“Hilma,” the new biopic about Hilma af Klint, screens Thursday/Sunday at SIFF26 in sunny Sonoma
Many of us made a beeline to New York to the Guggenheim in 2018 for the amazing and long overdue exhibition “Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future” a celebration of the Swedish artist’s strikingly original abstract paintings. The focus was on her innovative works completed just after the turn of the 20th century (1906-20), when she created incredibly imaginative non-objective paintings that were largely ignored by the art world. Now considered masterpieces with great mystical depth that invite a re-evaluation of the development of modernism, we decry that she, like many women, was sidelined by the art world and hunger for more information. “Hilma,” three-time Academy Award nominee Swedish director Lasse Hallström’s (“The Cider House Rules,” “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “My Life as a Dog”) new biopic promises answers about her lifelong interest in mysticism which had a negative impact on her career and is shot against the backdrop of some of her most famous works. This is the first biopic about af Klint. You’ll meet the Five, the group formed with four other women in the 1890s. Calling themselves the Five, they hold seances and meditations and collectively complete artworks; when Hilma paints, she believes higher spirits are directing her brush. The film is a family affair: Hilma is played at different ages by Tora Hallström (‘Hachi: A Dog’s Tale’), and Oscar nominee Lena Olin, Lasse Hallström’s daughter and wife. The films screens twice at the the 26th Sonoma International Film Festival (SIFF): Thursday, 1 pm at the Sebastiani Theater and Sunday, 7:30 pm, at Prime Cinemas. (115 minutes, in English)
Details:
The 26th Sonoma International Film Festival is March 22-26, 2023, with more than 110 films slated during the five-day festival, details in the SIFF Festival Guide. Individual tickets are available and should be purchased online in advance.
SFMOMA’s “Joan Brown” retrospective—relatable works exploring everyday experiences, closes Sunday, March 12
Highly talented but “unserious” is how Bay Area artist Joan Brown (1938-1990) was long categorized by the fickle art world which celebrates artists for their originality IF it fits the reining definition of contemporary art. Brown’s exposure suffered when she stepped back and forged her own path. Now, thirty-three years after her death, the defiantly independent Brown is the subject of the fascinating SFMOMA retrospective,“Joan Brown,” which examines her career with fresh eyes. She is lauded as a highly influential painter who forged her own marvelously distinctive style. The exhibit includes roughly 80 important works and is the most expansive presentation of her art in nearly a quarter century, covering the 31 years between 1959 and 1990. It closes soon, Sunday, March 12, and is well worth a visit.
Curated by SFMOMA’s Janet Bishop and Nancy Lim, the exhibit spans SFMOMA’s seventh floor and traces the arc of Brown’s life as an artist. It’s always a treat when SFMOMA celebrates a Bay Area artist whose works reference our local stomping ground and when it honors a female who held her own in a sea of male colleagues. That’s Brown. She was born in San Francisco in 1938 and grew up in the Marina district and lived most of her life in the City before her passing at 52 in India in 1992. In addition to being on the art faculty at UC Berkeley, Brown was an important mentor to many artists, particularly women artists, and she was a mother, a committed athlete, an animal lover and she had been married four times. All of this made its way into her art.
The exhibition opens with canvases from the 1950-60’s, made during Brown’s student years at California School of Fine Arts (CSFA)—later the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI)—where she met artist Elmer Bischoff, an influential mentor who she said “spoke my language, although I hadn’t heard it before.” He encouraged her to paint things from her everyday life and to trust her own instincts. She began gaining recognition for her large paintings that mixed figurative images with thick colorful paint. In 1960, at age 22, she was the youngest artist exhibited as part of the Whitney’s Young America 1960 (Thirty American Painters Under Thirty-Six) and was selling nationally. By 1964, her works had been featured on the cover of Artforum (with an accompanying feature naming her “Everyone’s Darling”) and were in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York and SFMOMA, among others.
Then, in the mid-1960’s, to the dismay of her peers, Brown stepped back and broke ties with her New York gallery and radically changed course, painting for herself, not sales or the attention of critics. She abandoned thick paint in favor of enamel house paint and forged a vibrant new style that came to define her iconic works of the late 1960’s and 70’s. The curators highlight this complete break in style in her eerie 1968 work, Grey Cat with Madrone and Birch Trees, which leans on the style of Henri Rousseau. The subject, a large gray cat, is behind a tree trunk and a sense of overall sparseness and separation prevails.
Over the next years, Brown’s style solidified in this uncluttered direction. She employed bright colors and patterns masterfully and delved into self portraiture, rendering human subjects other than herself in outline. She created an offbeat body of work that embraced autobiography, fantasy, whimsy, and frequently incorporated the familiar backdrop of San Francisco’s skyline and bridges. A vital through-line is self portraiture which Brown embraced decades before the obsessive selfie mania of today. The exhibit includes seminal portraits of a gradually aging Brown swimming, traveling, painting, dancing and living her life…and surrounded by an ever-expanding symbolic language which reached its peak in the 1980’s as she immersed herself in spiritual pursuits.
“We’re following Brown’s intuitive, totally unabashed journey,” said curator Janet Bishop, “this is an artistic vision marked by limitless curiosity and lust for life that resulted in colorful, personal, relatable, funny works.”
Highlights:
When Brown was just 22, this turkey, which exemplifies her early abstract figurative work in dense paint, was purchased by MoMA in New York. Drawing from her mentor, Elmer Bischoff, who advised her to paint everyday objects and on inspiration from Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox (1655), she positions the bird precariously on the edge of a table with its belly exposed in defiance of the laws of physics. “A strange sense of space and perspective ends up being a hallmark of Brown’s paintings,” explains curator Nancy Lim. “Everything seems to lay nearly on top of each other, there’s a lot of flatness, and space doesn’t quite make sense. Thanksgiving Turkey is the first time you begin to see this in her work.”
In this full-on-frontal portrait, one of Brown’s most powerful and well-known works, we see the development of her personal artistic language. Her symbolic vocabulary was drawn from wide-ranging cultural traditions, art history, and from her vivid imagination. The Bride breaks down into five pictorial elements: the bride, her leashed rat outlined in sparking gold glitter, her cat head, the field of poppies she is standing in, and various colorful fish that float in the sky or water above the poppies. The vibe is intense, unsettling.
“This is a painting where everything just evolved,” Brown told an audience at her slide lecture at SFAI on April 18, 1971. “I was doing a series of paintings of Adam and Eve…and it started out as a nude in the center, dead center, of Eve, and then it went from there ….” (cited in Jacquelynn Bass, “To Know This Place for the First Time, Interpreting Joan Brown”) Among many things, the painting addresses the bride’s power which comes from both innocence and experience and her openness to life which also entails embracing darkness. The rat, beginning with Brown’s iconic 3-D “Fur Rat” from 1962, also on display, was Brown’s most consistent and pervasive image. Here, the large and cowering leashed rat at the bride’s feet may represent Brown’s attempt to engage with her persistent fear of rats or her acknowledgement of the wisdom and intelligence associated with the rat in Chinese astrology.
Brown married four times. While married to her third husband, artist Gordon Cook, the couple went to local ballrooms and the one depicted here has the San Francisco skyline in the background. The composition features a range of techniques, from the heavy impasto of the large charming dog to the male dancer’s linear silhouetting. After struggling to paint the woman’s dress, Brown found a improvised solution in collage and she used fabric she had on hand to cut out the shape of the dress and glued it to the painting. The work was a success and, after seeing the painting in a exhibit in 1974, influential art dealer Allan Frumkin offered to represent Brown, and she accepted.
Going from gallery to gallery, you may begin to place yourself in Brown’s paintings and that relatability makes her work memorable. The Room, Part 1, from 1975 ,stuck an instant accord in me. Like many of Brown’s artworks, this painting pays homage to a historical image that she long admired, a ninth century depiction of nomadic Khitans hunting with eagles. Brown was deeply attracted to Chinese art and culture and its sense of exotic beauty. She had obviously read about the Khitans who, from the 4th century on, dominated much of northern China, Mongolia and the Manchurian plateau. And her work in the mid-1970s marks a transition in her focus—she began to research non-Western cultures and religions in her quest for spiritual enlightenment. In the sparse but immense gray foreground, a languorous Brown dangles her leg with its white sock and yellow shoes from an armchair while she studies the Song dynasty painting. (The yellow shoes are a constant in her self portraits.) By contrasting her own body into near invisibility, she directs our focus to the painting, suggesting the subject here is not the herself but instead the artwork on the wall and the contemplative act of taking it in.
An avid and accomplished open-water swimmer, Brown cherished the ideas that came to during her swims in the bay, often at sunset, looking out towards the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. The Night Before the Alcatraz Swim, from 1975, is related to a series of introspective self-portraits about Brown’s frightening near-death experience during a race from Alcatraz to Aquatic Park in 1975. During the course of the race, a freighter unexpectedly passed the swimmers, producing thirteen-foot waves and large eddies. Brown became hypothermic and had to be rescued from the water, alongside several other struggling swimmers. Here, Brown appears warm, calm, and contemplative with the island displayed behind her. Also notable are the Matisse-like colors and energy; she drew great inspiration from Matisse.
Brown’s long-held fascination with Egyptology manifested into a trip to Egypt after she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1977. The trip ignited a passion in her. During the late 1970’s and into the 1980’s, she made a number of trips to Ecuador, the Amazon, Machu Picchu, China, India and Mexico. She often traveled alone and made a point of accessing remote destinations. She said the purpose of these journeys was to study ancient belief systems and she became increasingly focused on commonalities between symbols and spiritual pursuits. She once reflected, “I’ve always thought of my fierce side as a tiger or jaguar or lion.” The tiger was Brown’s Chinese astrological symbol. In The Long Journey, which is on loan from Napa’s Di Rosa Collection, Brown wears a sari and depicts herself triumphantly riding a tiger as does the goddess Durga in some Hindu traditions. The scene references transcendence and a seamless passage into the next life.
During this period, Brown visited India frequently with her fourth husband Michael Hebel and they studied with their spiritual guru, Sathya Sai Baba. Brown had an intuition that her life would be short, and it was. Nine years after painting The Long Journey, Brown died at age 52 when a concrete turret collapsed on her and two assistants as they were installing an obelisk at Sai Baba’s Eternal Heritage Museum in Puttaparthi, India. Reflecting on the exhibition, I have deep admiration for Brown who was clearly self-made. She met professional success early on, at a time when women artists faced all sorts of barriers, but wasn’t satisfied. She succeeded by stepping back and embracing a unique artistic style that incorporated her own experiences and helped her process her growing quest for enlightenment. In her own words: “I’m not any one thing: I’m not just a teacher, I’m not just a mother, I’m not just a painter, I’m all of these things, plus.”
If you go, the wall texts are the most engaging I’ve experienced at SFMOMA—they’re rich with fascinating autobiographical details which make Brown’s paintings come to life, such as her experience being audited by the IRS after declaring her cat, Donald, as a tax write off for being the model in her 1982 painting Joan + Donald. (Brown won.)
Details:
“Joan Brown” closes Sunday, March 12, 2023 at SFMOMA. Free entry with general admission. Tickets: free for SFMOMA members; $25 adults; $22 65 and older; $19 19-24 years; free 18 and under. Save time and buy tickets online before coming to SFMOMA.
Ragnar Kjartansson’s beloved ethereal video installation The Visitors (2012) is back at SFMOMA. This is a surcharged exhibition. For guaranteed entry to The Visitors, choose “The Visitors with GA” tickets. A limited number of additional tickets for this exhibition may be available onsite, capacity permitting.
“Sargent and Spain” opens at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor on Saturday with a lively curator panel and Flamenco dancing in the courtyard
Celebrated as the society portraitist of his era, John Singer Sargent visited Spain seven times between 1879 and 1912, turning out a remarkable body of work, which is explored for the first time in “Sargent and Spain,” at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor through May 14, 2023. The exhibit, which originated at the National Gallery, presents over 140 of Sargent’s dazzling oils, watercolors, and drawings, along with never-before-exhibited photographs, showcasing Spain’s people, architecture, and magnificent urban and rural landscapes. A highlight is Sargent’s fascination with dance and several studies portraits of dancers are included.
This Saturday, the exhibit opens to the public with a performance of live flamenco music and dance, and a panel discussion from the curators, offering an overview of the exhibition and discussion of Sargent’s fascination with Spanish art and culture and its influence on his work—both are free.
Sargent and Spain: Curators in Conversation: 11 – 12 pm Gunn Theater, Legion of Honor
Emma Acker, FAMSF (Fine Arts Musuems of San Francisco) associate curator of American art will lead a conversation with Sarah Cash, associate curator of American and British paintings at the National Gallery of Art, along with Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray, exhibition co-curators and co-authors of the John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné. The delightful Ormond is the great nephew of Sargent, and grandson of Sargent’s sister, Violet Sargent Ormond and grew up with some of these art works on his walls. The Gunn auditorium will open 1 hour before the talk and early arrival is recommend to secure seating.
The panel talk will be live-streamed on the Legion’s YouTube channel: click here on Saturday at 11 a.m.
Dance and music performance by Caminos Flamencos: 12 – 2 pm, Court of Honor, Legion of Honor
Details: “Sargent and Spain” runs Feb 11 – May 14, 2023. The exhibit is free to FAMSF members. For non-FAMSF members, a general entry ticket is required; $28 for adults. Advance reservations are mandatory.
SF Opera’s “Orpheus and Eurydice”— Jakub Józef Orlinski, fabulous staging, and the rarely-performed Viennese version…all in 80 minutes
Breakdancing Polish countertenor sensation, Jakub Józef Orliński, is Orpheus in San Francisco Opera’s new production of Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice.” Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
“Orpheus and Eurydice” is a story plucked from antiquity, recounting the Greek myth of Orpheus, a musician so grief-stricken at his wife’s passing that he braves the underworld to rescue her from death itself. At SF Opera (San Francisco Opera), Christoph Willibald’s Gluck’s beloved opera, in a new dazzling production directed by Matthew Ozawa, is a not-to-be-missed experience of music, singing, dance, and inventive staging.
Gluck’s three act opera, last performed at SF Opera 63 years ago, takes place in both the world of the living (Earth) and the world of the dead (Hades), as well as in the space between (Elysium). It is not set in any specific time period. SF Opera’s new production is Gluck’s rarely-performed original Viennese score, first unveiled in 1762 at Vienna’s Burgtheatre, with libretto by the poet Ranieri de’ Calzabigi, sung in Italian. With Calizabigi’s collaboration, the plot had been reduced to its essentials, with the chorus taking on a larger role, and the solo and choral parts were connected closely with dance. Beforehand, I’d heard a lot about the breakdancing Polish countertenor Jakub Józef Orliński, the brain scans in Alexander V. Nichols’ rotating set, and the fluid dancing, but nothing prepared me for how seamlessly these elements all came together to create an experience of pure art. My review pertains to the performance Friday, November 18, where I sat in the dress circle, looking down on the action.
The opera’s lively overture and curtain opened dramatically on a lone red-robed figure doing spellbinding handstands and leaps— it was Jakub Józef Orliński, the renowned Polish breakdancer and countertenor, as Orpheus, grieving his beloved wife Eurydice and experiencing flashbacks of their life together. His mesmerizing dancing and pure athleticism immediately set him apart from all other countertenors who have sung this role. As Act I began, he cried out to the Gods to bring Eurydice back. His unexpectedly high, commanding voice took some adjusting to but I soon found his sound intoxicating. His “Che farò senza Euridice?” (“What will I do without Eurydice”) worked its heart-wrenching magic on the entire audience. As the drama continued to unfold, Orliński became even more captivating, a star whose role seemed much larger than this singular character, someone uniquely charged to invigorate opera.
Set & Projection designer Alexander V. Nichols’ creative staging added immensely to the production. Colorful floor projections on a rotating circular stage were reminiscent of a pinwheel but these were images of actual neurons and neural pathways from brain scans of trauma patients at USCF Medical Center, an amazing collaborative feat for SF Opera. Ozawa’s thinking was that Orpheus is traversing various phases of grief toward acceptance and his journey through his pain entails navigating memory and his own psyche. This is a rich visual tapestry of that neuro-biologic process. Since no two brains scans are alike, a myriad of beautiful patterns and colors moved before our eyes, at times resembling oceans, fauna, atmospheric turbulence adding greatly to the drama and our enjoyment, especially when viewed from the grand terrace where they could be appreciated in their entirety. One of the most effective visuals was simple and elegant—the thick black jagged line that appeared on the floor and grew like a fissure, at the moment of Eurydice’s death separating the two lovers with Orpheus singing “What will I do without my beloved.”
Meigui Zhang and Jakub Józef Orliński in the title roles of Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice.” Zhang and Orlinski’s flowing classically-inspired costumes were designed by Jessica Jahn, a former dancer who is interested in how garments facilitate movement. Photo: Matthew Washburn/San Francisco Opera
Meigui Zhang and Jakub Józef Orliński with dancers in Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice.” Choreographer Rena Butler employed six dancers―three doubles each of Orpheus and Eurydice, who were distinguished by costumes in lighter hues of red for
Orpheus and blue for Eurydice. Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
Soprano Meigui Zhang, as Eurydice, who sang with such power and touching vulnerability in her SFO debut in last season’s “The Dream of the Red Chamber,” again sang her principal role with remarkable passion, at times sounding utterly ethereal and at times on the verge of unraveling. This former Merola program graduate held her own in the dancing scenes with Orliński too, moving fluidly and expressively. In Act III, as Orpheus leads Eurydice through the underworld, she became more and more unhinged with his refusal to look at her and was convincing in her second death. But the most beautiful choreography was in the melding of their voices, creating a memorable layered beauty.
As Amore (Cupid, God of Love), radiant soprano Nicole Heaston, also a Merola program graduate, delighted the audience each time she descended from her ceiling perch in her sunny yellow gown and yards of golden fabric flowing. Her natural comedic bend was evident when she sang Despina, the maid in SFO’s “Cosi fan tutte” last fall and had everyone in stitches. Her Act I “Gli sguardi trattieni” was a joy both for her singing and her effervescent sparkle. This is where she tells Orfeo that his suffering will be short-lived because Jove (Jupiter) will allow him to descend into the land of the dead to retrieve Eurydice. Making this a real test, Orfeo must neither look at her, nor explain why looking is forbidden, otherwise he will lose her forever.
Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
Music symbolizes represents Orpheus’ emotional journey. Olivier award winning conductor Peter Whelan, music director of Scottish Chamber Orchestra, also a bassoonist, singer, and champion of Baroque historic performance, led the 46 piece reduced SF Opera orchestra in a remarkably vibrant performance of Gluck’s original 1762 Vienna version of the opera.
The SF Opera Chorus sang beautifully, taking on the roles of mourners in Act I, Furies and shrouded lost souls in Act II and joyful onlookers in Act III. Act II’s harrowing “Chi mai dell’Erebo,” sung by the furies and ghosts who are trying to deny Orpheus’ passage to the underworld, was particularly moving. The song was ushered in by César Cañón’s harpsichord playing and punctuated by energetic dramatic orchestral runs emulating the dark sounds of the Elysian fields.
Dance also plays a vital role, depicting the memory landscape Orpheus is navigating. Orlinksi and Zhang do all of their own dancing and six dancers dressed in slightly different shades of red or blue are on stage with them acting as doubles, symbolizing Orpheus and Eurydice at different phases of their relationship. Choreographed by Rena Butler, the overall impact seemed to be to highlight Orlinski’s immense talent and the rest followed a course of natural simplicity.
Meigui Zhang and Jakub Józef Orliński in the Elysian Fields scene in Gluck’s “Orpheus and Eurydice.” The sheer shroud fabric worn by the lost souls in the background (members of the SF Opera chorus) features portraits and writing samples from deceased family members of the opera’s creative team. Photo: Matthew Washburn/San Francisco Opera
Jakub Józef Orliński as Orpheus confronts the Furies (members of SFO’s Chorus) in Act II of “Orpheus and Eurydice.” Colorful floor projections on a rotating circular stage by Alexander V. Nichols are of actual neurons and neural pathways from brain scans of patients at USCF Medical Center. Photo: Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
I left the opera house enriched by this burst of creativity and then spent the drive home trying to dredge up what I remembered of the myth of Orpheus and how it was that, in the end of this opera, Orpheus survives and seemingly is reunited with Eurydice. I recalled that Orpheus couldn’t resist Eurydice’s pleas and gave in to the temptation to see his beloved wife again. He looked at her and, in fulfillment of prophecy, Euridyce disappeared forever and Orpheus killed himself. After researching Gluck, I learned that he adapted the legend, rejecting the harsh ending in his classical sources and instead conformed with the happy ending expected of the modern stage in his day. As Orpheus is about to kill himself, Amore intervenes, disarms him and rewards him for his love and devotion and Eurydice comes to life again, like she’s just woken up from a deep sleep.
Details:
There are two remaining performances: Saturday, Nov 25, 7:30 pm and Thurs, Dec 1, 7:30 pm. Run-time = 81 min, with no intermission. Tickets: Purchase online: https://www.sfopera.com/operas/orpheus-and-eurydice/
Traffic alert: If you are driving in from the North Bay, allow at least 45 min travel/parking time from the Golden Gate Bridge to War Memorial Opera House. For a list of parking garages closest to the opera house, visit https://sfopera.com/plan-your-visit/directions-and-parking/
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.
ARThound 