Membership of the FTC is open to travel industry personnel, travel writers and frequent foreign travelers whose credentials must be endorsed by a current member. Spouses are welcome to join. FTC luncheon meetings serve the dual purpose of social interaction and business opportunity. Professional presentations on travel trends, destinations and services are followed by Q&A session with Club members.

JUNE RECAP: TUNISIA -- After Historic Change 

Melita Wade Thorpe in Carthage

Melita Wade Thorpe, our June 23rd  speaker, was certainly on target with her topic "Tunisia After Historic Change."  Melita was in Tunisia after the Tunisian Revolution that began in December 2010. The revolt began with demonstrations that were precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption, poor living conditions, a lack of freedom of speech and other political freedoms. The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and resulted in scores of deaths and injuries, most of which were the result of police and security force actions against demonstrators. The protests were sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December and led to the ousting of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali 28 days later on 14 January 2011 when he officially resigned after fleeing to Saudi Arabia, ending 23 years in power. The protests inspired similar actions throughout the Arab world.

 

Melita, being a frequent traveler to Tunisia, was able to put the revolution into historical context and give us some on-the-ground insight.  Her excellent photos certainly portrayed the beauty of the country along with her rich descriptions of Tunisia's history, culture and people.   

A SENSE OF TRAVEL . . . With Georgia Hesse

Picasso Exhibit:  Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris at the de Young Museum through October 9, 2011 (Entry Photo by Jennifer Hus / Fine Arts Museums of SF. Other photos by Andrew Fox.)

"I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary, and as such they are valid."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

"The older you get, the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face."  -- Pablo Picasso 

The Kiss 1969

Pablo Picasso Portrait 1954

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de las Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, on Oct. 25, 1881, and died on April 8, 1973, in Mougíns, France, while entertaining friends with his wife, Jaqueline Roque. His last words were said to have been "Drink to me, drink to my life, you know I can't drink anymore." 

Pablo Picasso Self-Portrait 1906

If not every art critic cottons to Picasso, they all agree his talents were as extravagant as his name. As the artist explains it (so modestly!), "My mother said to me, `If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso."

For decades, travelers would seek out Picassos wherever they wandered on the globe: from Madrid, Münster, or Malaga to Berlin or Barcelona or even Chicago and Cleveland, not to mention Halmstad and Tehran. Shortly following its appearance in 1937, the mighty, anti-war "Guernica" was displayed in the S.F.Museum of Art (today's SFMOMA). San Franciscans now have the opportunity to explore the world of "Picasso's Picassos," at the de Young Museum (opened June 11, closing Oct. 9, 2011).

This exhibition of 150+ works comes to us from the Musée National Picasso in Paris, chaperoned by its general conservator Anne Baldassari, while its home, the 17th-century Hôtel Salé in Paris' Marais district, is being renovated. It will reopen in 2012.

Tête de Taureau (Bull's Head) 1942

There's no question that Picasso is a puzzler to some eyes. He may even be a "trickster," a creature out of Celtic mythology, capable of transforming one entity into another, as a broken bicycle becomes a bull's head. Debris - a wicker basket, two ceramic jugs, palm fronds, metal scraps metamorphose miraculously into a she-goat. (Using such "found objects" is an art form in itself.) Art historian Kerrin Meis, lecturing at Book Passage in Corte Madera, pronounces Picasso "the master scavenger."

La Chevre (The Goat) 1950

Naturally, Pablo had something to say about the creation of beasts: "God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things." 

Two Women Running on the Beach (The Race) 1922

Picasso loved painting women as much as he loved women. Of the apparently countless petites-amies in his long life, no fewer than 10 (of whom he married two) made their ways into his art, several of whom star in this show: Fernande Olivier (first long-term relationship, Rose Period, although married she lived with him for seven years); Marcelle Humbert aka Eva Gouel (died young due to cancer or tuberculosis); Gaby Lespinasse (a mistress even while Eva was ill and Picasso still writing "I love Eva" into paintings); ballerina Olga Khokhlova (Pablo's first wife, mother of his son Paulo).

Portrait of Dora Maar 1937

And the beat went on: Marie-Thérèse Walter (age 17, she lived with the artist in a flat across the street from Olga, still his wife, and she gave birth to Maya, inspiration for many of the Vollard Suite etchings); Dora Maar (Yugoslavian photographer who documented "Guernica," the mighty Spanish Civil War work); Françoise Gilot (art student aged 22 to the painter's 62, mother of Claude and Paloma Picasso, published "Life With Picasso" later, married American physician Jonas Salk of Salk vaccine); Genèvieve Laporte (she 24, he 70 and living with Françoise); Jacqueline Roque (she 27, he 72, she became his second wife eight years later).

Picasso created more artworks of Jaqueline than of his other loves, painting more than 70 portraits of her in one year. One stand-out in the de Young is "Jacqueline With Crossed Hands" (1954), whose head resembles a sphinx. There are several paintings and sketches of Dora Maar, including a brilliantly colorful one in which - as Kerrin Meis noted - she has "really great nail polish."

Portrait of Olga in an Armchair 1918

Those viewers who complain that Picasso really couldn't draw/paint people, will want to study a stunner of Olga, his first wife (1918), seated in an armchair and appearing almost classical.

Perhaps no artist working in the 20^th century was half as prolific as Picasso. His total output of work has been estimated at 50,000, counting paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings, prints, numerous tapestries and rugs. If that count is correct and if Pablo started producing at age seven (when he began formal training with his father, a professor of art), he would have completed 1.61 works each day, seven days a week, until his death at age 92. (In truth, according to his mother, young Pablo's first words were "piz, piz,"short for "lápiz" or pencil.) 

How did he find time for all those ladies? 

The Bathers 1918

Critics who enjoy categorizing art divide Picasso's creations into at least nine "schools": academic realism, modernism, Blue Period, Rose Period, African Period (1907-1909), cubism, neoclassicism, surrealism, neo-expressionism.

"Did Picasso have any competitors during the 20th century for prolificity," I asked Kerrin Meis. "No," she answered. "He did everything first and did it best."

Nota bene: For information on "Picasso's Picassos" exhibition at the de Young Museum, including evening viewings, reserving tickets (dated and timed), click on www.famsf.org. To watch a progression of Picasso portraits from one style to another, Google Picasso Philip Scott Johnson. To learn about the accusations made against Picasso and the poet Appollinaire for stealing the Mona Lisa in 1911, Google Picasso the story behind the theft of the Mona Lisa; it's a rollicking good tale.

There's a plentitude of Picassos in San Francisco this summer. Across town from the de Young in Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (151 Mission Street between Mission and Howard) displays the showy "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde." It includes 45 Picassos (opened May 21, last day Sept. 6). The Contemporary Jewish Museum ( 736 Mission Street ) adds to the fun with "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," where Picasso puts in another appearance (May 12-September 6).