San Francisco Art Deco

Sunday we went into San Francisco again, this time for more architecture, first the Art Deco guided tour and then the Victorian tour. The Bay area is studded with some great old art deco structures, office buildings, skyscrapers, but also movie theatres, and more. Our walk Sunday focused on the downtown skyscrapers.

The grand-daddy of them all, so to speak, was Timothy Pfleuger's Pacific Telephone
and Telegraph building, now under lengthy restoration; note the torchiere figures...

And torchiere figures on this contemporary office building: our guide called this
"deco echo"

The Shell Building

Above the entry; this is Shell Oil, I think, not Rococo

Massive Stackpole sculpture on the San Francisco Stock
Exchange,  another Pfleuger design; he engaged Diego
Rivera to do the 10th floor murals (which we saw later,
in 2014)

Russ Building

Not a skyscraper, but definitely deco

My personal favorite, 111 Sutter, the Hunter-Dulin building

Entry

Lobby ceiling

The offices of Spade and Archer, Private Investigators, were located in the
Hunter-Dulin building: there's Sam with clients Joel Cairo, Brigid
O'Shaughnessy, and Kaspar Gutman; who will take the fall? The first
great American film noir... "I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that 
sweet neck. Yes, angel, I'm gonna send you over. The  chances are you'll 
get off with life. That means if you're a  good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. 
I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you. "

And 450 Sutter

Exquisite lobby ceiling

Detail; Mayan motif throughout

De Girl With De Pearl At De Young

Somehow, when in the Netherlands, we always seem to have missed The Hague and its Mauritshuis museum.  But we have seen our share of Vermeers. And a decade ago we read Tracy Chevalier's excellent novel The Girl with a Pearl Earring with our Missoula book group (which we still miss). So when we learned that Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and numerous other Mauritshuis treasures were coming to San Francisco's de Young museum, we had to go. (We also viewed the film, same name, which also was quite good). Rebecca, Jeremy and Penelope motored us in again, took in the visiting show, and then occupied themselves in the Golden Gate Park area while we did the rest of the splendid de Young. Penelope has limited tolerance for museums, and R & J had been there before.

Thus; in addition to the paintings there also were scores of
prints, etc.

And thus, the "Dutch Mona Lisa"; stolen directly
off the Mauritshuis website, I think; they had a no
fotos policy at the de Young's exhibit, so there will
be no fotos of the many Hals, Steens, and others
we admired; nor even of the obligatory Rembrandt
self-portrait

At this point, the considerable imp in me
requires that I again post, for comparison,
Dali's immortal The Girl with the Pearl,
which is actually, I suppose, a reference to
Las Meninas

And now we return to the de Young's very
eclectic and largely American collection, just
a few bits we particularly liked; here, Karen
LeMonte's Dress 3, cast entirely in glass

Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom

Edward Hovenden's Last Moments of John
Brown

Albert Bierstadt's Arch of Octavius (Roman Fish Market)

Detail: ugly Americans even in 1858

Thomas Moran's Yellowstone Falls

And his Grand Canyon

Willard Leroy Metcalf's Winter Festival; reminds me a lot
of Russell Chatham; and here, a note: we signed up for one
of the 30 minute museum guided tours, but no one else
showed up, and en route to our first masterpiece collected
three more docents who had no takers: thus, four docents
to lavish their expertise on us...a real privilege!

Jerome Thompson's 1857 Recreation; OK, lose a few ladies,
lose the ladies' clothes, and you've got Manet's Le déjeuner
sur l'herbe; or better, Giorgione/Titian's, Pastoral Concert

And, a KO for us, Whistler's The Gold Scab:
Eruption of Frilthy Lucre; we'll see the
decor that led to it at the Freer someday in
DC

All in all, another pretty good day in The City

Coit Tower Murals

I became interested in 20th century muralism in the early 90s, while visiting Mexico to learn some Spanish and to further the Mexican interests of my Texas employer. It was probably not what they had in mind. In any case, learning that the Depression-era Coit Tower murals were done by Diego Rivera students and admirers made it an imperative for me. A few of Rivera's murals are in San Francisco--he painted here in the early 1930s--I'll have to get to them some other time.

Fast-backward to 1994: Rivera's History of Mexico at the
national palace

Ditto, Frida Kahlo home and museum, Mexico City

Fast-forward to 2013: at the entrance to Coit
Tower; the murals are all on the main and
second floors, and on the stairwell between
them; completed c. 1934 by a variety of San
Francisco artists

The murals generally depict life in California and specifically
the Bay area

Agriculture, for example...

But throughout, there is abundant social commentary, much
of it disapproved by the city fathers, some even removed
(NRA was the New Deal "National Recovery Act," one of
FDR's "excesses")

In The City now, the Daily Worker at the
newsstand

Life on the streets

Not much has changed...

In the public library, a patron at the right reaches for Das
Kapital

Workers of the world...

While some live in tents, developers show
up to survey the scene (click to enlarge and
note the difference between their dogs)

Upstairs, plans are shown to Mrs. Roosevelt 

More city scenes

And at the end of the tour, a glimpse of the elegant life

A Day in San Francisco

So a few weeks ago we decided to do some tourism in The City, riding into town with Rebecca, Jeremy and Penelope, initially up the coast, looking for big waves, and then on into town and our main destination, Coit Tower. (They went on back to the zoo). We wanted to see the murals (next post) and do the Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill guided walks. And then more walking. And then a great dinner at Marlowe before taking the Caltrain back home.

Up from the Cliff House: the ruins of Sutro Baths; founded
in the 2nd century by Carthagenian monks, wracked by
earthquakes and the eruption of Mt. Tamalpais in 79 AD,
and then terrorized and plundered by Saracen pirates, it
finally closed in 1966; wait, no...

Golden Gate from Coit Tower

Rebecca, Jeremy, and Penelope

Coit Tower; murals in next post

Saturday on the Bay

Downtown

Embarcadero and Bay Bridge

On Telegraph Hill, location for the Bogart/McCall film Dark
Passage; there's Bogey in the window if you click to enlarge

Somewhat reminiscent of Henri Guimard,
XVIIIe arrondissement

Street humor

One of the famed Telegraph Hill parrots

On Telegraph Hill; I can't believe my sister has done the
marathon twice now on these hills...

Same day, different hill

On Washington Square, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul
(and probably Mary, too)

Interior of Grace Church, someone doing the
interior pilgrims' maze

Mural of 1906

Seven miles' walk and a short bus ride later, we had a great
dinner at Marlowe, a superb and meaty little bistro, right
next to the station...thanks again, Rebecca and Jeremy

$2.49 Chuck

The world is changed, I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. 

Much that once was is lost...