Linda and I had the privilege of attending the members opening, and it was a thrill to see the stars of this exhibition actually in San Franciso. But what pleased us even more were that many of the the lesser known paintings were as pleasing and more surprising that the more famed D' Orsay paintings hanging nearby.

In last month's newsletter, we showed photos of some of featured highlights of this exhibition: Claude Monet's Saint Lazare Station and The Rue Montorgueil Paris June 30 1878, Pierre Auguste Renoir's The Swing, Edgar Degas' The Dance Lesson, Edouard Manet's The Fife Player, Frederick Bazille's Family Reunion, and James Whistler's Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother. They were all prominently displayed and the audience expressed appreciation with careful and approving observation accompanied with politely whispered comments.

Included here are a sampling of some of what we consider to be the exhibition's surprises. Jules Bastien Lepage's Haymaking was a dazzling composition, the restful moment of a pair of peasant farmers punctuated by the eyes of the young

Bazille's Studio invites us to consider the realities of artist's lives in late 19th century Paris. Not much has changed when you consider most artist's studios today, a mixture of finished and unfinished works along with sparse furnishings for the comfort of patrons, all bathed in natural light and music. Today, the piano would be replaced by a paint-stained CD player, and a stack of favored disks nearby.

Two paintings by Claude Monet somewhat outside the boundaries of his usual fare were intriging for that alone. The Turkeys at the Chateau de Rottembourg, Montgeron is a restful piece and humorous, a study of a flock of domesticated turkeys roaming roaming the grounds of a wealthy country estate. I couldn't help but think that Monet enjoyed observing this foraging flock and that he may have enjoyed eating turkey on his dining table as well.

And, as anyone who has gazed out of of a winter's frosty window at a sunfilled winter landscape knows, looking at the comical antics of a raven, crow, or magpie can be most entertaining. In The Magpie, Monet captures exquisite winter light and shadow on a snowy farm landscape, with a prominently perched Magpie totally at ease dominating the scene.

If you love great painting, please make your plans to attend this exhibition. You may go for the advertised highlights, but I think you will be pleased as much by the the other paintings in this exhibition.

Beginning with the Great Depression, a gritty style of painting came to the forefront, showing Californians dealing with difficult times.

Borrowing from the Ashcan painters of New York, these new painters showed Californians in the work places of industry and agriculture. Many of the artists of the age painted for the Works Progress Adminstration, and today the paintings they produced are called WPA style. The goal many of these paintings was to show the spirit of determination, of teamwork, and the virtue of hard work in overcoming hardship. The Oakland Museum has several fine examples of WPA Style painting. But most striking was a daring and stark work by Maynard Dixon entitled simply, Scab.

The occasion of the painting was a 1934 longshoremens strike and shows a trio of strikers beating up on a scab. Dixon uses harsh geometric forms and severe light and shadow to punctuate the gritty drama of co-workers turning on one another as they make the tough choice of surviving together, or daring to go it alone. We normally consider Maynard Dixon an influential painter of the desert, with clouds floating over angular landscapes, and and as painter of the gentle and proud American Indians of the Southwest. Seldom do we think of Dixon as a reporter of the darker side of urban life. But to see how he uses form, light and shadow to tell a dramatic dark tale from the underside of the San Francisco wharf illuminates for us how he uses these these same techniques in the dynamics in his more familiar desert landscapes.

For nine days they have come from the points of the four winds upon their shaggy little ponies, with their wagons and their women and their children; the brown little babies rolled safely in their mothers' blankets, the shy young girls peeping coyly from the wagons and the restless boys, whose keen prying eyes never miss a movement. Even the dogs and camp kettles look, alert—for on this night. the medicine men call to their aid the mighty Spirits of the past -- the ye-bitchai, the giant grandfathers of old.

For nine nights the strange, rhythmic hum of the medicine chant has not ceased in the big ye-bitchai hogan or medicine lodge -- for nine nine nights the young men, the tireless dancers and sweet singers of the people, have danced between the fires, and the medicine men have anointed the eyes of the young boys with the sacred meal, that they may not be stricken blind when they look upon the strong gods in whose forms the dancers move.

This dance is being given by a young buck who owns many sheep and ponies, wampum and silver -- for the Navajos are good silversmiths in the Indian style; as a thank offering for the recovery of his mother from a long illness. The sum of his payments to the medicine men and singers, whose services he has retained, and gifts to guests will come to near $500 in Navajo goods.

This ceremony may be held either as a thank offering or as propitiation of the powers of departed and deified ancestors of the tribe, as the case may demand. Sets of dancers, six to twelve in a set, from different parts of the reservation compete for the honors of their calling, dancing alternately in relays.

Long before the dance begins the long space between and all around the twelve great bonfires of juniper logs is filled with a dense and restless throng, wild in the many colors of their blankets. The medicine hogan is at the west end of the lane and the dancers lodge -- a high, circular corral of green brush -- at the east.

All who can have backed their wagons in behind the fires forming two irregular rows, and these are filled with men, women and children, deeply muffled in their blankets, for the night is biting cold.

Here and there, amid the throng, a massive silver bracelet or concha flashes in the firelight. Tall, stately figures of the chief’s medicine men stalk through the flickering light, or stand silent and impressive in statuesque poses, while always from within the medicine lodge comes the weird cadence of the chant.

At last, from the lower end of the lane, comes a shrill “whooh! whooh!” -- like the cry of some unknown bird -- the crowd opens a trifle, and a young man appears, waving his arms as he advances. He is clad all in brown velvet -- his moccasins are decorated with silver buttons, around his waist is a belt of enormous silver conchas, about his neck an ungainly bushy wreath of evergreens -- but his face is covered with a hideous mask of buckskin, painted with ashen gray and surrounded with a wild wig of goat hair. It is decorated behind with a tall, fan shaped spread of eagle plumes, lightly swaying as he rolls his head from side to side.

He retreats into the darkness again and a chief steps forward to address the crowd. He delivers a long harangue in the strange clicking Navajo tongue, his strong voice and

The prayer finished, the Laughing Doctor advances down the line, sprinkling each dancer with the sacred meal, returning to his place. Then the leader rushes to the far end of the line, stopping suddenly and throwing out his arms and giving his peculiar whoop, and back again, doing the same before the Laughing Doctor.

The first dancer advances until he faces the host and begins with his rattle and stamping with one foot and hopping slightly on the other, that strange rhythmic step of Indian dancers whose very monotony is a fascination. He begins the chant, which is taken up by each dancer in turn, and the dance is on. They go down the middle and back and around and dance together in a circle, conducted always by the leader with the spreading plumes.

The steady drumming of the moccasined feet, the deep guttural “O-hoho-ho! E-hehe-he he-he!” mingled with the shrill high-keyed tenor comes down the scale in a peculiar wave-like movement; it is the cry of the wild things of the remote desert fastnesses--which these Navahos themselves are. The song rises and falls.

Sometimes it is like the grunting of the great bear of the mountains as he grubs between the roots of the juniper -- like the rushing of a brook -- like the wind -- like the mingled cry of vultures or the waiting of coyotes in the darkness -- and through it all persists the drumming of the feet on the ground and the steady ch-r-r! of the gourds like a hundred rattlesnakes.

The song finishes in a humming sound and this set files out to be replaced by another, very much the same to the unpracticed eye. But with each set there are two clowns, dressed very much as the dancers in masks and feathers, each carrying the skin of a small animal, which they put through all manner of queer pantomime.

Old Chief Black Horse steps forward and delivers a speech. He is a fine old warrior type, his fiery little eyes turning upon his brethren with a commanding gleam.

Then come set after set and song after song, which seem very much alike to us, so we take a walk around the edge of the camp among the ponies and wagons and coffee-pots, sleeping figures curled up in their blankets, head to the fire, Indian fashion.

Here we find mothers nursing their babies -- little brown dumplings, wearing only a calico slip. They blink at us solemnly in the firelight, and, glancing beyond them into the dark and frosty horizon, we do not wonder that this is a hardy race -- those who survive their infancy.

At the lower end of the camp, near the dancer’s dressing-room, we come upon a set of them standing apart in the gray moonlight getting a breath with their masks off, humming over in a low tone their next song. We speak to some

The blue smokes of camp rise afresh into the keen morning air, and already gaily blanketed men and women dash by us on their way to the store -- and wagons and ponies and wives and babies follow -- returning to their faw-away hogans among the juniper hills.

The paintings of Alexander Dzigurski and John W. Hilton have received glowing admiration from art lovers for decades. Both artists have compelling and unique biographies and easily identifiable and fascinating styles. But beyond their art, each has been blessed with a child who carried on his artistic legacy. Alexander's son Alexander II, and John's daughter Kathi have each distinguished themselves as well known artists, following the paths of their respective fathers. Back to the Top