Peter Behrens's Blog, page 179

1980 Ford F-250 4x4

 

On the block at BaT in a few hours.

'61 Pontiac

Robert Bechtle  Bob's Sebring

"Robert Bechtle, the California photorealist painter whose meticulous works gave wonder to the everyday, has died, aged 88. A lifelong Bay Area resident, Bechtle captured the unique light and wonder of the community. 

"Bechtle was born in San Francisco in 1932, and raised in Sacramento and Alameda. His father Otto Bechtle was a telephone lineman who died when Robert was only 12, and he and his younger brother were raised by their mother, a schoolteacher. Showing an early aptitude, he received a scholarship from California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of the Arts) in Oakland. Shortly after graduating with a bachelor’s degree, he was drafted into the military and stationed in Berlin. While there, Bechtle painted a mural in his company’s mess hall and visited every European museum he could. Upon his return to the US, he took advantage of the GI Bill to enroll again at the Oakland college for his MFA.

"Bechtle started working as an artist during the era of the Bay Area figuratists, with artists like Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff leading the way. The figuratists were known for their heavy, stylised use of paint, and Bechtel worked in this fashion for a brief time, but moved away from it as he discovered his preference for high realism. “As Bechtle tells it, he tried to be a Bay Area figurative artist but he just wasn't a very good one,” says Janet Bishop, a curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) in a video interview. Bechtle adds that his pursuit of realism was "“a way of saying I’m not interested in style. This is a no-style way of painting, it just goes back to looking. This is a classic painter’s ploy—to say I just want to look, observe, and learn—and it worked.”"

--Wallace Ludel in The Art Newspaper, 9.25.20

Robert Bechtle  '61 Pontiac

Fitchburg and the Listless Bucket

Spent some time on a cold, clear winter day looking around Fitchburg. An intriguing town. Just got the barest glimpse of it, must go back for more. The Nashua River runs through and powered the 19th century mills.  Like Worcester, Fitchburg was more an engineering/metal manufacturing town (guns, tools, machinery) than a textile town like, say, Lowell was. Or Biddeford, Maine. Fitchburg would have had a significant French Canadian population, since Quebec from the 1860s through the 1950s tended to export its surplus farm population south to the industrial centers of New England. While I was at the Macdowell Colony in the 1990s,, another colonist,  the architectural photographer Cervin Robinson  Cervin was driving south from New Hampshire every day in his Porsche (was it a Speedster?) to shoot Fitchburg. I plan to return. Meanwhile, here are some other towns AL has explored. They are mostly on no one's bucket list, but we never much related to the bucket list. Anyway it seems that the best places to go are most often the places you never heard of until you got there.

Brunswick Maine. Ottawa, Kansas.  Ottawa, Kansas (again)  Clayton New Mexico and and the Hi-Lo Country.  Montreal.  Winnipeg, Manitoba   Frankfurt, Germany.  Toronto.  Colorado Springs

Las Vegas, New Mexico. Bath, Maine   Moncton New Brunswick.  Paris.  Cimarron, New Mexico

Mora, New Mexico.  Eastern Townships, Quebec.

 

Triumph of the Brattle Book Shop (Cervin Robinson photograph)

Cervin Robinson photograph. Boston, 1963. The Brattle Book Shop is still there. More Cervin Robinson here.
 

Oförstörbar

 Ye olde indestructible. 1992 Volvo 240 5-speed,  on the block today at BaT

1955 Plymouth Savoy; 1977 Mercedes 450SL

 

further treats of Dupont St., Toronto from Eva H.D.

Big Mack, Fitchburg, Mass.

Beauty is in the eye....AL will be posting some more on Fitchburg MA which we have been exploring. Very interesting New England ex-mill town. The kind of town where everyone looks at you 2 or 3 times-long hard stares--when you're running around with a camera. Because maybe the last tourist spotted in Fitchburg was before the Civil War. Though my friend the architectural photographer Cervin Robinson was doing some work there while we were at MacDowell, way back when. More on all that in another post...Anyway, truck's a beauty, eh?

Colombian Van, Fitchburg MA

"Color, Flavor and Aroma of my land"                                                                   Fitchburg MA

Cadillac Fitchburg

Fitchburg, MA. Cold bright windy January.
 

Once and always Cutlass.

 

from the poet Eva H.D., in Toronto. 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Dupont Ave. T.O.