Zahi Hawass, the famed face of Egyptian archaeology, will speak at the de Young this Saturday, revealing new discoveries
Widely known as Egypt’s Indiana Jones, the renowned archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, is speaking this Saturday, 2-3:30 pm, at the de Young’s Koret Auditorium, coinciding with the opening of the traveling Egyptian blockbuster, “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” (August 20, 2022 – February 12, 2023). Sponsored by FAMSF’s Ancient Art Council, this is the first of four guest lectures associated with the Ramses exhibition. Anyone who has ever encountered the charismatic Hawass on the National Geographic or Discovery channels or caught his reality show, “Chasing Mummies: The Amazing Adventures of Zahi Hawass,” on the History Channel knows they’re in for a treat. His thrilling in-the-trenches stories have revitalized interest in Egyptian archaeology around the world.
Dr. Hawass will regale the audience with the discoveries at Saqqara, which has proven to be treasure trove that keeps on giving. Saqqara is where the oldest complete stone building complex in history was erected and where as many as 16 different Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs are thought to have planned and built their pyramids. Hawass will tell of a new pyramid in Saqqara; the name of a previously unknown queen; and the discovery of 57 shafts of coffins and mummies. He will also discuss the ongoing excavation at Gisr el Mudir, in Saqqara, and the uncovering of major statues dating back 4,300 years ago found while searching for the missing pyramid of the Third-Dynasty King Huni. He will touch upon recent excavations in the Valley of the Kings and the search for Nefertiti and Ankhesenamun (King Tut’s wife) and the use of DNA analysis to complete the family tree of Tutankhamun. The presentation will conclude with the amazing find of the Lost Golden City, near Luxor—considered the most important discovery of 2021
After earning a degree in Egyptology in Cairo, at age 33, Hawass earned a Fulbright fellowship, came to America, and completed his Ph.D. in Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. In 2002, during Mubarak’s rule, he was appointed as Egypt’s Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which in 2011 became the Ministry of State for Antiquities. During his tenure, Hawass revolutionized archaeological site management in Egypt and revitalized its museum system, opening 15 museums to the public and initiating the construction of 20 more, including The Grand Egyptian Museum, slated to open in fall 2022 as the largest archaeological museum in the world with an extensive archaeological collection of some 50,000 artifacts and the full tomb collection of King Tutankhamun.
Hawass is a bold advocate for Egyptians reclaiming Egyptology and has successfully repatriated more than 5,000 artifacts. In 2020, he formed a committee that has been focusing efforts on the return of five priceless Egyptian artifacts: the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum; an exquisite bust of Nefertiti (1345 BCE) at Berlin’s Neues Museum; the Dendera zodiac sculpture (ca. 50 BCE) in the Louvre Museum; a statue of Hemiunu (Old Kingdom) at the Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum in Hildesheim, Germany; and a bust of Prince Ankhhaf (ca. 2520-2494 BCE) located in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. So far, those institutions have refused.
ARThound’s Ramses coverage: “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” opens August 20 at the de Young—rare lion cub mummy and stunning virtual reality experience add to the buzz
Details: Lecture is 2-3:30 pm at the de Young’s Koret auditorium. Free but requires a ticket which will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis at 1 pm, just outside the Koret auditorium. Seating is limited and unassigned.
Admission to “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs,” is separate. Different prices for weekdays vs. weekends. FAMSF members free for one visit only; additional visits require $23 member tickets. Non-member Adult prices: weekdays: $35; weekend $40.
Saturday, August 20, is free Saturday, which includes general museum entrance and all exhibits that do not have a surcharge, including Faith Ringgold: American People, covering 50 years of the trailblazing Harlem-born African American artist’s work, the first retrospective celebrating her in almost 40 years (through November 27).
“Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” opens August 20 at the de Young—rare lion cub mummy and stunning virtual reality experience add to the buzz
Closing summer with a bang, we’re off to ancient Egypt. “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs,” opens Saturday, August 20, at the de Young Museum. The first exhibition about Ramses the Great in over 30 years and the first ever in San Francisco, this multimedia extravaganza has the de Young as the second stop on its global tour. Fresh from its world premiere at HMNS (Houston Museum of Natural Sciences) where it received rave reviews, it includes 180 objects, the most important trove of treasures related to Ramses the Great ever to leave Egypt.
Many of these items are newly discovered and have never toured before. Among the rarest finds are recently excavated mummies of lion cubs from the Saqqara necropolis—a vast ancient burial ground, some 30 miles south of Cairo, that once served the Ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis—as well as treasures discovered in the royal tombs of Dahshur and Tanis.
The de Young promises gallery after gallery of royal statues, sarcophagi, spectacular masks, magnificent jewelry, and ornate golden tomb treasures all revealing the fabulous wealth of the pharaohs, the astonishing skill of ancient Egyptian tomb builders, and the superb workmanship of Egyptian artists. Drone photography, immersive video and multimedia productions, and life-size photo-murals will re-create pivotal moments from Ramses’ life, including his monumental building projects and his triumph in May 1274 BC over the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh (near the modern Lebanon–Syria border), considered the largest chariot battle ever fought. This exciting blending of art, history, and technology that will expand our understanding of Ramses’ as the most celebrated pharaoh of the New Kingdom, Egypt’s golden age.
“This is a once in a lifetime experience,” said curator Dr. Renée Dryfus, recently named FAMSF’s George and Judy Marcus Distinguished Curator in Charge, Ancient Art, who organized the exhibit’s presentation for the de Young. “These objects are coming from Egypt’s major museums and when they go back to Egypt, I doubt you will be seeing them again for many generations.”
Jewelry held a significant place in the lives of the ancient Egyptians, anchoring social status and helping them transcend into the afterlife. You’ll want to take your time with the exhibit’s stunning jewelry, noting its generous use of gold and semi-precious stones, intricate craftsmanship, and a built-in language of protection to ward off evil. If you’re like me, you’ll probably also be asking yourself why there is no tech gimmick that lets viewers try these on these exquisite pieces and imagine themselves as Egyptian royalty.
Ramses and his many wives and children wore elaborate gold earrings, bracelets, rings and necklaces, examples of which are on display. They considered gold to be “the skin of the gods.” An ornate single gold earring bears the name of Ramses the Eleventh. Ramses II was so revered that, after his death, nine more Pharaohs bore his name. The three rows of decorations are tiny cobras snakes wearing sun disks and Atef crowns rearing up to strike anyone who dares to harm the King.
A gorgeous collar, made of six rows of carnelian, feldspar, and glass paste beads with the bottom row droplets representing flower buds is one of the treasures discovered in the Hawara tomb of 12th dynasty Princess Neferuptah, daughter of Amenemhat III (who ruled around 1860-1814BC). Neferuptah lived roughly 500 years before Ramses II. The solid gold ends are shaped as large falcon heads—symbolizing protection in the afterlife by the falcon god, Horus. At 36 cm wide, roughly 14 inches, it has considerable weight and employs an opulent counterweight at the back to help prevent the collar slipping down the chest while being worn. This necklace bears a striking resemblance to a collar found within the innermost coffin of Tutankhamun, who lived roughly 200 years before Neferuptah and was buried with six collars, each with exquisite gold falcon head ends. One of these collars, which was discovered draped over Tut’s thighs, employs a very similar design scheme to Neferuptah’s collar and has the same droplet beads, representing flower buds, as its final row. The exhibit also includes the breathtaking 22nd dynasty cuff bracelet of Sheshonq II, a masterpiece in gold inlaid with lapis lazuli, carnelian and faience and a huge inlaid eye of Horus.
Visitors can also enjoy the optional Ramses & Nefertari: Journey to Osiris, a thrilling 10 minute and 30 second VR (virtual reality) experience featuring the Positron Voyager Chair, a VR platform that moves and vibrates so that you can actually sense what ancient Egypt was like as you tour of two of Ramses’ most impressive monuments—Abu Simbel and Nefertari’s tomb—led by the spirit of Nefertari, the pharaoh’s beloved queen. While we’ve all had our share of dubious new media experiences in museums, this seems the perfect blending of immersive entertainment and teaching experience, bound to bring out the kid in all of us and mesmerize the kids we bring along with us.
Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Photo: Sandro Vannini, courtesy FAMSF
Ramses II, believed to be a god on Earth, ruled for 67 years as part of the 19th Dynasty, in the 13th century before Christ. He fought the Hittites, signed the world’s first official peace treaty and fathered over 50 sons and 50 daughters, the most children of any pharaoh. His reign corresponded with a great flourishing of the arts and he undertook an unparalleled building program, creating the great temples at Karnak and Luxor, erecting enormous temples, obelisks, and statues and expanding Egypt’s empire.
His tomb is located in the Valley of the Kings, the final resting place of New Kingdom pharaohs for over 500 years. Because his tomb was plundered in ancient times, “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” doesn’t actually include any objects from Ramses’ tomb but, instead, includes objects from royal tombs found elsewhere in Egypt, providing an idea of the extraordinary objects that Ramses’s tomb must have included.
“Kings before and after Ramses erected colossal statues of themselves, but none are larger or greater in number than those commissioned by Ramses the Great,” said Renée Dreyfus. “The temples he erected, statues he commissioned, monuments he inscribed throughout Egypt and Nubia, and funerary temple and royal tomb he built were reminders of his earthly power and closeness to the gods. The proliferation of his name led to it becoming almost a synonym for kingship.”
After closing in February, 2023, the exhibit heads to Europe, where its first stop is the Parc de la Villette cultural complex in Paris (April – September 2023).
Details: “Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs” is August 20, 2022 through November 12, 2023. Advanced ticket purchase is essential; a great number of timed tickets have already been sold. Different prices for weekdays vs. weekends. FAMSF members free for one visit only; additional member tickets $23. Non-member Adult prices: weekdays: $35; weekend $40.
Additional VR experience: Ramses & Nefertari: Journey to Osiris, FAMSF members free. Non-member Adult price: $18 both weekdays and weekends.
The Obama Portraits at the de Young—so much better in person, fascinating symbolism—through August 14
Installation view of “The Obama Portraits Tour,” de Young Museum, San Francisco, 2022. Photo: Gary Sexton, courtesy FAMSF. Left, “Barack Obama” by Kehinde Wiley, oil on canvas, 2018. Right, “Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama” by Amy Sherald, oil on linen, 2018. Both: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
There’s just no substitute for seeing art in person and letting the experience hit you full force. The official portraits of President Barak Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama by artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald at the de Young Museum are stopping people in their tracks—it’s not the usual quick selfie and move on type of viewing. Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. and unveiled in February 2018, these presidential likenesses are strong and stunning, each in their own way. They speak to what each of us holds in our hearts and memories of the Obama’s and their era and challenge us to dig deeper. As presidential portraits go, they are highly unorthodox and have broadened discussion on portraiture, challenging staid conventions of representing political leaders, and influencing how Black American identity is shaped in the public realm. Wiley and Sherald were chosen by the Obamas and are the first African-American artists to paint portraits of the president and first lady, our first African American first family, for the National Portrait Gallery. The Obama Portraits Tour has been traveling since June 2021 and the two paintings leave the de Young on August 14 for their seventh and final stop, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and then return to their permanent home at the National Portrait Gallery. It’s estimated that 4 million people have already seen them on this tour.
“I am struck by their magnificence,” said an impassioned Timothy Anglin Burgard, Distinguished Senior Curator and Curator-in-Charge of American Art at FAMSF. “They really have been become secular pilgrimage objects. I’m inclined to remove the word secular; they’ve got a spiritual aspect…The Obamas represent the realization of the American dream and that’s entangled in our perception of these artworks.”
Three years after their unveiling, nearly every stylistic detail in these portraits has been researched and and there’s a hook for almost everyone. They are displayed side by side and several feet apart within the gallery. Your first take is how dramatically different the two portraits are from each other stylistically, speaking completely different languages, and then you notice the differences in their size and scale. At 7 feet tall, Barack Obama’s portrait is a foot taller than Michelle Obama’s and he is painted roughly 10 percent larger than life-size; whereas she is slightly smaller than life-size. This is highly unconventional for husband and wife portraits, but attests that each portrait was created independently.
Kehinde Wiley’s Barack Obama
The vibrant flower power struck a strong chord with me: the entire painting is teaming with vegetation. Obama sits surrounded by a mass of verdant foliage which threatens to engulf his chair and him, wrapping around his feet, creeping over his shoulder. A respectable power-affirming setting has long been the norm for presidential portraits, setting a tone of honor and remembrance. A garden portrait like this is beyond rebellious but well within Kehinde Wiley’s oeuvre. Wiley, 42, attended San Francisco Art Institute. He grabbed the attention of the art world and media almost immediately after earning his MFA from Yale in 2001. He employs the power of images to address the historic invisibility of blacks in art and has created series of works that inject black people, usually men, into old-master European royal portraits. He tends to foreground his subjects in colorful and highly intricate all-encompassing patterning. His iconic 2005 portrait of rapper LL Cool J, also at the National Portrait Gallery, employs an almost florescent intricately repeating ornamental backdrop. As Wiley remarked at the unveiling, “There is a fight going on between he (Obama) in the foreground, and the plants that are trying to announce themselves at his feet. Who gets to be the star of the show?”
The flowers each symbolize an aspect of Obama’s personal history. The purple African lily symbolizes Obama’s Kenyan heritage (Wiley’s father is Nigerian); the white jasmine represents his Hawaiian birthplace and time spent in Indonesia; the multicolored chrysanthemum signifies Chicago, the city where Obama grew up and eventually became a state senator. The three red rosebuds, the official flower of Washington D.C., represent new beginnings. The overall message is the flowering or dawning of a new era in a nation that finally has its first Black President. But these exquisite flowers are also all struggling to emerge, a metaphor for Obama’s own struggle to emerge from obstacle after obstacle.
There’s also the idea of camouflage. Obama had to be very careful about both concealing and revealing himself. Often, he was often seen as black man before he was seen as president. Certain moments in his presidency— in 2012, when he spoke at the interfaith prayer vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre; in 2013, when Trayvon Martin was shot, when he said that could have been his own son; in 2015, when he sang “Amazing Grace” during the eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a shooting at a Charleston church—the walls came down and he spoke as a father, as a man mourning and we had an inkling of the great difficulty he had navigating race relations which were so central to his presidency.
Obama himself is depicted in a serious pose, seated with arms crossed, looking straight ahead, wearing a dark suit with an open-collar shirt and no tie. He wears his gold wedding band and a Rolex Cellini reference 50509, with a white gold case.
In part, the portrait seems inspired by George P.A. Healy’s 1869 portrait of Abraham Lincoln—the carved wooden antique chair, the alert forward pose, and thoughtful expression. But instead of the austere darkness that threatens to engulf Lincoln, Wiley substituted plants infused with light and energy. Lincoln is one of Obama’s heroes, a role model, so much so that Obama launched his first presidential campaign in Lincoln’s hometown, Springfield, Illinois, and cited the 16th president numerous times during his two terms in office. Obama even requested that Wiley’s portrait of him be unveiled on February 12, Lincoln’s birthday. Paul Stati, the Washington Post art critic, wrote in his February 13, 2018 review, “(Wiley) is not just channeling Healy, he’s linking the Obama presidency to Lincoln’s — painting Obama as the rich fulfillment of the promise of Lincoln’s abolition of slavery.”
When you look at the armchair Wiley painted, the assumption is made that it is resting on an unseen bed of soil but the bottoms of Obama’s shoes are not touching solid ground, his left foot which tilts slightly upwards. “He seems to be weightless and defying gravity, possibly levitating,” suggested Timothy Burgard. “It’s fascinating that both artists arrived independently at visual solutions that suggest or create an aurora of spirituality or even religiosity.”
Amy Sherald’s Michelle Obama
The former First Lady’s striking portrait also defies convention. Executed in flat neutral grayed-out tones, a bare-armed Mrs Obama is set against a solid light blue background and gazes directly at, or right through the viewer, giving the impression her thoughts directed inwards. Her hair falls in loose curls just beyond her shoulders, framing her angular face with its strong jawline. It’s abstracted, more impression than detail. Her seated posture is relaxed, with legs crossed. She’s resting her chin on her hand, elegantly depicted with long slender fingers. She’s wearing a black and white maxi dress with a billowing skirt that spreads to the bottom of the portrait.
New Jersey-based Amy Sherald, 49, stayed true to her distinctive style of portraiture: paintings of self-assured, black people in stylish clothes against colored backdrops that contrast with their faces, which are uniformly grisaille. When Sherald got the Obama commission, she was just beginning to move into the national spotlight after putting her career on hold for four years as she navigated family health issues and her own heart transplant. She’d had a few solo shows and was known within the contemporary art world but needed national exposure to boost her name recognition. The Obama portrait did just that. She got her first first full-fledged New York solo show, “The Heart of the Matter” at Hauser & Wirth, in September 2019 which New York Times art critic Roberta Smith called “magnificent, stirring” (9.16.2019 review). She has since gone to several museum shows and made the news in December 2020 when her portrait, “The Bathers” (2015), sold for $4.2 million at Phillips, over 20 times its estimated sale price. The portrait offered a counter-representation to the genre of European paintings whose white subjects, relaxing near bodies of water and wearing bathing suits or in the nude, are described as bathers.
Sherald has said many times that she uses gray-toned skin to take race out of her portraits and force viewers to look deeper. Those neutral gray tones also give her subjects, especially Mrs, Obama, a timelessness. The de-emphasis of precise facial features invites the viewer to question who the subject really is, an issue Mrs. Obama must have grappled with continually as she navigated all of her roles, playing a slightly different version of herself to suit the occasion. There’s a strong physicality to the portrait which is unusual in a first lady’s portrait. While many people have commented on Obama’s strong arms in this portrait, I didn’t see the prominent muscular definition in her biceps and forearms which I and so many admire: she works out and it shows but not so much here.
The dress is the most discussed aspect of the portrait: a bold arm-bearing white halter-style maxi dress with a geometric pattern in pink, red, and chartreuse, designed by Michelle Smith of the label Milly and was based on a look from her Spring 2017 collection. At the portrait’s unveiling in 2018, artist Amy Sherald said it reminded her of a Gee’s Bend quilt and the colors reminded her of Mondrian. This dress, so distinctive from the conservatively-styled, solid-colored choices selected for most National Gallery’s presidential portraits, has garnered so much attention and commentary that in 2021 it was displayed along with the portrait at the National Gallery in 2021. It was immortalized further in the Showtime series The First Lady, with Viola Davis as Obama. It is emblematic of Obama’s fashion-forward style which became bolder the longer she occupied the East Wing. She championed upstart American designers, was fond of bold colors, and metallics, and wasn’t afraid to show some skin. At 5’11”, with her body and confidence, she could pull off almost any look.
Michelle Smith remarked in Vogue (February 12, 2018) that, more than being a high-fashion statement, the simple cut cotton dress is “a people’s fabric. The dress has pockets. It is easy and comfortable…The halter neck exemplifies Michelle Obama’s confidence to show her arms and shoulders. It is forward thinking and she is comfortable. The dress speaks to her in that she is modern, clean, and forward thinking.”
I’m missing Obama’s infectious empowering smile, wishing that more of her were revealed in this portrait but evoking my individual memories of her is not what this portrait is about. These are the first presidential portraits by African American artists ever to be commissioned for the National Gallery. They are intended to solidify the legacy of our first African President and First Lady who defied all expectations. The portraits are perfect in their unwavering unconventional beauty, a strong public statement of who we are as Americans.
Details:
The Obama Portraits Tour closes August 14, 2022. Requires additional timed ticket and a General Admission de Young ticket. The de Young also has a fitting companion experience— Faith Ringgold: American People, covering 50 years of the trailblazing Harlem-born African American artist’s work, the first retrospective celebrating her in almost 40 years (free with General Admission museum ticket through November 27). Pre-purchase tickets online in advance. ars (free with General Admission museum ticket through November 27). Pre-purchase tickets online in advance.
The 24th Sonoma International Film Festival is March 24-28th—virtual, for the way we live now
The 24th edition of the beloved Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF) takes place virtually again this year from March 24-28, with over 100 films from 40 countries and three drive-in screenings. Having scrambled to offer the Eventive platform last year to a global audience that streamed some 4,000 hours of media in four days, SIFF is more than ready to roll this year. It’s the art films that keep ARThound enamored with the SIFF and Program Director, Steve Shor, along with Artistic Director, always provide engaging, informative films that often take us into bygone eras. Here are the films that caught my eyes this year:
Maverick Modigliani
Maverick Modigliani (Maledetto Modigliani) delves into Italian-born artist, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). Famous for his serenely seductive women with elongated features, Modigliani created artworks that were a synthesis of ancient and modern techniques and were fashionably hip in their day. Valeria Parisi’s documentary feature covers Modigliani’s life from when he left his home in Livorno in 1906 and arrived in Paris as a vivacious 21 year old dandy, determined to establish himself as an artist. He began as primarily a sculptor and created tall stone heads—with the long, narrow noses that became his hallmark. He studied with Constantin Brancusi for a year and his radically simplified forms, evocative of African art, which was all the rage, had a powerful influence on him. Crushingly handsome, Modigliani was ensnared by Parisian life and, fueled by alcohol and drugs, he painted and seduced numerous women—notably poets Anna Akhmatova and Beatrice Hastings. Many became the subjects of his languid portraits, rendered in bold flat colors, eyes without pupils. He married Jeanne Hébuterne, who he immortalized in over 20 paintings but never in the nude. In a span of 15 years, he painted over 400 pictures, created magical stoneworks, and left a small archive of drawings before his untimely death at age 35 from tubercular meningitis. (2020, Italy, 97 min, in English and Italian) (Available to stream Saturday, March 26, 10 a.m.)
Mucha: The Story of an Artist Who Created a Style
A scene from Roman Vávra’s documentary, Mucha: The Story of an Artist who Created a Style, image: maxim film.
Czech director Roman Vávra’s stylized documentary, Mucha: The Story of an Artist who Created a Style (Svět podle Muchy) (2020), is about the life and reach of Czech-born art nouveau pioneer, Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939). Shot in 2019, the film tells Mucha’s story from the perspective of his son, the writer and bon-vivant Jiří Mucha, with lots of re-enactments, animations, archival footage as well as paintings and photos. Mucha has slipped in and out of the limelight. His advertising posters immortalizing French actress Sarah Bernhardt became synonymous with Belle Epoque Paris. In the 1960s, his Art Nouveau posters attained cult status as the hippie movement rediscovered his vivid pictorial world. Mucha’s art has since become the inspiration for street art, psychedelic rock posters, and Japanese manga. What he considered his most important work is largely unknown outside of the Czech Republic. In 1920, at the peak of his fame, Mucha left Paris for a castle in Bohemia where for he holed up for 18 years, pouring his soul into his monumental Slav Epic— 20 huge canvasses, some more than 25 feet tall illustrating key events in the history and mythology of the Czech and Slavic people. Mucha conceived it as a monument for all Slavonic peoples. Instead, he was met with fierce criticism upon its completion. In 2016, the cycle was at the heart of a major law suit that pitted Mucha’s grandson, John, against the city of Prague. He argued that because Prague failed to build a permanent gallery for the artworks, which was a pre-condition of his grandfather’s gift, it never became the full owner of the Slav Epic, and that the works should be returned to Mucha’s heirs. In December 2020, the court ruled in favor of the family. Shortly after that ruling, it was announced that the City of Prague had commissioned an appropriate gallery for the Slav Epic to be completed by 2026. (2020, Czech Republic, Germany, France, 100 min, Czech with English subtitles)
M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity
M.C. Escher, image courtesy Adrian Curry (Kino Lorber Team)
M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity is the story of Dutch graphic artist M.C Escher (1898-1972). Equal parts history, psychology, and psychedelia, Robin Lutz’s entertaining, eye-opening portrait presents the man through his own words and images and delves into the deep waves of math and art he conjured. Escher’s diary musings, excerpts from lectures, and correspondence are all voiced by British actor Stephen Fry as Escher’s woodcuts, lithographs, and other print works appear in both original and playfully altered form. We hear Escher align himself with scientists and mathematicians, often trashing his own skills as a draftsman. Two of Escher’s sons, George (92) and Jan (80), reminisce about their parents while musician Graham Nash (Crosby, Stills & Nash) talks about Escher’s rediscovery in the 1970s. This doc has been praised highly for its innovation, for finding clever ways to show the audience, visually, just how Escher’s style evolved and the principles behind that evolution. (2020, Netherlands, 81 min, multiple languages with English subtitles)
Built Beautiful
The question of beauty is something that science has shied away. Built Beautiful introduces the new field of neuro-aesthetics which may give us the ability to peer into realms of the human experience that were once thought to be totally abstract and intangible. Image: SIFF
Mariel Rodriguez-McGill’s Built Beautiful explores the interface of design and science in the emerging field of neuro-aesthetics which seeks to understand the neural mechanisms behind the appreciation of design. The documentary features leading experts on neuro-aesthetics from around the world elaborating on ideas presented at the Ux+Design/2019 conference (co-sponsored by Genetics of Design) held at Tufts University. A core area of research is determining how and why beauty plays an important role in our well-being and how subliminal responses to one’s built environment will influence the future of design. It’s an exciting evolutionary approach to art appreciation, a realm of human experience that was once thought to be totally inaccessible to science. While filming, Rodriguez-Gill discovered that several elements of cities remained the same no matter where they were in the world. At one point in the film, students in schools in Oxford, UK, and Denver, Colorado, were asked to draw a home. Each student drew buildings containing what neuroscientists call the primal form—human facial features unconsciously drawn into renderings of nonhuman objects. (2020, US, 77 min, English)
Drive-in Screenings:
Celebrate cinema at Sonoma Parkway on their 40 foot screen, with FM transmission to car radios, special video introductions by SIFF sponsors, gourmet food, non-alcoholic beverages, and one gift bag per car. Every car present will be eligible to win a door prize of two tickets in the main cabin of Alaska Airlines. Tickets are $75/car with a $25 discount given to pass holders.
Opening Night: Six Minutes to Midnight, (Wed, March 24, 6:15 pm) (Andy Goddard, 99 min, English) A spy thriller set days before WWII at an Anglo-German finishing school on the south coast of England, involving a teacher, a headmistress and 20 teen girls, daughters of the Nazi high command. Stars Judi Dench (Casino Royale), James D’Arcy (Broadchurch), Jim Broadbent (War and Peace), and Eddie Izzard (Victoria & Abdul).
Friday Night at The Drive-In: Spacewalker, (Fri, March 26, 6:16 pm) (Dmitriy Kiselev, 140 min, Russian, dubbed in English) A look at the Soviet side of the space race, set in the Cold War 1960’s as two Russian astronauts, Pavel Belyayev, a seasoned war veteran and Alexey Leonov, a hot-headed test pilot, part of the Voskhod 2 mission in March, 1965, prepare to step into the unknown on the first space walk.
Closing Night at The Drive-In: The Comeback Trail (Sat, March 27, 6:15 pm) (George Gallo, 104 min, English) An American crime comedy. Two movie producers (Robert De Niro, Emile Hirsh) who owe money to the mob (Morgan Freeman) set up their aging movie star (Tommy Lee Jones) for an insurance scam to try and save themselves. They wind up getting more than they ever imagined.
Details:
SIFF is Thursday, March 24th to Sunday, March 28, 2021. Tickets: $12/film. Passes: SIFF’s Virtually Everything Pass is $175 and includes SIFF Saturdays, a monthly virtual screening on the last Saturday of every month throughout the year. SIFF Drive-Ins: tickets are $75/per vehicle; passholders receive a $10 discount/one vehicle maximum.; SIFF’s First Responder Passis $25. Show appreciation for the staff at Sonoma Valley Hospital and the Community Health Center by underwriting their access to SIFF.
Rancho Gordo’s Steve Sando has a new bean portrait by Jason Mercier
Pop trash artist Jason Mercier fascinates me with his meticulous mosaic portraits. He’s outdone himself with his new portrait of Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo beans—he’s captured Steve’s essence in heirloom beans. As materials go, the humble heirloom bean is just about perfect, varying in color, size, and texture and it has great karma.
A pic of the artwork arrived in my email this morning in Steve’s e-letter celebrating his 20th anniversary selling beans. As Steve points out, glamorous celebs of a certain era used to appear in print, draped in Blackgama furs as part of Blackgama’s “What becomes a legend most?” ad campaign (1968-94). Today’s legends are captured in Jason Mercier’s mosaics—Snoop Dogg sculpted out of weed, Steve Jobs’ 2006 portrait revisioned from 20 pounds of e-waste, Amy Sedaris out of her own trash, Justin Timberlake and Miley Cyrus out of candy. Amazing how blobs of material in deeply saturated colors, arranged just so, can cohere into vivid likenesses.
Steve Sando is an artist in his own right: his heirloom beans look like gems, taste fabulous and have the most interesting names—Cicerchia, Vaquero, Alubia blanca, Mayocoba, Yellow Eye. It’s hard to buy just one bag when confronted with these enticing beauties. Sando has traveled the world in search of rare and delicious artisan beans, written passionately about his finds, respectfully crediting the farmers he collaborates with and created a gourmet brand that has become a staple in the culinary world. He started selling at the farmers’ market in Yountville two decades ago and built Rancho Gordo slowly. He now sells direct to consumers all over the US, Canada, to restaurants and retail stores. He grows in California, all along the West Coast, Mexico, Italy and Poland. He’s planning a 20th anniversary celebration at the his storefront in Napa, after Covid. If you’d like to know more, he’s been profiled wonderfully in the New Yorker by Burkhard Bilger (The Hunt for Mexico’s Heirloom Beans). Even better: subscribe to his newsletter and check out them beans for yourself: https://www.ranchogordo.com.
San Francisco’s museums are reopening this week: What to see
An installation view from “Calder-Picasso,” at the de Young museum, the first major museum exhibition to explore the artistic relationship between Alexander Calder and Pablo Picasso, two of the most innovative and influential artists of the 20th century. Image courtesy: FAMSF
The Asian Art Museum, de Young Museum and SFMOMA all reopen to the public this week, after three plus months of closure. The Asian reopens this Thursday, March 4, followed by de Young on Saturday, March 6, and SFMOMA on Sunday, March 7. The news came today after Mayor London Breed’s announcement that San Francisco has entered the red tier, allowing cultural institutions to operate at 25% capacity. What that means for viewers is a combination of mask mandates, social distancing, and timed entry tickets to regulate capacity. What this means for museums, who rely desperately on the revenue from visitors, is cash flow. With the Bay Area’s vaccine rollout petering along, about to roll into full swing, and new highly transmissible variants of the virus that have cropped up in the Bay Area, it goes without saying that limiting community spread should be our highest priority. If you do decide to go, exercise every caution.
Each museum offers new, substantial exhibitions, installed during their recent pandemic closure. The Asian has Zheng Chongbin: State of Oscillation, an installation in dialogue with the museum’s ongoing transformation project. Working in the Osher Gallery, the Marin-based artist created ink paintings, videos, and an ephemeral chamber suffused with overlapping video imagery that heighten awareness of our bodies moving through space. In the museum’s Bogart Court, panels in varying transparency and patterns are suspended below skylights, directing the flow of natural light and manipulating sight-lines to create a novel spatial experience. The free flow of light and exploring ideas of transparency also informed architect Gay Aulenti’s impressive 2003 renovation of the Asian. After Hope: Videos of Resistance is comprised of 50 short videos made by artists across Asia and the Asian diaspora. Memento: Jayashree Chakravarty and Lam Tung Pang comprises two large-scale works that allow viewers to travel through Kolkata and Hong Kong, exploring the modern city as both a personal and political landscape.
The Asian will have free admission on Sunday, March 7, and will continue with free first Sunday of every month going forward.
The de Young is offering the traveling blockbuster, Calder-Picasso, which makes its first U.S. stop in San Francisco. Conceived and curated by Alexander Calder’s grandson Alexander S. C. Rower and Pablo Picasso’s grandson Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, it features over 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs. The exhibit is focused on both artists’ occupation with “the void” and how they transformed our conceptions of form and space—and thus the very definition of art itself.
New at the de Young is Nampeyo and the Sikyátki Revival, an installation of 32 pots by Nampeyo (ca 1860-1942), the renowned Tewa-Hopi potter. Examples of Hopi pottery from Nampeyo’s era and works by four generations of her descendants will be juxtaposed with her masterpieces.
Also, continuing at the de Young is Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving, which opened in March 2020, was impacted by pandemic closure, and has been extended through May 2.
The de Young will offer free admission on Saturday, March 6 and continue with free Saturdays moving forward,
SFMOMA reopens with Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis, featuring new works by seven Bay Area artists ― Carolyn Drake, Rodney Ewing, Andres Gonzalez, James Gouldthorpe, Klea McKenna, Tucker Nichols, and Woody De Othello ― in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented social upheaval of 2020. Bay Area Walls, which spreads across three floors of the museum, is a series of commissions by local artists that continues the museum’s investigation of the pandemic and unfolding crises of 2020. It features works by Erina Alejo and Adrian L. Burrell, Liz Hernández, Muzae Sesay, and the Twins Walls Company (Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong). The museum’s New Work gallery will showcase new works by conceptual artist Charles Gaines, emerging from his interest the controversial Dred Scott Decision of 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Missouri Compromise and decreed that Black people were not U.S. citizens and therefore could not sue for their right to freedom.
Before their public reopening, both the de Young and SFMOMA will have member preview days. SFMOMA will be free to the public on March 7 and tickets can be reserved online starting Wednesday, March 3 at roughly 10 a.m. Due to safety protocols in place which limit the number of visitors, reserving a ticket beforehand is essential. For more details on ticketing, admission and safety protocols, visit the websites: Asian Art Museum, de Young and SFMOMA.
Meet Richard Savino, whose baroque instruments add period splendor to Handel’s “Orlando,” at SF Opera through June 27
Grammy-nominated guitarist/lutenist Richard Savino who makes a special appearance with the SFO Orchestra for Handel’s Orlando at SFO. Photo: Geneva Anderson
When Handel’s baroque opera Orlando, opened June 9 at San Francisco Opera, guitarist and lutenist Richard Savino was the most sought after musician in the pit. The grammy-nominated musician, making a special appearance with SF Opera, is one of the world’s foremost early music instrumentalists. His playing was magnetic and stood out, even among the rich arias in this must-see production. Savino spent much of the intermissions fielding questions from fascinated attendees about his theorbo and baroque guitar. The theorbo is a guitar-like instrument with a very long neck—as long as six feet—with two sets of strings— a longer set tuned with pegs at the top of the fret board (for the deeper range) and a shorter set tuned by pegs on the sides of the fret board (for the higher range). Savino also doubles in certain parts of the opera on baroque guitar. His buoyant playing stands out in most parts of Orlando but is heard most clearly in the recitatives—the dialogue that moves the story forward. Once you recognize his sound, it’s easy to find. There is a lot of improvisation for Savino as Handel didn’t orchestrate Orlando but provided just the chord changes. The musicians of the continuo ensemble—Christopher Moulds (conductor/ harpsichord), Ronny Michael Greenberg (harpsichord), David Kadarach (cello)—work together and improvise much like a jazz rhythm section, deciding together how the music will be voiced. In person, Savino’s personality is just as energetic and engaging as his playing and his passions run wide. He has given important works that haven’t been performed in centuries their premiere recordings and has developed a fascinating sideline, providing musical accompaniment to art works held in the world’s most elite collections and putting together programs on early artists and period music. Savino was eager to talk about his music, Orlando and his numerous projects:
How did you come to early music and why? Your bio indicates you dabbled in rock and roll and then jazz fusion first which strikes me as unusual path.
Richard Savino: For me, it was all very logical. I love the Beatles and listened to them all the time. At their core, they were rock and roll as well as pop musicians, but they were also very influenced by all epochs of classical music, including baroque music. One reason for this is because George Martin, their producer, was a classically trained composer. They used the harpsichord on a number of their songs and many others fall within the classical/romantic cannon. In particular, they had a real fascination with music from the baroque era and contemporary music of the ’60s. Listen to Penny Lane, a Tin Pan Alley kind of pop song that has a piccolo trumpet solo. This is because Paul McCartney heard a piccolo trumpet player play Bach’s second Brandenburg concerto. Then, listen to A Day in the Life, with its incredible orchestration. Both songs are magnificent.
I also played rock when I was in high school and I always sang too. I won a high school vocal competition in a school of 4,000 students. A couple of years before me, the person who won that same competition was Pat Benatar. I was always in choirs, so I knew the Bach cantatas, Handel, so forth. When I went to the State University at Stony Brook, I began to have a strong interest in classical guitar, and I was lucky enough to have a wonderful teachers, in particular Jerry Willard, Oscar Ghiglia, my dear friend/colleague Eliot Fisk, and harpsichordist Albert Fuller who would have a huge impact on my life. Interestingly, every classical guitarist studies early music because the canon for our repertoire is so rich. I was also one of the last group of students to study with Andres Segovia. Unlike most other instruments, guitarists are required to study early music from the 16th and 17th centuries. The weirdest part is that I went from being a rock and roll guy to studying classical guitar to playing the theorbo and baroque guitar. I love the Spanish canon that Segovia brought to our consciousness.
Most early music specialists tend to focus on the baroque and early renaissance periods but you are also very engaged with the classical music of the 19th century and play instruments from that period as well. What accounts for your unusually broad scope?
Richard Savino: One could say it’s a lot of ADD. I love playing music from all epochs and the guitar flourished during the 19th century. It has quite an extensive solo and chamber repertoire. The 19th century guitar is very different from the classical guitar. It’s much smaller, more intimate and is the perfect bridge between the guitars of the 18th century and the modern classical guitars; it’s a transitional instrument. I just love playing it. Early in my career, I went out of my way to specialize in late 18th and early 19th century chamber music. And while I love playing solo pieces, I also realized that the world can only sustain a certain number of solo classical guitarists and I am too much a social an animal. I really enjoyed playing with other musicians, so I went down that path which led me directly into playing basso continuo and other plucked stringed instruments like the theorbo and baroque guitar, which I play in Orlando at SF Opera. But I still love playing the 6 string guitar and my first recordings were for the Harmonia Mundi label and featured the complete Boccherini Guitar Quintets, which no one had ever recorded before on instruments from the epoch. A couple of my other recordings that I’m really proud of are the romantic miniatures titled Bardenklänge by Johann Kaspar Mertz, and my recording of Mauro Giuliani’s Op. 30 Concerto, which, I believe, is the only one of its kind that is performed on period instruments with NO cuts.
Can you give an example of a moment in SF Opera’s production of Orlando that you have come to love through experiencing it performed?
Richard Savino: I can’t actually watch because I’m playing but, during rehearsals, I was constantly standing up to try and see what was going on because I knew it was a contemporary adaptation set in WWII. In a musical context, I have been very moved by the Act 1 duo between Anjelica and Medoro, “Ritornava al suo bel viso” and Orlando’s “Fammi combattere” at the beginning of the opera, and Orlando’s Act 3 aria, “Gia l’ebro mio ciglio,” which is so beautiful with the two violas that have this gorgeous full cadenza at the end of it.
Handel is a remarkable genius and I’ve played many of his operas with Glimmerglass Opera, Opera Colorado, San Diego Opera, San Francisco Opera, and Santa Fe. He is the great chameleon of all composers. When he lived in Italy, he wrote like an Italian; when he lived in England, he composed like a Brit; and when he lived in Germany, he composed like a high German composer. What is amazing is his ability to set music to different languages. For example, when he was in Rome, he went to Naples and was asked to write a piece for one of the Spanish viceroys and it’s his only piece that I know of that is in Spanish. I happened to record it a few years ago with my period ensemble group, El Mundo, on the album The Kingdoms of Castille (2012) which was nominated for a Grammy. Handel just how to absorb the style, the native musical, as well as spoken language.
What is the continuo and what is its function in a baroque opera such as Orlando. How do you work??
Richard Savino: It came about at the turn of the 17th century and was meant to be a quasi-improvised manner of performing that would respond to the way the singers would sing a particular piece. It was the consequence of the meetings of the Florentine Camarata, a group of humanists that included Giulio Caccini, Vincenzo Galilei and Jacobo Peri, who got together to emulate Greek oratory and music. They hypothesized about how it must have entailed spontaneity and improvisation between poets, singers and how it would be accompanied by a lyre. That was the birth of monody, the initial basis of opera. Much of these early operas by Monteverdi, Caccini, Peri and Cesti consist of collections of these little monodies which consist of a bassline and harmony that supports a singer, much like the way the rhythm section functions in a jazz combo. Today, when I’m playing with the continuo, I’m looking at a bassline, and am enhancing that. The idea is to reflect the affection of the text and to create some sort of dialogue with the singer and reflect their interpretation of what’s going on and that’s a gas.
Richard Savino with his theorbo in the orchestra pit at War Memorial Opera House. The theorbo was an important instrument through the Renaissance and baroque eras. The last historical compositions written with the theorbo in mind appeared about 1750. Savino plays a modern copy. His theorbo has a very long neck and two sets of strings which are plucked—a longer set tuned with pegs at the top of the fret board (for the deeper range), and a shorter set tuned by pegs on the sides of the fret board (for the higher range). Photo: Geneva Anderson
What is so special about the theorbo and the sound it produces?
Richard Savino: First there’s understanding why the theorbo is different–it’s shaped like a lute, with a larger bowl size, no flat back, and it’s single strung, so you can pluck it harder because when you have double strings you can’t pluck very hard because they will rattle against each other. Usually, it has 14 strings and quite long strings. The longer the string length, the lower the pitch. The instrument has a very odd tuning in which the highest pitch string is the third string from the top and has a very strong middle and bass register with quite a few extended base strings which I pluck with my right hand thumb. Those pop out like a cannon. Just the other day, someone told me the other day that I was quite audible (a big compliment to a lute player) but I have always focused on projection. I play loudly and you have to project to fill a really big hall. The theorbo provides the bass fundamental and, sometimes, I’ll play the bassline or just part of the bassline with some chords.
What is tricky about playing both the theorbo and baroque guitar in Orlando?
Richard Savino: In this production, I’m playing just about everything—almost every recit and aria; there are just a couple that I don’t play. In the second half, my hand just begs for a break. Handel’s orchestra would have had two of me, so someone could take over. Here, it is constant because the recitative moves so fast. Some are conducive to the instrument; some would be conducive to the archlute, which looks like a theorbo but is tuned differently and is more conductive to flat keys. The theorbo is more conducive to keys that are in the sharp side of our harmonic language. I’m covering both players in one. Playing continuo really keeps your brain sharp and focused. You have to keep track of the tunings of the different instruments when you switch instruments and change your fingerings accordingly. On one instrument, one fingering will produce the A chord and on another it’s the G chord and so on.
What is the difference between an original and a copy of a baroque instrument like the theorbo or guitar and what do you play?
Richard Savino: I play very accurate copies in Orlando and, as far as we can ascertain, it’s the same sound. These are very delicate instruments and most that have survived from the 17th century suffered from some degree of neglect and damage. I have a couple of very early guitars in my collection but nothing earlier than 1800. I play copies of instruments that would have been built in the late 17th century and would have been part of a player’s arsenal. I know private collectors who own some of these originals and I can say that very good copies do sound very close to the originals in their present state. But every instrument in and of itself sounds a bit different.
In Orlando, Richard Savino plays a modern copy of a baroque guitar. Photo: Geneva Anderson
The main difference between the guitar and lute and the way they were played is that the guitar, in its baroque incarnation, was strummed and provided expressive rhythm, dance melodies and dramatic battle scenes. In SFO’s Orlando, Savino strums as well as plucks his guitar. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Orlando marks Christopher Moulds’ (SF Opera conductor/ harpsichord) debut with SF Opera. What does he bring to the production?
Richard Savino: What I love about him is that he is an expert on period instruments, very well-educated and an intense worker who is demanding but never insulting. I’d never worked with him before, but I got to know him a little before the production by exchanging emails. He was very open and conversant, whereas a good number of conductors can be very removed. He knows how to talk with and work with the orchestra. A lot of period instrument conductors will talk down to the orchestra which isn’t fair really because, nowadays, orchestras tend to specialize predominantly in romantic and more contemporary repertoire. That means a lot of the musicians haven’t touched this music in a very long time. Chris was really good at communicating his ideas.
Vermeer’s “Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,” (1670-72), owned by the Leiden Collection, has so far been lent to the Pushkin, the Hermitage and Louvre Abu Dhabi. For the descriptive video on the Leiden Collection’s website, Savino selected a sonata by Giovanni Legrenzi performed by his ensemble group, El Mundo on strings, harpsichord and lute. The music’s mood echoes the sobriety of the painting. Image: courtesy, The Leiden Collection
I’m interested in all your art and music projects—there’s something magical in bringing together different art forms. Tell me about your collaboration with Thomas S. Kaplan, the billionaire metals investor and founder of the Leiden Collection. I understand that these artworks are being lent all over the world and the music from this same period, that matches them so well, is getting exposure. What a beautiful project!
Richard Savino: The Leiden Collection is fabulous; it’s the largest collection of privately owned 17th century Dutch paintings in the world—Rembrandt, Vermeer, Jan Steen, Gerrit Dou. It was founded in 2003 by Thomas S. Kaplan, an art collector from New York, and his wife Daphne Recanti Kaplan. He was putting together an online catalogue to accompany the part of his collection that tours and asked me to do the soundtracks which accompany his video discussions of each of the paintings. I did 25 of these, some of which I recorded in the middle of the night in my bedroom and some were taken from tracks that I had recorded previously. These can be seen and heard on the Leiden Collection in their video section.
Collector Thomas S. Kaplan acquired Rembrandt’s “Bust of a Bearded Old Man” (1633) in 2008 and calls it “the jewel in the crown” of The Leiden Collection. Rembrandt’s smallest known painting, about the size of a baseball card, and the only privately-owned grisaille by the artist in private hands. Savino plays an early 18th century prelude by Giovanni Zamboni on the archlute which accompanies a video of the artwork as it is unpacked from its crate and held in Kaplan’s hands for the first time. Photo: courtesy The Leiden Collection
How did you go about creating the music for each of these paintings? Did you have free rein?
Richard Savino: First of all, when I was called and they described it, I thought it was an eight to nine month long project. But surprise! They wanted it in a month, so I had to do it very very fast. I had just had some minor surgery and didn’t even know if I could hold an instrument, much less meet the deadline. It was a difficult project too. They wanted music that was epoch appropriate, no later than the early 18th century, preferably late 17th century, luckily repertoire that I had recorded. I also needed to record some new material so I set up a studio in my practice room at home and, right after the surgery, I started. They sent me the script, basic mock-ups and I’d get an idea of the kind of piece I wanted. It was important that the music conformed to the subject matter and the painting itself and, then, I had to match it to the cadence of the speech and be appropriate for the camera and scene cuts/shifts that were part of the video. It was very challenging. I remember being up at 3 a.m. in my studio, recording, and then editing and matching it to the video.
You’ve also done projects on Francisco Goya and Artemisia Gentileschi.
Richard Savino: I’ve done quite a few of these. In fact, I’m doing a Goya program here in San Francisco next May as part of the Humanities West series, Artistic Responses to Napoleon: Beethoven, Goya and Goethe (May 1-2, 2020). I’ve prepared a multi-media program, Music in the Time of Goya, with music from Soler, Courselle, Boccherini and Sor that will be performed by my chamber ensemble El Mundo. Works by Goya will be projected throughout the concert. The program was created for the Aston Magna Festival and Milano Classica.
Humanities West actually came about from a project back East, the Aston Magna Academy of Music, whose founder was Albert Fuller, one of my mentors. It turned me on to this whole idea of interdisciplinary perspectives and putting music into a sociopolitical context which addressed literature, art, architecture and sociopolitical trends. I attended as a participant in the 1980’s and 1990’s and was later asked to be a guest artistic director and have done that on several occasions. Right now, I am preparing a program on Rubens with music from Holland, Italy, England, and Spain by Caccini, Frescobaldi, Marin, Arañes, and others for Aston Magna’s summer music festival this July. My project on the Art and Life of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi received its debut at Aston Magna which then developed into the 2015 cd, What Artemisia Heard; Music from the Time of Caravaggio & Gentileschi.
Savino wondered why the music of Artemisia Gentileschi’s time was not as widely appreciated as the visual arts of the era. He decided to integrate the painting of Artemisia and her contemporaries directly with the music these painters would have heard at the time from composers Uccellini, Kapsberger, Ferrari, Frescobaldi, Mazzocchi, Gagliano, Caccini, Piccinini, Castello, Monteverdi, Corbetta, Falconieri, Rossi, Giramo, and Lanier. This evolved into a 2015 cd performed by Savino’s period instrument ensemble, El Mundo, along with distinguished soloists. Photo: courtesy Sono Luminous.
How did you go about selecting the pieces for the cd and evoking Artemesia’s struggle to lead her life as an independent woman?
Richard Savino: Artemisia Gentileschi, who was born in Rome in 1593, was one of the most impressive persons in the history of western civilization; she also was one of the most talented. She suffered great pain surrounding her rape by Tassi and the trial that found him guilty, but there were moments of beauty and intimacy too. She was friends with a number of composers, and was very close to the very talented Francesca Caccini, who was at the Medici Court and composed the first published opera by a woman. For the cd, I matched the music to the different cultural environments Artemisia found herself in after the trial. She traveled widely and lived as a completely independent person, which is remarkable for a 17th century woman.
“DOMINICUS PEREGRINUS Bononiaensis,” engraving, signed “Fontana F,” (17.7 cm x 24.6 cm). The cover to Domenico Pellegrini Bolognese’s 1650 book of guitar music. Of note are the long fingernails.
Has art provided you with any interesting insights about music centuries ago? Like the how musicians held their instruments or their nail length?
Richard Savino: Absolutely, but you have to be careful with that as, sometimes, it’s an affected gesture and they are posing with their instruments rather than holding it the way they would play it. With the nails, there’s this whole thing in the period instrument world about whether the “pluckers” played with nails. I’ve seen numerous paintings by both anonymous and well known artists that do actually depict players with long nails. An important work is the cover engraving to Domenico Pellegrini’s book of guitar music that was published in 1650. It shows him with his right hand extended with long fingernails. In addition to guitar, we know that he also played lute with the ensemble based at San Petronio, the major cathedral in Bologna. We also know about these kinds of performance “practices” from the tutorials themselves. I’ve learned that it was dependent on country and climate. In Italy, they used fingernails because they played outdoors in cathedrals and they had to be louder, same with Spain. In France and England, where it rained a lot, they played indoors and it was a much more intimate space and they played without for the most part. With nails, you can project more, which some find less refined, more aggressive and in your face.
You mentioned that you studied with Segovia? What was that like? A memorable moment?
Richard Savino: I played at the Metropolitan Museum for him and he actually yanked the guitar out of my hand and said ‘You should never play this piece again.’ Because this was filmed by PBS and shown on CBS Sunday morning, it gave me a degree of notoriety. At that stage of my life, all publicity, was good publicity. To be fair, it was a piece he didn’t like and it was also my attitude—that I even thought of playing it for him—that he found so irritating. But it was like meeting Buddha. I was in front of this larger than life figure. I also studied with him at the Conservatoire du Musique in Geneva, and was lucky enough to have a few private lessons with him in New York
Before we began our formal interview, you alluded to a new musical discovery you’d made…is this a historical find, something that will likely be recorded?
Richard Savino: It consists of a collection of cantatas by some of the most important early 18th century Spanish composers. I will edit the music and record it as an El Mundo project. I’m a very good sleuth. I uncovered these personally in a collection in Spain where they should not have been located. I had heard a rumor about some wonderful other pieces and, while trying to track those down in an archive, these literally fell out of a book and are a gold mine.
Details: Orlando has two remaining performances at War Memorial Opera House: June 21 and 27, 2019, both at 7:30 p.m. Run time is 3 hours and 20 min. Tickets: www.sfopera.com, by phone at (415) 864-3330, or in person at the San Francisco Opera Box Office, 301 Van Ness Ave.
Richard Savino’s ensemble group, El Mundo, will perform a program of 18th century music from Latin America with the San Francisco Girl’s Chorus in October 2019.
The 22nd Sonoma International Film Festival kicks off Wednesday—here are your must-see’s
Luminous, emotional, dazzling…if you see just one of SIFF’s 123 films, see Yuli! Directed by Catalan filmmaker Icíar Bollaín (Take My Eyes) and written by Paul Laverty (I, Daniel Blake) with cinematography by Alex Catalán, this bio-pic follows Cuban dance super-star, Carlos Acosta, from his early life in an impoverished Havana neighborhood as he defies all odds and becomes the first black artist to perform as Romeo at the Royal Ballet in London. Acosta goes on to dance in the world’s leading companies and form his own dance company in Havana. Bollaín masterfully conveys the pride, frustration and contradictions of living in Castro’s Cuba. Wonderful performances by Carlos Acosta and the participation of the Acosta Danza Company will raise your heart beat.
Ask anyone who makes the film festival circuit and they’ll tell you that the Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF) tops their list for the “best time” fests–good film, incredible atmosphere, great parties and music, and the Backlot tent’s superb food and unending flow of wine and craft booze. The 22nd edition of this gem kicks off Wednesday, March 27, with an opening-night reception at the Backlot Tent from 5 to 7 pm, followed by two screenings of Bruce Beresford’s new period drama, Ladies in Black. SIFF continues in full force Thursday through Sunday offering some 123 films from 31 countries with an anticipated 200 filmmakers in attendance who will participate in on stage interviews and audience Q&A’s. All films are shown at seven intimate venues within walking distance of Sonoma’s historic plaza so there’s no driving, just meandering charming streets where all the plants are beginning their glorious spring bloom.
SIFF has lots to offer both locals and destination visitors. Festival passes are the way to go if you’re interested in easy access to films, the marvelous parties, and the Backlot tent. If you want to see a few films, single tickets are $15 when purchased in advance. SIFF caters heavily to pass holders and offers just a limited number of individual tickets for many of its films. Lock in those tickets right now before they are snapped up. Click here to read about all the pass options and price points.
Here are ARThound’s festival recommendations:
OPENING NIGHT (WED): Ladies in Black
Australian director Bruce Beresford’s drama Ladies in Black stars Julia Ormond and Angourie Rice and powerfully recreates the postwar culture of 1950’s Sydney. It took Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Tender Mercies (1983)) 24 years to bring the story to the big screen but it has become Australia’s highest grossing film, ever. Photo: Sony Pictures, Lisa Tomasetti
Based on Madeleine St. John’s 1993 debut novel The Women in Black, Ladies in Black is set in 1959 Sydney at a time when European migration and the women’s movement are starting to impact Australiaand offers an upbeat reflection on the impact of immigration and integration. Julia Ormond (Mad Men) stars as Magda, a wise and sophisticated Slovenian emigre who heads the evening wear section of a large department store. She, along with several other immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, are vital to the store’s success. Angourie Rice plays the fresh faced and adorable student, Lisa, who lands a temporary job at the store and ends up working alongside these glamorous and self-assured women who encourage her to embrace fashion and to empower herself. SIFF always pairs shorts with features. Screening first is Domee Shi’s 8 minute animated film Bao about a dumpling that springs to life as a lively growing boy and gives a weary Chinese mom a life lesson.
Beauty and Ruin (THURS)
A still from Marc de Guerre’s feature documentary Beauty and Ruin of school children at the Detroit Institute of Art. Photo: courtesy Subject Chaser Films
How much does art matter to a city on the verge of distinction? Canadian director Marc de Guerre’s latest feature documentary explores the fate of the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA), one of America’s great art museums, in the wake of the city’s 2013 bankruptcy. With a debt approaching $18.5 billion in 2014, and the DIA the largest asset the city of Detroit owns outright, a bitter brawl emerges over whether the city-owned artworks should be sold to pay down the debt. DIA housed 66,000 artworks, including an irreplaceable collection of European masterpieces from Titian, Van Eyck, Rembrandt, Bellini, Brueghel, Tintoretto, Fra Angelico and dozens of others. Most of these were bought during the 30-year period, a century ago, when Detroit was the center of American industry. No other American museum the size of the institute has ever confronted such a threat to the integrity of its collection. Emotions and racial tensions reach their zenith when it is revealed that the pending bankruptcy has put the pensions of retired city workers are at risk. This thorough unpacking of the museum’s story includes interviews with all the key players—the DIA director, the Emergency Manager of Detroit, the retirees, an activist Baptist pastor and acclaimed artist Charles McGee. Screens: Thursday March 28, 6:30 p.m., Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. Open to festival pass-holders only.
Botero: (THURS and FRI)
A still from Don Millar’s documentary, Botero, the definitive documentary profile of the life and work of Fernando Botero, one of the world’s most recognized living artists. Image: Hogan Millar Media
Directed by Canadian film and television director, Don Millar (Oil Slick, Full Force, Off the Clock), Botero offers a poetic behind-the-scenes look at the life and art of the 86-year-old self-taught Colombian painter and sculptor whose unique style always evokes strong reactions. Art critic Rosalind Krauss of Columbia University calls his work “terrible,” while others offer praise and penetrating insight into his oeuvre, calling Botero’s critics intellectual snobs. Don Millar lets you decide. Either way, Botero’s story is fascinating. Born in provincial Medellin, Colombia, in 1932, he arrived in New York as a young artist with $200 in his pocket. Through a stroke of luck, he meets a curator whose connections get him into MOMA and, all of a sudden, he is famous. “I like fullness, generosity, sensuality” says Botero. “Reality is rather dry.” The audience learns that, even today, Botero is happiest in his Monaco studio where he says he is still learning as he strives to be the best painter in the world, because “my life is to paint.” The film weaves together original footage shot in 10 cities across China, Europe, New York and Colombia, with decades of family photos and archival footage alongside unprecedented access to the artist. Screens: Thursday, March 28, 4:14 p.m., Landmark Vineyards at Andrews Hall and Friday, March 29, 3:30 p.m., Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.
Yuli (THURS & SAT)
A still from Icíar Bollaín’s Yuli with Edilson Manuel Olbera as the young Carlos Acosta. Yuli won the Best Screenplay Award at San Sebastian and has gone on to receive five nominations for the Spanish ‘Goya’ awards including Best New Actor for Carlos Acosta, Best Cinematography and Best Adapted Screenplay.
It’s very difficult to pull off a drama about dance where the acting is an engaging as the dance itself. Icíar Bollaín has done it with a riveting drama set largely in Castro’s Cuba with astonishing dance scenes and bursts of family drama. Sit back and soak in the artistry of the astounding Carlos Acosta. (In Spanish with English subtitles) Screens: Thursday March 28, 1 p.m., Burlingame Hall and Saturday, March 30, 11:30 a.m., Meyer Sound & Dolby Hall at Vets I)
Yellow is Forbidden (FRI and SAT)
Chinese designer Guo Pei’s international breakthrough moment was designing Rihanna’s golden gown for the 2015 Met Gala. The 55 pound dress took 100 workers 50,000 hours to create and became one of the most talked about dresses in history. Pietra’s Brettkelly’s documentary explores Guo Pei’s rise to fame and her unique way of interpreting her aesthetic history. Photo: Getty Images
New Zealand documentarian Pietra Brettkelly (A Flickering Truth, 2015) has created a fascinating and intimate portrait of fashion designer Guo Pei that also speaks to the energy and aesthetic of a rapidly evolving China. She tracks Guo Pei just as she has burst onto the international scene—when Rihanna wore her hand-embroidered canary yellow gown to the Met Gala in 2015—through her remarkable 2017 show “Legend,” presented at La Conciergerie, in Paris, where Guo Pei proved to the world that she had penetrated haute couture’s most elite circle. The film takes us into Pei’s life, connecting the dots between her life experiences and aesthetic expression—her upbringing in the Cultural Revolution; her relationship with Cao Bao Jie, her husband and partner; her elderly parents who don’t grasp the scope of her talent, her A-list clients, and her team of craftsmen and embroiderers. Her world is one of struggle, passionate dreaming and a constant balancing of her artistic passions with the financial reality of running a business. Ample attention is devoted to her atelier, where she obsesses over the handcrafting of garments that can take over two years to create. Pei is a curious mix of old and new, a balancing of East and West with an absolutely unique way of interpreting her aesthetic history. (97 min, in Chinese and French with English subtitles.) Screens: Friday, March 29, 2019, noon, Andrews Hall, and Saturday, March 30, 2:15 p.m., Vintage House
Restaurant from the Sky: (FRI and SUN)
A sill from Yoshihiro’s food drama, Restaurant in the Sky (2019). Photo: SIFF
Yoshihiro Fukagawa has made a number of dramas that tenderly explore human emotions against the gourmet food backdrop. Restaurant in the Sky unfolds on a bucolic cattle ranch in Setana, Hokkidao where Wataru (Yo Oizumi) lives with his wife Kotoe (Manami Honjou) and his daughter, Shiori. He inherited the cattle ranch from his father and he also runs a cheese workshop but he lacks passion. He enjoys hanging out with his sheep farmer friend Kanbe (Masaki Okada) who moved to the area from hectic Tokyo. After a chef from a famous Sapporo restaurant visits and praises Waturu’s produce and creates a masterful farm-to-table meal with ingredients sourced the ranch, Wataru has his ahh-hah moment. He will open a restaurant for only one day to let people know about Setana’s wonderful food. This is a goal that unites the family and community but suddenly a tragedy occurs. (126 min, in Japanese with English subtitles) Screens: Friday, March 29, 9 a.m., Sebastiani and Sunday, March 31, 1:45 p.m., Sebastiani
Details: The 22nd Sonoma International Film Festival is Wednesday, March 22 through Sunday, March 31, 2019. For information, tickets, festival passes, prices, and benefits visit www.sonomafilmfest.org.
Proud Mary! Mary Fassbinder’s National Park Project has its reveal at Petaluma Arts Center— artist talk Thursday, January 31
Petaluma artist Mary Fassbinder at the opening of “National Parks Plein Air Project by Mary Fassbinder,” at Petaluma Arts Center. She visited all 60 U.S. National Parks, painted a plein air landscape at each one and then built exquisite frames for each work. Photo: Geneva Anderson
“It’s been the road trip of my life,” said Mary Fassbinder at Saturday’s opening of her “National Parks Plein Air Project” exhibit at the Petaluma Arts Center (PAC). Fassbinder’s epic 72,000 mile, 3.5 year journey to every U.S. national park is captured in 60 vibrant plein air paintings, one for each park.
“Inspiration is the thread that runs through the entire project,” said Fassbinder at Saturday’s crowd-packed opening reception at PAC. “Set a goal and follow through. Don’t let anything get in the way. You have to own your goal, that’s what keeps that thread of inspiration alive.”
“Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN #29,” May 2016, oil, 10 x 13inches. Photo: Mary Fassbinder
The Petaluma artist is well-known for her light-infused expressionistic landscapes, which capture Sonoma County’s rustic beauty. She’s also a renowned picture framer. She created all the frames for the 60 paintings at PAC. The paintings sales and frame commissions helped finance this large-scale project, which she broke into 12 separate excursions. Just last summer, Fassbinder turned the framing business over to her daughter, Nicole Carpenter, so she could devote her full attention to painting and finishing the parks project.
“Lake Clark National Park, AK #48,” August 2017, oil on panel, 13 x 10 inches. Photo: Mary Fassbinder
“I’m happy to be home but happiest on the road and shockingly very comfortable with just myself,” said Fassbinder, who turned 59 at Yosemite, her 59th national park. Actually, Fassbinder made the epic journeys with Charlie, her beloved used VW Westphalia, that she picked up in Ohio at the beginning of her journey. Charlie appears in several photos on display at PAC. “She had some rust but she took me up into Canada where she got strip searched at the border. I miss her. I had to sell her so I could get to Alaska, where I painted at each of those eight epic parks.”
Normally, Fassbinder created a single painting at each park. Upon entering the park, she would ask the park ranger where the best spot was and “make a beeline” there. Sometimes, she spent the night, and, on several occasions, she hit two parks in a single day, never varying her method.
“I am out there in nature, slopping that paint around, trying to get what I can get, when I can get it.” Mary Fassbinder
“Yosemite National Park, CA #59,” May 2018, oil, 27 x 9 inches. Photo: Mary Fassbinder
In May, 2018, she lingered in Yosemite National Park, #59, where she created five oil paintings. Her portrait of Yosemite Falls, captures its majestic 2,425 foot vertical drop. The 27-inch-long composition stands out for its long narrow shape; most of the other paintings in the park series tend to be more or less proportional rectangles. Painted from the trailhead, looking through towering pines at Yosemite Falls, Fassbinder captures a group of tourists, mere dabs of bright colors so expertly applied we sense them looking up and taking in the magical booming rush of water. While she loves all the paintings in the parks series, this one is special— “It’s my heart and soul.”
At the time, Fassbinder thought Yosemite, the 59th park, was her last park. With a surge of energy, she applied her wonderful sense of color and texture to her jeans jacket and hand-embroidered it with a Half Dome scene. To her surprise, when she returned home to Petaluma, she learned that Gateway Arch, in St. Louis. MO, had become the 60th national park in February, 2018, necessitating yet another road trip. “To me, that was St. Louis trying to get federal funding to get their city park re-built,” said Fassbinder. Off she went in June 2018 to capture Gateway Arch National Park, Missouri.
Fassbinder hand-embroidered her jeans jacket with a Half Dome scene. At the time, she thought Yosemite, #59, was her last park. Photo: Geneva Anderson
Later last fall, while visiting Yosemite, Fassbinder showed her National Parks project portfolio to the manager of the renowned Ansel Adams Gallery. She was offered an exhibition. Details/dates to follow. “This is such a critical time for our national parks,” said Fassbinder. “It takes an act of Congress to establish a national park; it takes the power of the people to protect and preserve.”
Upcoming Events:
Thursday, January 31, 7-9 pm: An Evening with Mary Fassbinder and Davis Perkins, conversation in the gallery, Petaluma Arts Center (Click here to pre-register; $12 non-members, $10 members)
Also at Petaluma Arts Center: Davis Perkins landscapes exhibit: California landscape painter Davis Perkins is also at PAC with an exhibit featuring his landscape paintings from around the world. Perkins has had an adventurous career as smokejumper, firefighter, and paramedic. He spent several of his winters attending art school and received a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Oregon. His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Alaskan State Museum and the Smithsonian Institution Air & Space Museum and one hangs in the Pentagon with the United States Air Force Art Collection. In 2015 he was selected as a Signature Member of the Oil Painters of America.
Details: “The National Parks Plein Air Project by Mary Fassbinder” and “Landscape Paintings by Davis Perkins” are at Petaluma Arts Center through March 23, 2019. Petaluma Arts Center is located at 230 Lakeville Street, Petaluma in the train depot between East D and East Washington Streets. Hours: Tues-Sat, 11 am to 5 pm. Closed Sunday, Monday and holidays. $5 General admission, $4 senior, student, teacher, military. PAC Members free.
For detailed information about Mary Fassbinder’s National Parks Painting Project and a chronological list of parks painted, visit Fassbinder’s website: https://fassbindergallery.com/
Fassbinder’s gallery and painting studio is located at 900 B Western Avenue, Petaluma 94952. (707) 765-1939 By appt. only.
Your must-see list for the Legion of Honor’s luxurious jewelry show, “East Meets West: Jewels of the Maharajas from the Al Thani Collection,” through February 24, 2019
The Nawanger Ruby Necklace sums up all the themes of the Legion’s Al Thani Collection exhibit. Made in London by Cartier in 1937 for the Maharaja of Nawanger, the necklace has moved between East and West and male and female and has dazzling stories associated with it. When the young Maharaja came to power in 1933, he inherited an enormous trove of jewels and began modernizing their traditional settings, deepening the relationship his connoisseur father had formed with Jacques Cartier. The necklace’s 116 Burmese rubies came from the Indian Royal treasury while Cartier supplied the diamonds and the Art Deco design. The Maharaja wore the necklace with pride. By Western taste, it would have been worn only by a woman. When heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post saw the necklace, she immediately commissioned Cartier to make a sapphire and diamond version of the necklace for herself. After Indian independence in 1947, the Maharaja’s necklace was returned to Cartier and it was worn by style icon Gloria Guinness at Truman Capote’s famous Black and White Ball of 1966. Image: ©The Al Thani Collection
A visit to the Legion of Honor’s jaw-dropping jewel exhibit, East Meets West: Jewels of the Maharajas from the Al Thani Collection is pure delight. It features more than 150 exotic treasures—gems, pieces of jewelry, jades, and objects—made in India or Europe and associated with Mughal emperors (1526-1857), maharajas (1858-1947), and their courts. The Al Thani collection is owned by 30-year-old Sheikh Hamad bin Abudullah Al-Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family. The sheikh’s love of Indian jewelry was itself inflamed by a museum visit to London’s Victoria & Albert Museum where, in 2009, he saw its wonderful Maharaja show. He began collecting Indian jewelry in 2010. It took a few years, but he nabbed the exhibition’s accomplished curator, Dr. Amin Jaffer (who by then headed Christie’s Asian Art division) and went on to amass one of the world’s finest collections of Indian gems, jewelry. and artifacts. An avid collector, the Sheik keeps adding to the roughly 6,000 works of art in his encyclopedic Al Thani Collection, housed in Qatar.
The Al Thani Collection’s Indian jewelry has toured widely, from Beijing to Venice. The savvy San Francisco iteration, co-curated by FAMSF’s Martin Chapman and Dr. Amin Jaffer, emphasizes cross-cultural exchange between India and the West and gender. It closes on February 24, 2019.
At the press conference, it was made known that the Sheik especially loves the Legion of Honor building. When Beyond Extravagance, the Al Thani Collection’s first catalog of Indian gems and jewels, was launched in 2013, it was at the original Palais de la Légion d‘Honneur in Paris, making our Legion of Honor the perfect West Coast venue for the exhibition.
Here’s your must-see list:
Opening Gallery: Maharaja of Patiala portrait and necklace, Queen Alexandra portrait
Vandyk, “Sir Bhupinder Singh, Maharaja of Patiala” [wearing the Empress Eugénie diamond necklace], 1911, from glass plate negative, original size 12 × 10 in. Photo: ©National Portrait Gallery, London.
Upon entering the exhibit, you’ll encounter dazzling display cases of jewels. After you’ve ogled the Newanger Ruby Necklace, described at the top of the article, head further through the golden arches (crafted in Rome by artist Giuliano Spinelli) to the blown-up portraits of Indian, European, and American rulers and aristocrats, male and female, all sporting their jewels.
Look no further than the 1911 photo of the Maharaja of Patiala for a lesson in “more is better.” In matters of jewelry, it was the Indian men who showed Western female style icons what extravagance really was. To confirm their prestige and stature, India’s male rulers covered themselves jewels. In addition to numerous ropes of exquisite pearls, the maharaja wears a diamond necklace created for France’s Empress Eugénie, which includes the Potemkim diamond, formerly owned by Catherine the Great of Russia, as a pendant.
The wearing of pearls starts out with the men of India and the Middle East and is appropriated in the 20th century by women in the West. An adjacent wall photo of Queen Alexandra, the wife of Edward VII, speaks volumes. Taken in 1902, on the day of her husband’s coronation as King of England and Emperor of India, she has draped herself in fashionable ropes of pearls, just as the Maharaja of Patiala. She wears the famous Indian diamond, the Koh-i-Noor, in her crown and an exquisite dress that was embroidered in India. Many of her jewels were given as tribute by Indian princes and were originally intended to be worn by men.
The re-worked famed Patiala necklace. The original necklace disappeared after the1947 fall of the British Raj and resurfaced in London in 1988, stripped of its largest jewels. Cartier restored the necklace using zirconias, topazes, synthetic rubies, smoky quartz, citrine. Photo: Vincent Wulveryck, Cartier Collection ©Cartier
The 1928 Maharaja of Patiala necklace, made for wearing at court, represented the largest commission made by Cartier at that time. Originally, the necklace comprised 2,930 diamonds, set in platinum and cascading in five tiers around the exquisite 234 carat De Beers yellow diamond, roughly the size of a golf ball. The Maharaja bought the diamond following its display in Paris in the early 1920’s and brought it to India. When he commissioned the necklace in 1925, he sent an overflowing trunk of precious stones, including the yellow diamond, and jewelry to Cartier in Paris with a note requesting him to create a ceremonial necklace worthy enough for a king. It took three years. The necklace also had a rare 18 carat tobacco colored diamond and a number of Burmese rubies. The Patiala necklace at the Legion has been re-worked. Cartier restored the necklace using synthetic and lesser value stones.
Gems: Engraved Imperial Spinel Necklace
Imperial Spinel necklace, North India, spinels, 1607-1608 and 1754 -1755. Spinels, pearls, emerald, and modern stringing. Length 20 3/8 inches. Image: @The Al Thani Collection
While diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires and emeralds were prized in India, the deep red spinels of Central Asia were most valued at the Mughal court. Don’t miss the huge translucent watermelon-colored spinels found on the Imperial Spinel Necklace.
Engraving detail, Imperial Spinel Necklace. Image: ©The Al Thani Collection
They bear multiple dynastic inscriptions, including to the Mughal Emperor Jahangir, as well as to his father, Akbar the Great, under whose rule the Mughal Empire tripled in size and wealth. Akbar had so many unmounted precious stones that by the 1590’s, one of his 12 treasuries was reserved solely for these loose jewels, the most valuable of which were spinels. These blood-colored gems were associated with vitality and wearing them was believed to enhance life force and stamina in battle. Dynastic inscribed gemstones of this size and quality would have originated in the Mughal Imperial Treasury where they were prized not only for their material value and physical properties, but also for their distinguished provenance.
Idol’s Eye Diamond
The Idol’s Eye Diamond, a 70.21-carat light blue diamond from India’s Kollur mine in the Golconda region. 2.6 x 2.8 x 1.3 cm. Modified brilliant-cut, VVS2 clarity. (The legendary Hope Diamond, also blue, is a mere 45 carats.) ©The Al Thani Collection. Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd.
Romantic unsubstantiated stories are often attached to prized diamonds. Legend has it that the 70.21 carat Idol’s Eye, the largest cut blue diamond in the world, and the largest diamond in the exhibit, was so named because it was torn from the eye of Hindu deity venerated in a temple in India. The Idol’s Eye does have a mystical pear shape.
Diamonds, like many gems, were considered talismanic in India. A 6th-century Brhat Samhita text promises: “He who wears a diamond will see dangers recede from him, whether he be threatened by serpents, fire, poison, sickness, thieves, flood, or evil spirits.” Large diamonds in Mughal India were cut into talismanic shapes, often an amulet (ta’widh), a form that would maximize the volume of stone. Unfortunately, few diamonds have survived in their original cuts as the taste for diamonds in the West was different. And, as cutting technology advanced, these prize gems were cut and re-cut to reflect contemporary taste, resulting in lost carats but maximizing brilliance and color. The Idol’s Eye was once owned by Philippine despot Imelda Marcos and it was likely purchased it with the billions of dollars of public finds embezzled by her or her husband, Ferdinand Marcos. It has passed through the hands of leading diamond dealers Salmon Habib, Harry Winston, Robert Mouawad and Laurence Graff.
Jahangir’s Jade Wine Cup
The Mughal Emperor Jahangir’s Wine Cup, dated AH 1016 / AD 1607-1608, mottled grey nephrite jade, Height 5.7 cm, W 5.4 cm. Image: ©The Al Thani Collection
Emperor Jahangir’s wine cup is the earliest dated jade artifact that can be linked without question to a Mughal emperor. In the Mughal court, jade was thought to invoke success in battle and was used for daggers. It was also believed that jade could detect the presence of poisons, so there were many jade drinking vessels. Jahangir’s cup is magnificently incised with Persian and Arabic calligraphy. The central band, carved in sols script, has a royal dedication announcing that the cup was made for Jahangir. The upper border, in Nasta’aliq script, confirms it was the emperor’s personal cup and that it was made in the second year of his reign, therefore between April 1607 and March 1608. Persian poetry also adorns the cup, including some contemporary 17th century poetry. The Mughals of this period were very influenced by Chinese ceramics and jades and this cup’s shape is exactly that of a Chinese tea cup of this period. The mottled jade used in the cup also reflects the Mughal affinity for Chinese bronzes and their mottled surfaces.
Jewel-encrusted Rosewater Sprinkler
Rosewater sprinkler, North India, 17th century base, late 18th century neck. Gold inlaid with rubies, emeralds, pearls. Height: 10 1/8 inches. Image: ©The Al Thani Collection
The bottom of the rosewater sprinkler has an inscription and weight identifying it an as Imperial treasury object. Image: @The Al Thani Collection
An entire section of the exhibit explores the opulence of the Mughal court at its height, during the 17th century. At public court, a ruler would receive ambassadors, petitioners, nobles, returning generals, etc. These were great events where the ruler was richly attired and the way in which he presented himself, completely adorned, was much like how a deity in a Hindu complex would be presented, as an ascendant divine being. The ruler was normally on a textile throne and when supplicants came, there was an exchange of gifts and perfume and sometimes condiments. This jewel encrusted rosewater sprinkler would have been used for a splashing of the hands. It is of extreme importance because on its underside it has a Mughal imperial weight which identifies it as an Imperial treasury object. It also relates to a group of three similar 17th century sprinklers in the Hermitage Museum which came from the loot of the Mughal treasury when the Mughal empire collapsed in 1738.
Upcoming events:
February 2, 2019: Docent Talk: “All That Glitters: The Jewels of the The Al Thani Collection,” docent Marsha Holm, John and Cynthia Fry Gunn Theater, Legion of Honor, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Free after general admission.
Paris, Spring 2020:
The Al Thani collection has found a home in Paris—the historic Hôtel de la Marine on place de la Concorde in Paris, the original warehouses of the French royal art collections. Following an agreement signed last fall with France’s Centre des Monuments Nationaux (CMN; National Monuments Centre), the government body which manages the 18th-century property, the Al Thani collection will be exhibited in a dedicated gallery over a 20 year period. The inaugural exhibit is due to coincide with the reopening of the Hôtel de la Marine in spring 2020 following a €100m refurbishment.
Details: “East Meets West: Jewels of the Maharajas from the Al Thani Collection,” ends February 24, 2019 at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor. Tickets: FAMSF members free; $28 general admission; $25 (65 and older); $19 students, $13 (6-17). Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays. Closed Mondays. For more info, visit: www.famsf.org
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