old old studios new studios

I posted on flickr today some photos of my ggrandfather's classroom studio. He was Franz Moritz Goldstein and I wrote about him earlier in this blog under "past lives" or something close to that. We have one big photo of him teaching at the Girls' High School in San Francisco from about 1880 until his death in 1915. I had to scan the photos in three pieces so I could get it all. What a difference a century makes.

His studio is staged for the photo, obviously. There are plaster feet, hands, heads, and various objects and pieces of nature all used for drawing. One student is using a mall stick. The girls, of course are in long dresses, and seated in properly lady like poses. There is his big framed still life hanging on a rafter. It lives on in my mother's house along with 3 of his watercolors. I'm sure he had much more work, as he went to the Sierras and all about the city to paint with artist friends. But, as he had 7 children, the pieces were strewn about and we have lost communication with whatever descendants there may be. His daughter Matilda Valentina Goldstein was my precious grandmother. And she was born on Valentine's day.

I compare this with the drawing and painting classes I taught at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts. Many of my students figured it was the art way to dress way way way down so to speak. Actually, slovenly might be an appropriate word for a selected few.
We drew from life, we painted our feelings, we accepted that perfection in drawing was, hmmmm, passe. (Real attention to proper drawing is coming back in some colleges......but when Pollack came in, accuracy of form went out.)

So, to get back on track.....I included a photo, also in black and white of my first warehouse studio in about 1981, 99 years after my ggrandfather's photo. It's just interesting that's all.

To see these photos larger visit Flickr.com by clicking on my photos from flickr or by clicking on the flickr slideshow. And to this exhaustingly long post I've also added a photo from my first studio.....maybe about 1983. Enough, good bye.