URBAN LIFE

Flaneur: the French word for a cool, aloof observer of urban life

Do you know someone who fits that description? Are you? If you've eaten in an older Parisian cafe, you could be a flaneur because the mirrors placed at table level all around the room allow you to glance at other patrons. If you have watched any of the Bridgerton series, you will recognize the promenade of the upper class in the city parks who want to be seen by others. You may notice a solitary figure there who is amused by the sight. Today, few people have the time or interest to be part of such a parade, but if you spend time on social media, you could be today's version of a flaneur.

I think of myself as a flaneur when I bring out my sketchbook, and my new fountain pen, and try to catch the expressions or appearance of someone nearby. I'm also a window flaneur. From our eighth-floor windows, I can see a tai chi group that meets every weekday morning. I watch as they slowly move from one pose to another and swing their swords around them. I notice the young couple in morning sweats with their dog hopping along beside them as they jaywalk across the street. The man sitting on the park bench each morning feeding the seagulls reminds me of the old woman in the movie Mary Poppins who sits and feeds the birds. Often I see groups of girls walking briskly down the path, phones out, yoga mats tucked under their arms, ready for their morning workout.

When I walk into a cafe in our neighborhood, I see rows of people with the same posture, hunched over their computers, their backs to the windows or walls. Their common concentration on their screens reminds me of old movies with views of business offices where numerous clerks sit at desks working over typewriters in unison, the motion of their hands on the keys like an orchestra making music together.

I don't think of myself as cool or aloof, but I do enjoy observing urban life and recording what I see. Drawing from above everyone is a challenge that I'm just beginning to try. The perspective is very different than the one I see when I am sitting in a cafe observing other people on the same plane as I am. My drawings are awkward as I try to understand the difference. From my seat at ground level, I capture my delight in the wagonloads of toddlers being transported to the Children's Park across the street from our apartment. 

CHANGE IN THE WEATHER

Day one of the first heat wave:

I used to love the first day of an early heat wave in the East Bay with still enough moisture in the air to be manageable unlike summertime when the temperature stays above 100 degrees for days and sucks the moisture out of the air and energy out of my body. During the first day of the first heat wave, I got on my gardening clothes and my clogs and relished digging in the garden when it was 90 degrees. I liked the heat on my back and the sweat that came as I worked to pull out dead plants and replace them with new ones. That first day brought the knowledge that California's rainy season was over. When I finished, I liked to stand in the shade admiring my work as a slight breeze wafted across the yard.

Day two of a heat wave:

Enough of the heat. I pulled the shades and windows closed till late afternoon. I stayed inside in darkened rooms hoping that the heat would cool down at sunset as it often does in California. I was in an endurance race with heat that drained me, and I dreamt of sitting in a metal tub of cold water like my sister and I used to do as children.

I don't miss gardening (except when I step into a friend's lushly planted garden by the Carquinis Straits) or when I walk through the plant selection in a gardening store. (What am I doing in a gardening store when we have no place to plant a plant?)  I don't miss the upkeep of a big house. Our apartment with two bedrooms, two baths, kitchen and living room is just the right size for now (but without a room for a studio or a balcony for outside sitting). 

Our new place will have sunny windows that will give us a place for a plant or two. I carried two indoor plants from our old house throughout our moves this year. One, an Areca Palm, has been with us for almost 30 years and is a survivor. I had to place it outside our old house because our cats loved to chew on its leaves. The plant stayed under an overhang, facing east, all year long through freezing cold and heat waves. It has adapted well to indoor life in San Francisco throwing out new shoots and flower buds. If you look closely at the palm, you will also see the remains of a bird's nest tucked into the middle of the stalks of the plant. A finch attempted a nest there for several years. All that is left is the carefully constructed nest. I've thought of re-potting the plant but decided against it. It is doing fine without my meddling.

We are coming up to a year of being vagabonds. We sold our house last June, wandered to the beach for a while, considered Minnesota and Colorado, moved to San Francisco, bought a condo, traveled to Portland, and discovered a city that might be a better place for us or maybe even Seattle, which made us think over our San Francisco decision for a minute.

We are glad we have had the time to consider and discover where and what we want at this point in our lives. We are staying right here in the Bay Area. If I'm repeating some themes in my posts lately, it is because we continue to rethink our priorities, interests, and assumptions each week, each day. Just like during the days of the heat wave, our minds are contemplating the good and bad of each decision. A couple of friends suggested that we have carried our home on our backs like snails and turtles and that we will make a home wherever we decide to stay.

PRINTMAKER'S ART

a page from an incomplete book about language by Martha Slavin.
Printing techniques include letterpress and wood stamps

Words:
Japanese/nihongo
Learning a new language feels like illiteracy.
Some people have an ear for language
while others flounder & rail
grasping a few words here and there.
Nothing makes sense
but facial expressions & hand gestures.
Even these can mean something
entirely different in different cultures.

When we were living overseas, I sometimes cringed when I saw the invasion of the worst of American culture, instead of its best. McDonalds, KFC, and rock and roll were everywhere while supplanting the goods and culture of the local society. In return, Western culture, especially the art world, has absorbed Eastern influences like yoga, martial arts, and sushi. One artistic endeavor, woodblock printing on cheap paper, helped to create the Impressionist movement when the woodblock prints arrived in Europe as wrapping paper for goods shipped from Japan in the 1800s. The use of black outlines, strong colors, asymmetrical compositions, and exaggerated facial expressions in these Japanese prints appear in the works of one of my favorite artists, Toulouse-Lautrec, who like Degas, Van Gogh, and Manet incorporated the design principles discovered on these humble prints.

At the Circus, Fernando, the Rider by Toulouse-Lautrec

The word "print" can be confusing. Most of us think of a print as a copy of another piece of art. Printers can make copies of an oil painting, which is then called a print of the original and costs less than the original would. Printmakers work in printing media such as woodblock, lithography, silk screens, or etchings to create original art. The difference from a painting is that they can make more than one copy of their work. Each one is numbered so you will know what order the print was produced. The artist can make multiple versions, changing colors, papers, and reworking parts of the design. Each print is an original work of art.

Parrot  by Martha Slavin
printed with green ink on yellow paper

Two versions of the
same linoleum block print,
printed using different papers and ink

A long-time friend and I went to the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco recently to see a collection of Japanese woodblock prints. The exhibit showcases works on paper starting with prints featuring actors, sumo wrestlers, prostitutes, and landscapes created by well-known Japanese artists such as Utamaro, Hokusai, and Hiroshige. We walked into a room that displayed an original print of The Great Wave Off of Kanagawa, an image almost as famous as the painting of the Mona Lisa, both of which have been used on coffee mugs, calendars, and book bags to the point of being trite. Both still have the power in person to attract viewers to study them in their original form.

The Great Wave Off of Kanagawa by Hokusai

The Great Wave represents the changing world in Japan at the end of the Meiji period in the 1800s. The print shows Mt. Fuji in the distance and the waves coming in as if to engulf the sacred mountain. When Japan opened up to the rest of the world during this time, the culture of Japan was immediately affected. Woodblock prints showed people in Western clothing and using Western implements. Later Japanese printmakers would use their prints as tools of propaganda to show Japanese dominance over other Asian countries during the first half of the 20th century.

The exhibit at the Legion culminates with modern woodblock prints by Masami Teraoka, now a U.S. citizen, with references to the historical prints with a sly twist. McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan is one of a series of prints about the cultural changes that have occurred there. I had to laugh when I found the partly eaten hamburger hidden at the feet of the woman in a kimono and geta. Teraoka expressed my feelings exactly about how easily cultures change when countries and people can access other cultures so easily. We lose something unique in the process, but we can also gain new insight into our cultural heritage.

McDonald's Hamburgers Invading Japan
by Masami Teraoka

History of the Ukiyo-e woodblock prints:  

https://www.theartstory.org/movement/ukiyo-e-japanese-woodblock-prints/#:~:text=Ukiyo%2De%20was%20known%20for,kacho%2Dga%2C%20and%20landscape.

Check out Masami Teraoka here: https://www.masamiteraoka.com/early-work

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Sign on a wall in a kindergarten: 

Lose without blaming.