{"@context":{"@vocab":"https://schema.org/","artism":"https://artism.org/schema/"},"@type":"VisualArtwork","@id":"https://bernardbolter.com/san-francisco-city-1906","name":"San Francisco City 1906","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/san-francisco-city-1906","dateCreated":"2017","creator":{"@id":"https://bernardbolter.com/bio#person"},"artMedium":"Acrylic on canvas","width":{"@type":"QuantitativeValue","value":76.2,"unitCode":"CMT"},"height":{"@type":"QuantitativeValue","value":76.2,"unitCode":"CMT"},"isPartOf":{"@type":"CreativeWorkSeries","@id":"https://bernardbolter.com/series/a-colorful-history#series","name":"A Colorful History","url":"https://bernardbolter.com/series/a-colorful-history"},"image":"https://pub-6a869efbfec4404396a52a3b7056bfc7.r2.dev/san-francisco-city-1906.jpg","additionalProperty":[{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:intent","name":"Intent","value":"Uses the century-long gap between the source photograph and the painting to make a wider argument: that beauty and horror aren't opposites, only separated by time; that Lawrence himself was likely more captivated by the new aerial vantage point than by the disaster it happened to record; and, ultimately, a holistic view onto the human condition on this planet rather than a record of one city's tragedy."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:consciousRejections","name":"Conscious Rejections","value":"Held a personal rule against using earthquake-disaster photographs after Grant Street 1906 and Market Street 1906 (the series' 4th and 5th paintings) — uneasy about setting bright colour against a real tragedy. Broke that rule for this painting specifically because the curved horizon reframed the source image as a view of a place on a globe rather than a disaster scene."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:makingNote","name":"Making Note","value":"Made at the 27th Ave studio during an active production run for City Art Gallery — five motifs total, each produced as a small/large pair to restock the gallery wall as pieces sold (three small paintings hung above, two large below, a shelf of prints beneath). One of roughly ten canvases in progress at once during that period."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:directInspiration","name":"Direct Inspiration","value":"Came across the Lawrence panorama during general research into old San Francisco photographs — it kept surfacing because it's on Wikimedia Commons. Had avoided earthquake-disaster photographs since the series' 4th and 5th paintings, but the idea of curving the horizon was strong enough to break that rule for this one."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:seriesContext","name":"Series Context","value":"Made in 2017 at the 27th Ave studio during an active production run for City Art Gallery. Sits mid-series, after the shift from t-shirt-transfer paper to a blended acrylic transfer method, but before the more conceptual series-thinking that developed later in Berlin."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:artHistoricalContext","name":"Art Historical Context","value":"Rather than the series' more typical references (Rauschenberg, Richter), this painting sits in direct relation to the original photographer, George R. Lawrence. Lawrence chased a new aerial vantage point and monetized it, selling prints of the panorama repeatedly; a century later, a structurally similar act — remaking the same image, in multiple sizes, for different buyers. Both, per the artist, were likely more drawn to the view itself than to the wreckage it happened to depict."},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:sizeTier","name":"Size Tier","value":"md"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:orientation","name":"Orientation","value":"square"},{"@type":"PropertyValue","propertyID":"artism:catalogueNumber","name":"Catalogue Number","value":"BB-ACH-2016-015"}],"artism:recordUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/san-francisco-city-1906","artism:visionPageUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/san-francisco-city-1906/vision","artism:indexUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/index","artism:sessionsUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/san-francisco-city-1906/sessions","artism:sessionsPageUrl":"https://bernardbolter.com/sessions?artwork=san-francisco-city-1906","artism:scope":"work","artism:depth":"record","artism:tier":4,"artism:availableTiers":{"1":true,"2":true,"4":true,"5":false},"artism:tierMap":{"1":{"url":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/index","scope":"corpus","depth":"gist","description":"triage — identity, series, gist"},"2":{"url":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/index?depth=survey","scope":"subset","depth":"survey","description":"narrowing — description, intent, colors, keywords"},"4":{"urlTemplate":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/{slug}","scope":"work","depth":"record","description":"full record — all fields, all vision analyses"},"5":{"urlTemplate":"https://bernardbolter.com/api/corpus/{slug}/sessions","scope":"work","depth":"sessions","description":"session transcripts — how it came to be known"}},"artism:embeddings":[{"@type":"artism:Embedding","artism:model":"clip-vit-large-patch14","artism:dimensions":768,"artism:specUrl":"https://huggingface.co/openai/clip-vit-large-patch14","artism:shortDescription":"Language-informed visual embedding — 768 dimensions","dateCreated":"2026-06-18"},{"@type":"artism:Embedding","artism:model":"dinov2-large","artism:dimensions":1024,"artism:specUrl":"https://huggingface.co/facebook/dinov2-large","artism:shortDescription":"Self-supervised visual embedding, no language influence — 1024 dimensions","dateCreated":"2026-07-16"}],"artism:visionAnalyses":[{"@type":"artism:VisionAnalysis","text":"The composition sits on a hard horizontal division roughly two-thirds down the canvas, the flat pale sky-blue above meeting a solid ultramarine-navy below at a horizon that bows gently upward at center — a curve added deliberately beyond what the source aerial photograph showed. The transferred photograph occupies the middle third of the width, a dense grayscale field of grid streets and radiating piers, its edges dissolving unevenly into the surrounding blue rather than reading as a hard cutout. The piers extend down into the navy like a burst of rays, giving the mass a radial, almost solar structure against the flat water. Two narrow colour bands break the horizon — warm tan/brown toward the left, cooler sage green toward the right — placed less as topographical accuracy than as a deliberate complementary counterweight, needed because sky and water otherwise dominate the frame. Dominant palette: pale cyan-blue, deep ultramarine, warm ochre/tan, muted sage green, and the full grayscale range of the transfer itself.","artism:model":"claude-sonnet-5","dateCreated":"2026-07-21"}]}