Bohemian Club – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

The Bohemian Clubs Allegorical Figures

Posted by Cindy on August 9, 2013

Aug 092013

624 Taylor Street
Nob Hill

These four bas-relief, terra cotta panels are between the second and third floors of the Bohemian Club on the Post Street side. The first panel depicts Art and Architecture represented by a semi-nude turbanned male figure kneeling. In his proper left hand is a mallet which rests on the ground by his proper left leg. In his raised proper right hand he holds a fluted Greek column with an Ionic capital. Behind the figure is a painter’s palette and brushes.

The second panel depicts Playwriting and Acting represented by a nude male figure kneeling on his proper right knee. The figure wears a helmet with wings, and he holds a partially unrolled scroll at ground level in his proper right hand and a draped mask of tragedy in his raised proper left hand. Draped owl masks (the symbol of the Bohemian Club) hang over the figure’s proper right shoulder.

The third panel depicts Literature represented by a bearded nude male figure. He wears a scribe’s hat and kneels with a large open book resting in his lap, the edge of the book held with his proper left hand. Behind the figure is a skull, a bookshelf with books, and an owl.

The fourth panel depicts Music represented by a partially nude male figure, whose thighs are covered with cloth. His head is covered with a helmet of an owl design. His proper right arm encircles a lyre or harp with a base designed to look like a turtle shell. The figure reaches across to pluck the instrument’s strings. Behind the figure’s proper left shoulder is a disc symbolizing the moon.

These figures were done by Carlo Taliabue. Born in Cremona, Italy on March 26, 1894, Taliabue studied on a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Art in Milan. He immigrated to California in 1924 and lived in the Lincoln-Sacramento area until the late 1930s. At that time he settled in San Francisco where he produced statuary on Treasure Island for the Golden Gate International Exhibition. During the 1940s his work won awards in the annuals of the Society for Sanity in Art at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. His last years were spent in Walnut Creek, CA until his death there on July 21, 1972.

Flower Boxes at the Bohemian Club

Posted by Cindy on August 7, 2013

Aug 072013

624 Taylor Street
Nob Hill

These planter boxes were commissioned by the architect, Lewis Hobart, for the Bohemian Club in 1933. They were sculpted by Haig Patigian.

Haig Patigian has been in this site may times, you can read all about him and his works here.

Lewis Parsons Hobart was born in St. Louis, Missouri on January 14, 1873. After graduating from preparatory schools in the East, he attended U.C. Berkeley for a year. While there he was influenced by Bernard Maybeck (as were many other young students, such as Julia Morgan and Arthur Brown, Jr.), participating in drawing classes that Maybeck taught in his home. Hobart left Berkeley to study architecture for two years at the American Academy in Rome and followed that by three years of further architectural training at theÉcole des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1901 to 1903.

Back in the United States, Hobart first worked in New York for two years, and then returned to the Bay Area in 1906, to participate in the rebuilding of the City after the earthquake and fire. He obtained his State Architectural license in October 1906 (number B429). He opened his own office in the A. Page Brown-designed Crocker Building (600 Market at Post). His classical training and knowledge of steel-frame construction stood him in good stead and he obtained commissions for several downtown office buildings from the Crocker Estate and other property owners. Surviving buildings of his from 1908 include the Postal Telegraph Building at 22 Battery, the Jewelers Building at 150 Post, the Commercial Building at 825-33 Market, and the White Investment Co. Building at 280 Battery.

Hobart is best known in San Francisco for his work implementing the design of Grace Episcopal Cathedral on Nob Hill. In 1903 Hobart had married socialite Mabel Reed Deming, a cousin of William H. Crocker who donated the site for the Cathedral. Inspired by 13th-century French Gothic architecture, the plans were drawn and the cornerstone laid in 1910.

In 1932 Hobart became the first President of the San Francisco Arts Commission, and later was appointed to the Board of Architects for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition held on Treasure Island, for which he also designed the Court of Flowers and the Court of Reflections. He died on October 19, 1954 and his funeral was held at Grace Cathedral. (excerpted from the San Francisco Encyclopedia)

Bret Harte at the Bohemian Club

Posted by Cindy on August 6, 2013

Aug 062013

624 Taylor Street
Nob Hill

The artist, Jo Mora, created and donated the sculpture to the Bohemian Club of which he and Bret Harte were members. In 1933, when the old Bohemian Club was torn down, the memorial was removed and reinstalled on the new club in 1934,

Francis Bret Harte (August 25, 1836 – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.

The plaque which is on the Post Street side of the club depicts 15 characters from Harte’s works.

The characters represented come from a handful of stories and a poem that established Harte’s reputation. He wrote these while living in San Francisco during the gold rush: Tennessee’s Partner, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, M’Liss and The Luck of Roaring Camp. Through his poem “Plain Language from Truthful James,” Harte created a wily Chinaman who outwits his Anglo gambling opponents shown on the far right as the Heathen Chinee.

Jo Mora has been in this site many times you can read all about his life and other works here.

Owls and Spiders

Posted by Cindy on June 3, 2013

Jun 032013

624 Taylor
Nob Hill

The Bohemian Club

As this post is about the art not the club, (a controversial group at best) I will simply copy what Wikipedia says about the Bohemian Club:

“The Bohemian Club is a private gentlemen’s club located at 624 Taylor Street, San Francisco, California. Founded in 1872 from a regular meeting of journalists, artists and musicians, it soon began to accept businessmen and entrepreneurs as permanent members, as well as offering temporary membership to university presidents and military commanders who were serving in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A number of past membership lists are in public domain, but modern club membership lists are private. Some prominent figures have been given honorary membership, such as Richard Nixon and William Randolph Hearst. Members have included some U.S. presidents (every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge has been a member of the Bohemian Club), many cabinet officials, and CEOs of large corporations, including major financial institutions. Major military contractors, oil companies, banks (including the Federal Reserve), utilities, and national media have high-ranking officials as club members or guests. The club’s bylaws require ten percent of the membership be accomplished artists of all types (composers, musicians, singers, actors, lighting artists, painters, authors, etc.). Artistic members are admitted after passing a stringent audition demonstrating their talent.”

Regarding the Owl:

The Bohemian Club’s symbol is an owl, which has been in use since the first year the Club started. The owl has come to symbolize the wisdom of life and companionship, that allows humans to struggle with and survive the cares and frustration of the world. The owl is found on all Bohemian materials from matchbook covers and doormats to the most elaborate Club publications.

The club motto is “Weaving Spiders Come Not Here”, a line taken from Act 2, Scene 2, of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The club motto implies that outside concerns and business deals are to be left outside. When gathered in groups, Bohemians usually adhere to the injunction, though discussion of business often occurs between pairs of members.

The bronze sculpture, done by Haig Patigian, (who has been in this website many, many times) was dedicated n 1933, the other dates in the inscription refer to the Club’s previous buildings, which were built or dedicated in 1872 and 1909.

I have been unable to find the sculptor of this owl that sits above the entry door.

Arnold Genthe’s Photography at CCSF Chinatown Campus

Posted by Cindy on August 28, 2012

Aug 282012

Washington and Kearny
Chinatown

Diligence is the path

Up the mountain of knowledge

Hard work is the boat

Across the endless sea of learning

This is the Washington street side of the new Chinatown campus of San Francisco City College. This particular window is the library. The archival photograph is by San Franciscan Arnold Genthe. This young immigrant girl in traditional Chinese dress gazing out at the city is the cover photograph for the book Genthe’s Photographs of San Francisco’s Old Chinatown.

She is framed by a couplet, in English and in Chinese calligraphy, metaphorically extolling the cultural virtues diligence and hard work as the “path up the mountain of knowledge and the boat across the endless sea of learning.” For years this poem has been displayed on the student bulletin board at the Filbert campus, but no one is quite sure of its origin.

Genthe’s autobiography, As I Remember (1936), is the chief source of information about his life. In it, Genthe recounts a cosmopolitan upbringing in Berlin, Frankfurt, Korbach, and Hamburg. His father, Hermann Genthe, was a professor of Latin and Greek and, later in life, founded and served as director of a gymnasium or preparatory school.

Under his father’s tutelage, young Arnold grew up well versed in topics from poetry to classical literature

In 1895 he accepted an offer to tutor the young son of Baron F. Heinrich von Schroeder when the family moved to San Francisco. Thus began a new life for Genthe in America.

Genthe’s first photographs were made while in the employ of the von Schroeders to illustrate his letters home.

Genthe became involved in photography at a crucial juncture in the history of the medium. The introduction of the hand-held camera and easier methods for development and printing encouraged many people to try photography.

Genthe opened his first portrait photography studio in San Francisco in 1898 and became very active in the city’s cultural and social milieu. At the socially prominent Bohemian Club, he mingled with artists, writers, theater people, community and business leaders, and entertained famous out-of-town visitors. Through contacts at the illustrated weekly The Wave, he met Frank Norris, Jack London, and Mary Austen.

Even as the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed Genthe’s studio, equipment, books, and art collection, he used a borrowed camera to document the events as they unfolded. Genthe and Ashton Stevens, drama critic for the San Francisco Examiner, toured the ruins with visiting celebrity Sarah Bernhardt.

Intrigued by San Francisco’s Chinatown, he shot a series of photographs documenting life there before the destruction of the city in 1906. About 200 photographs in the series survive.