-by-the-Sea

When I'm visiting California's artsy Carmel-by-the-Sea, I seldom fail to scoop up a copy of the pocket-sized Carmel Gallery Guide, a publication published every season or two. The current (Fall/Winter 2010/2011) edition has an interesting addition. Besides lists of galleries and artists, it now lists genres and which galleries offer such items.

Exactly what a genre is and which paintings belong to it is a matter of judgment. Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to post the genre names and the number of galleries claiming to sell examples. Bear in mind that a gallery can stock paintings in more than one genre.

Here is my tally (data first, categories as listed in the publication, my comments in brackets):

• 3 -- 19th & 20th Century European
  
• 7 -- Early California & American Historic
  
• 11 -- European Contemporary (Landscapes, Cityscapes & Figurative)
  
• 31 -- American Contemporary (Landscapes, Cityscapes & Figurative)
  
• 1 -- Marine Life [Wyland Galleries only for this one]
  
• 13 -- American Modern, Abstract Impressionism [not Expressionism?!?]
  
• 4 -- European Modern and Abstract
  
• 7 -- Plein Aire Artists (Contemporary)
  

Carmel is a conservative place so far as painting is concerned, not at all like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Probably not like the USA as a whole, either.

The American Contemporary category was tops, at 40 percent of the instances. American Modern and European Contemporary had 17 and 14 percent, respectively. Modernism, if tightly defined as American Modern and European Modern and Abstract held a 22 percent share.

Even given the not very precise and sometimes confusing categories, modernism doesn't seem to be hugely popular in Carmel galleries according to these very rough statistics. Nevertheless, it tends to confirm the impression I get strolling around town that hardcore and even soft-core modernism is not strong there.

Better in Reproduction Than on Canvas?

Perhaps the most talented Catalonian realist artist, vintage 1900, was Ramón Casas i Carbó (1866-1932). His Wikipedia entry is here and a short biography with many illustrations posted by Matthew Innis is here. (Not all the posted art is by Casas. Some posters by others are fairly easy to spot, but a painting ("Granadina") by Hermen Anglada Camarasa is grouped with some by Casas, so there is a chance that other non-Casas work crept in.)

When I finally was able to visit the Barcelona area this fall, I was geared up to view as many works by Casas and other Catalonian painters as I could -- the main sites being the museum at Montserrat and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.

The Casas painting I most wanted to see was Antes del baño (1894 or 1895) in the Montserrat museum -- it's the painting shown above. However, the museum's placement of it was, shall I say, unfortunate. It was near a corner where one couldn't quite view it head-on. Moreover, it wasn't properly lighted. All that aside, the painting struck me was looking flatter and more thinly-painted than I had anticipated.

These last two defects cropped up in other -- but not all -- Casas paintings I came across; the ones in Barcelona tended to be richer. The result is that while I still regard Casas as an excellent draftsman, I'm not quite as impressed by his paintings as I was before viewing them in person.

This is odd: normally the real painting is better than any reproduction of it.

Fashion (Almost) Beyond One's Reach

I suppose I'd best admit it now rather than waiting. You see, um, well, there's this thing. Er, you might call it, uh, a kinda defect or something I have. It's, it's, it's.... [Draws deep breath, closes eyes, forces himself to uncross fingers]

I love certain brands of clothing that I can't really afford nor rationally justify buying.

My wife is the same way. Maybe you are too: most people have weaknesses, after all.

In my case it used to be sweaters, jeans and jackets from the Danish firm Blue Willi's. But Blue Willi's scaled back sales operations in the USA a couple of years ago and that source of temptation faded accordingly.

Even before that happened, a greater source of temptation began its emergence: Paul & Shark. Despite its name, Paul & Shark is an Italian company whose sweaters and other garments sell for at least twice the price of a comparable Blue Willi's item.

"Affordable" is a relative concept. When I was a private in the Army, I could afford only the cheapest civilian clothing. And there are people at the higher extreme. Nevertheless, a decent men's sweater such as a Pendleton crew-neck woolen can be had for around $70. Given that benchmark (and setting aside matters such as quality of materials and workmanship), a Blue Willi's sweater was five times too expensive and a Paul& Shark is around ten times so.

No way can I afford a $700 Paul & Shark, and even $350 for a Blue Willi's was more than I could really justify. Solution: buy only sale items. Unfortunately, a Paul & Shark on sale is about the same price (or more!) than was a non-sale Blue Willi's.

That was enough to allow me to do no more than drool on the shop's rug when looking at Paul & Shark clothing. But around a year ago I broke down and bought one on sale. Now I have four.

It's beginning to look like I'd better check myself in for rehab.

Joaquim Mir and His Landscapes

Joaquim Mir (1873-1940) was a Catlonian painter who specialized in landscapes -- landscape paintings that caught my eye in more than one Spanish art museum in October. Unfortunately, I could find little about him in English on the Internet. The most comprehensive item was here, and it's in Catalan! If you know any Spanish or Italian, you might be able to get the gist.

Anyway, images of some of his paintings are below. Mir's style is an interesting mix of expressionism and impressionism: I hope you enjoy viewing them.
Gallery

Poble escalonat

La eremita de Sant Blai - 1907

El abismo - 1903

El miral de la esglèsia

La joia L'Aleixar - (detail) click to enlarge

El roc de l'estany - 1903 (detail) click to enlarge

Mannequins and Facial Features

The photos below are a bit out of focus (I was shooting telephoto; plus, my camera in one case apparently was more interested in the Nordstrom store itself than the subject), but I'm displaying them to illustrate an idea I've been mulling for a while.

Back in the glory days of academic training, young prospective artists would have to slave away for months and even years drawing images of plaster casts of sculpture. Nowadays, an artist so-inclined can buy a model of a human head where the surfaces are reduced to a set of planes -- this to better understand the structure.

But there is another potential reference source: the store mannequin.

Now some mannequins are stylized beyond usefullness. Others are not. Consider the mannequins in the Las Vegas Nordstrom store pictured here. Some are definitely simplified, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because all artists except hyper-realists simplify anyway. Then there is lighting. The Nordstrom mannequins are lighted from above, and that provides useful information regarding the eye socket, the muzzle area around the mouth, and the lips and chin.

Not all stores welcome photography (a Chanel staffer gave me a stern warning once), but if you pack a camera and find a useful mannequin setup, consider snapping a reference photo.

Lluis Masriera, Versatile Catalonian

The painting shown above, Ombres reflectides (1920) was one of the more interesting ones I noticed while making a mad dash (not recommended) through Barcelona's Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (Wikipedia entry here and Web site here.)

It's by Lluis Masriera (1872-1958). I couldn't find much biographical information about him during a brief Google search other than this Wikipedia entry (in Spanish) and a blog post by a antiques advisor here. The latter is informal and includes at least one factual error (a 1906 commission from Queen Victoria was impossible because the monarch had died five years earlier).

At any rate, it turns out that Masriera is better known for his jewelry design than his painting. An example of the former is shown below.