Discoveries: Arts and Culture

Viewing Buddhism in Nepal is seeing Buddhism in a Hindu (caste) context.     Professor von Rospatt tries to enable the participants in this study group understand how scholarship about the West differs from scholarship about the East.   The West is constantly seeking innovation and new perspectives while the East is seeking a continuous thread.   He discusses the relationship between Buddhism and its origins in India and its passage through Nepal, Tibet, China, and on ward to Korea and Japan and SE Asia.  His focus is his specialty, Nepal, which scholarship looks to India. What the Buddah has said is or must be true.  Tibetans believe in Indian scripture, but the Chinese have reinvented text and fabricated text.   He mentions the French Belgian Larencin de Poussant (sp)?as being the most accurate translator of texts.  One member of the study group, Iowan Tenzig is married to the guide of Tucci, the famous Italian scholar; she was in Rome, and w...

The UN Mural wall.  The Sycamore Chamber orchestra will play here, at 12:45 pm  The commemorative plaque   Charter was created to work for peace, and then reduction of poverty on the globa l stage .  The Buddah on the Lotus and  The Christian Christ figure on the cross   The organizers of this celebration dedicated to Dag Hammarskjold are the URI and the UNUSA-SF.  The 70th Chair of UNUSA-SF invited me as an advisor on the steering committee.   A work based on MARKINGS, on an entry in the journal of Dag Hammarskjold will be played by a sax quartet  at 12:55 prior to the afternoon session's beginning at 1:00 pm.  "The Way Chose You" will be played, in its West Coast Premiere at 3:00-5:00 pm closing the celebration, by three choirs:  Koster Vocalis, from Sweden; the Korean Coelis Ensemble, as well as the Pacific Choir orchestrated with the Sycamore Chamber orchestra.  The website is www.Charter70UN.org cre...

Heard Gary Snyder read from his new book, THIS  PRESENT MOMENT .  He is 85 years old, and still agile and dexterous in his speech and thought.  One of the significant questions asked of him, was why the return to Greek imagery in these poems.  Snyder replied that he had returned to the Western world, that California was a better ecology in which to live, as he does in the Sierra Nevada mountains north of Sacramento than anywhere in Asia.   He was unwilling to let anyone politicize him in their leading questions about his relationship to government and ecology in California.  Governor Brown was in the audience, sitting right behind my friend, met at the last lecture, though he entered and departed without comment. Snyder was educated at Berkeley and plays an active role in the Buddhist Center, there;, having missed those lectures, I was happy to finally hear him read.  He read many of his poems, without much commentary.  The title derives from thi...

Spoke with Deputy Director Pedro Moura Carvalho, at the reception prior to the business meeting held by Linda Lei, President.   Wine and a light buffet was served in the museum.  The Deputy Director spoke about "What is a masterpiece in Asian Art?"    He presented common examples in Western Art, and queried as to what would be the criteria for the counterpart.   This lecture was a postscript to the series of lectures for docent training in the Spring, which foccussed on iconic objects in the Asian Art Museum, discussed, for the most part by AAM curators, with some guest curators in the program.   Quality, craftsmanship, aesthetic principles and patronage all are factors, of course.  As in the West, what is contained in a museum is a donor contribution and has been filtered through collectors and dealers.   I don't have more to say about this right now.  The Deputy director adopted an entertaining style using cartoons and light hearted mate...

Li Huayi, SF based artist who synthesizes Chinese ink landscape tradition and W. abstraction;  Michelle Liu, moderator, Asia Society, and Cheryl Haines, Curator @Large: Ai Wei Wei on Alcatraz, Founder, FOR-SITE Foundation, Gallerist.  Dr Britta Erickson, Artistic Director, Ink Studio, Beijing; Independent Scholar and Contemporary Art Curator, Palo Alto; and in orange sweater, Peggy Loar, Acting CEO, Interim VP, Global Arts and Culture, Asia Society NYC  Why is now such an important time for Contemporary Asian Art?  What do we gain by paying closer attention to emerging artists and trends from Asia, and inversely, what do we stand to lose by failing to engage with thie crucial component of Asia's ascension in the world?   Asia Society N California has organized this panel in conjunction with the Annual Dinner  The discussion by leaders will address the interconnectedness of Asia, the Bay area and the globalized world.    Part One focus...

Carlotta's dressing room off her bedroom   His wife was an actress whom he met in NYC first when she was in one of his plays and then some years later at an event.  They had no children but were devoted to their dog.  Edith Wharton also was very devoted to her dogs, and remained childless.   The desk where his manuscripts were placed, O'Neill's desk where he wrote in seclusion O'Neill penned his plays at this desk.  At Tao House he wrote "A Touch of the Poet", 1935-39. part of the cycle plays.  In 1939, he wrote what has become a classic, the last play produced on Broadway in O'Neill's time, or "The Iceman Cometh", which I saw at BAM this past year in Brooklyn.   "Hughie" was performed last year in the San Ramon Museum in Danville, and I also attended this play, which seems a prelude to David Hare and David Ware's plays.   "Long Day's Journey into Night", his most autobiographical play, which is bein...

                                                  Lovely Suzanne E. Siskel, Executive VP & CEO                                                   The Asia Foundation,  with intro to charming                                                     Pierre Baptiste, Chief Curator, SE Asia.  Pierre started his talk with a great sense of humor!  He said that when the Eiffel tower was built everyone thought it was ugly but they loved the Guimet architecture.!  The beginnings of Kymer art were with a man who knew nothing about art, connoisseurship or collecting; this is not uncommon in th...

Executive Director, Jennifer Sims  Mark Burstein, Guest Lecturer and Curator Alice at 150   The current exhibition (May 18-features fine press books from the Collection of Mark and Sandor Burstein (3500 volumes)  curated by Mark Burstein.  Some of these include a version illustrated by Arthur Rackham; a limited edition bearing the illuminations of Salvador Dali (1969), a Black Sun Press volume with pictures by Marie  Laurencin (1930) and an incredible art book by the Cheshire Cat Press (1988, 1998)  handtypeset on handmade paper with find bindings by Eleanor Ramsey.   Burstein  tells us:   Alice in Wonderland has been translated into 170 languages.  There was a showcase with a pad and pencil for viewers to guess the languages!  There are 700 editions in English, 11 feature films, including one by Thomas Edison in 1910, and a Walt Disney cartoon, in 1951, a version with Peter Sellers in 1966, another version with Tim Burton i...

Wendi introducing her guest lecturer Gavin Parkinson, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, who wrote the essay for her gallery's catalogue "Science in Surrealism" The gallery features Max Ernst, Matta, Wolfgang Paalen, Gordon Onslow Ford, and  Yves Tanguy among others.  Parkinson focussed on Physicists including Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics of Max Planck, and how this achievement coincided with  and no doubt impacted on the formulations of the Surrealists about different ideas of space and shape and form and representation of space and time.     Interviewer and Gavin Parkinson 

I have been working on the steering committee of the event honoring Dag Hammarskjold, and the 70th signing of the Charter for the UN in SF on June, 27 with Mary Steiner and Rev Steve Harms, as principals  We were invited by Mia to join her in a historical and contemplative walk in the National Monument, Muir Woods, which I have wanted to visit since arrival in San Francisco . It did not disappoint. !  " In every walk with nature, one receives far more than one seeks." - - John Muir. Janet Roberts, Mia (ranger guide)Mary Steiner, (behind her and to my rifhrt, her brother Franz Steiner; Reverend Steve Harms Peace Lutheran Church, and two other members of the hike and the other ranger.  "The joy of looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift." --Albert Einstein.  A mother doe deciding to return to her twin one month old fawns across our path  A particular kind of fern which is one of the oldest on earth beautifully backlit  ...

The architectural critic for the Los Angeles Times discussed the historical preservation movement in California, saying that it has become slow and reactive and how it can get back ahead of the curve of public taste.   Hawthorne, who grew up in a Julia Morgan house in Berkeley,  makes the point that the digitalization of information for a younger generation makes the cycle of taste move even faster.   He featured several case studies including a guest house for the Hearst estate  by Julia Morgan on the Hearst/Davies beachfront estate.  There the pool was retained, along with restoration of the guest house, and a large glass pavilion like building or the Annenberg Beach House is not a bad contemporary addition to one side of the pool.   He had several points to make including comments about Post Modern buildings of the 80's and 90's...which one concludes are abit of a mish mash. The greatest loss in LA seems to have been the old Ambassador Hotel on Wilt...

Tao House  Returned for a play by Clifford Odets, "Golden Boy"  at the Barn Playhouse on Sunday and was pleasantly surprised at how much I appreciated it.  Odets is viewed as sharing in the O'Neill tradition, as this play appeared on Broadway, after "O'Neill's departure.   William Holden starred in the original movie. I prepared myself by reminding myself how I had liked Joyce Carol Oates essay on boxing in America, and how it is the subject of Homer and how American it is, and that is where I am: America  But it was not about boxing; it was about exploitation of an individual for profit and about the conflict between the arts and the  physical sportif events in America...or in an individual, who is the product of the "Bonaparte" family, and whose father represents an old "aristocracy" and he has to survive and triumph in the seedy world.   It has a tragic outcome by betrayal of the young man's namesake,  and betrayal of his own...

Picasso, Mother and Child 1902 at Womens Prison Hospital, Saint Lazare.   These paintings from the National Gallery in Edinburgh Scotland were a wonder to see! I also came away with a lovely Scot plaid shawl, which I will wear in the winter back East, in 2016.  My thought when I viewed the panorma at the entrance to the gallery, depicting the historic museum, was " Why have I never gone to Edinburgh? "  What a pity I did not go, when a student at Oxford..I guess all my trips were pilgrimages to writer's homes...the strength of this exhibition is in its portraits, and historical subjects.  Wm Dyce (Scottish)Dante, Divine Comedy.  Francesca da Rimini, 1837  Note hand at left of the jealous brother who killed the lover depicted in this painting of the indiscretion.  Henri Matisse (1869-1954)  The Painting Session. 1919.  Hotel Mediterrane room. Cote d"Azur.  Corot, Vill-d'Avray Entrance to the Wood ca. 1825 . Si...

I enjoyed this exhibition of the collection at the De Young Museum, being reminded that in Diebenkorn's Berkeley years, he lived not far from me, or within walking distance, in the Berkeley hills.  He represented these sketches of his home.   Solano Tunnel  I pass through here every day!