Yes, There Really Are Real Microsoft Stores

As of this writing there are seven honest-to-goodness, tangible, non-virtual places you actually can walk into: Microsoft Stores -- not to be confused with a part of the corporation's web site.

Dense me, I had no idea Bill Gates' little start-up had graduated from bits and pixels to bricks and mortar until last month, when a store opened not far from its Redmond headquarters in Bellevue's classy Bellevue Square shopping mall. It's the latest one: in 2009 stores opened in Scottsdale and Mission Viejo. This year others opened in: Lone Tree, Colorado; San Diego; Oak Brook, Illinois; and Bloomington, Minnesota -- the last two just before the one in Bellevue.

The likely reason why I wasn't aware of Microsoft's retail push is that I've been drifting away from Windows-based computers to Macs and only knew about Apple Stores, a very handy resource.

Since a Microsoft Store might be coming to your neck of the woods, I thought I'd show you what you might find on that happy day. Here are some photos I took at Bellevue Square:

Looks a lot like an Apple Store, doesn't it?

The layout is similar -- tables with computers and gadgets that use Microsoft software (they are for sale, too), wall racks of software packages and peripheral equipment such are cables and mice, and there's even a counter near the rear where one can get technical advice.

Moveover, the place was jumping when I gave it a walk-through; even busier than the smaller, usually jammed Apple Store a few doors down the mall. Could this have been because the whole mall was hopping thanks to Christmas shoppers? Was it the store's novelty? Might it have been due to the fact that the Seattle area is Microsoft's home turf?

Beats me.

In the Beginning: Salvador Dali

This is the introductory item of a series of occasional posts dealing with modernist painters who began their careers as representational artists.

My concept is that this will form the basis for speculation as to how a given artist might have developed had he not "gone modern." Obviously, there is no way of telling for sure what might have happened absent a system of parallel universes and wormholes for traversing them. Still, speculation is usually a fun, harmless activity as evidenced by the popularity of pre-game sports programs on television.

To begin, let's consider Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). Unlike the artists to be featured in later posts, he almost never drifted very far from representationalism and, in post-Surrealist years, largely returned to representation. This gives an example of beginnings and representational potential attained. The main defect with my choice of Dalí is that examples of his early painting that I could find are not particularly representational. Oh, well.

Maybe I'd better explain what I mean by his degrees of representationalism. Surrealism, as Dalí practiced it, meant painting images representing unreal things in a manner so detailed that they might be seen as being real. That's why I claim his drift was small; small compared to changes in style exhibited by the likes of Picasso, Kandinsky and Mondrian, for example. By the 1950s, as we shall see below, the Surrealist content of his paintings became much less extreme. The result was that some paintings, particularly those with religious content, were close to representational with a touch of symbolism analogous to details in religious art of the mid-second millennium.

Let's take a look:

The Artist's Father at Llana Beach - 1920
Dalí was about 16 when this was painted. It's hard to tell if he was already experimenting with modernist ideas (see below for examples) or, like many at that age, hadn't developed much skill.

View of Port Dogue - 1920
This was painted the same year as the one above, and the same critique could be applied.

Self-Portrait (Detail) - 1923
I snapped this at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid where it and the two following paintings (not my photos) can be found. Dalí is now about 19 and experimenting with Cubism.

Retrato de su hermana (Ana María) - 1925
Two years later, he is returning to representational art. This portrait of his sister is hard-edged and slightly simplified -- a style often found in paintings of the 1920s and 30s.

Figura en una finestra - 1925
Another painting of his sister from the same year. This takes on the solidity and featuring of form that characterize much of Dalí's future painting.

The Persistence of Memory - 1931
At 27, Dalí created this, his most famous work. Most of his purely Surrealist paintings were done between the late 1920s and mid 1940s. Art critics tend to dismiss work done after this period.

Leda Atomica - 1949 (click for larger, clearer view)
This was painted when Dalí was about 45. It contains echoes of his earlier Surrealism, but actually was as carefully planned as any classical or academic painting.

Leda Atomica study
This is one of several studies for Leda Atomica. Others dealt with the perspective of the platform his wife Gala is (almost) seated on.

Christ of St. John of the Cross - 1951 (click for larger, clearer view)
Aside from the landscape at the bottom, this painting might be considered an example of hyper-realism.


Dalí did receive formal art training, even though surviving examples of his early work do not suggest this. Nevertheless, once his venture into Surrealism sealed his permanent fame, he focused his efforts on becoming a highly skilled representational painter of interesting works. I reject the idea that his work worsened after World War 2 and his focus on Surrealism.

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