[Reviewed by Christopher Bernard]

AWESOME

The enterprising Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco never lets an opportunity slip from its grasp.

According to John Buchanan, director of museums for FAMSF, when he learned a number of famous Venetian paintings at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna would be taken down to make way for a temporary exhibit, the museum seized the opportunity to bring them to San Francisco for a unique presentation of these, some of them the most celebrated paintings of the High Renaissance. As an added bonus, a number of them had never been seen in the United States. (One can fairly say FAMSF never lets the grass grow under its feet: just last year they presented two enormous and brilliantly curated shows of impressionist and post-impressionist artworks borrowed under somewhat similar circumstances from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.)

Now, the word “awesome” has lost much of its rhetorical power due to sloppiness and overusage (“That corn dog was simply awesome!”), but every once in a while, it’s the only word that sums up one’s experience briefly and securely. This exhibit is one of the few things in recent memory that incontrovertibly deserves it.

To move through it is like meeting old friends – or what you thought were old friends – in something closer to their original habitat, and in spectacular apparel. That painting by Andrea Mantegna of Saint Sebastian standing against a marble pillar and pierced with arrows, beneath a sky of steely, cobalt blue: haven’t you seen that before? And yet never has it looked so forceful, so, frankly, magnificent. And of course you have: in many an art history book since school, or on the web, or on posters. Then you realize: you had never seen the painting. And the shock hits you: this is the real thing  – more modest in size, more approachable, than you’d thought, and more beautiful, and powerful, more nearly perfect, than you had ever imagined. And you realize the word “masterpiece” does not actually refer to an interesting if uneven television series on PBS.

A similar thing happens to you with other paintings: with Giorgione’s mysterious and spacious Three Philosophers and his intimate Portrait of a Young Woman (Laura) and mysteriously androgynous Young Man with an Arrow; with Titian’s grand sensual fugues of Mars, Venus and Cupid and Danaë basking under a shower of gold coins from Zeus, her divine lover, and his stately portrait of Isabella d’Este (looking like a gilded child, though painted by the foxy flatterer when she was already past 60), and his depiction of the massive torso and worried eyes of Johann Friedrich, Elector of Saxony (a Protestant ruler imprisoned by the Catholic emperor Charles V during the strife-torn Reformation);with Tintoretto’s surrealistic Susannah and the Elders and straining Saint Jerome (as if in combat with himself or his God); and Veronese’s pain-wracked Lucretia: images we thought we knew, but realize we are discovering only now. The effect is a bit dazzling, sometimes deeply moving: a painting, no more than a frame of wood, a covering of rough fabric, a smearing of thin color, can seem to contain a soul.

For me, the greatest discovery of the exhibit is Giorgione, a highly influential artist who left a relatively few paintings and died in his mid-thirties. Some of his work I know from visits to the Louvre (more on that later), but otherwise I knew his paintings from art books alone: I always liked his work. I didn’t realized I loved it till now. There are mysteries at the heart of many of his canvases that scholars still argue about, and a beauty, of a precision and softness, that fascinates like an unanswered question or a veiled and seductive look.

Giorgione continues to be the subject of discovery and controversy: discovery in that only recently (according to the exhibit’s signage) has his family name come to light: Gasparini; and controversy over the re-attribution of one of his most famous canvases, the Concert Champêtre, now in the Louvre, to Titian. (I’ve always been suspicious of that attribution, but after seeing this exhibit I must put in my modest two cents and say, if that canvas is by Titian, and not by a Giorgione who was willingly influenced by his most famous pupil, then I will eat my hat.The reticence and inwardness, the softness yet preciseness of contour, the Leonardesque sfumato, of the Concert, to say nothing of the Giorgionesque enigma of the scene, are at the farthest remove from the taste for high drama at the heart of the style of the grand old man of Venetian painting.)

The dominant figure in the exhibit, as throughout 16th-centuryVenice, is indeed this very same Titian, and his work continues to intrigue and impress, from the precisionist portraints mentioned, to the glorious poesie: scenes direct from mythology, many of them gorgeously sensual, pointedly erotic.

Another revelation is the Tintorettos: sometimes called the first modern painter, and the subject of a typically provocative essay by Sartre, there is at least one canvas here that looks like it could have been done by a late 19th century symbolist – a Moreau, even an Odilon Redon – or a newly-discovered expressionist, with the endless spirals of his compositions, the pained psychology contorting his faces, the virtuosic foreshortening and perspectives, to express a tormented and suspicious sensibility: a proto-Daliesque paranoia.

The exhibit (which is curated by Dr. Lynn Federle Orr with help from Sylvia Ferino-Pagden, director of the Gemäldegalerie (Picture Gallery) of the Kunsthistorisches Museum) concludes with several lucious Veronese’s to make one drunk on Venetian colore to balance the more sober enchantment of the designo so well displayed in the earlier Mantegna.

But even Veronsese appears here in a profounder light than usual, despite the curator’s interpretation, expressed in the excellent audio tour: Veronese’s painting of Lucretia, the famous pre-republican Roman woman depicted at the moment just before she takes her own life after being raped, is a profound gaze into the face of a lethal anguish, the more telling for being displayed as surrounded by the gifts of wealth and luxury, and one I never expected to find among Veronese’s usual voluptuousness and sybaritic radiances.

The exhibit  is enriched by paintings and prints, including portraits of individual men and generic female images, by lesser-known but intriguing figures such as Bassano, Pordenone, Bordone, and Palma Vecchio, as well as large-scale, context-setting reproductions of work by the likes of Carpaccio, Teniers, and Gentile Bellini.

In sum: this show is awesome. And a triumph for the museum.

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Christopher Bernard is a San Francisco writer and founding editor of Caveat Lector magazine.

Masters of Venice: Renaissance Painters of Passion and Power

From the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

De Young Museum, San Francisco

Through February 12, 2012

[Reviewed by Cara Diehl]

There is a palpable vibrancy in the language of Talia Carner’s Jerusalem Maiden, and from the opening chapters I found myself completely captivated by young Esther Kaminsky’s journey of self-discovery.   Carner’s ability to weave together a narrative of personal and spiritual struggle amidst the backdrop of Palestine and Paris in the second decade of the 20th century is powerful.  The historical geographical descriptions are at once knowledgeable and welcoming—reading it, I was not a stranger peering into the life of something and someone unknown; rather, I had the pleasurable experience of feeling present at each moment along the way.  Esther’s struggles, revelations, and heartbreaks reflected, became, my own—and I was rooting for her through to the very end.

Jerusalem Maiden begins in Jerusalem in the fall of 1911, in a moment of a thrilling defiance: coloring with pencils on a blank page.  Esther Kaminksy belongs to a very ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, Me’ah She’arim, where art was forbidden, and where reverence for Hashem, God, and a devotion to the procreation of his chosen people through marriage was the only culturally acceptable norm for a woman to preoccupy herself with.  As the Ottoman Empire is slowly declining around her community, Esther finds herself challenged daily by the inner urge to create—to draw, paint, and vividly represent the world she sees around her.  She is encouraged by her forward thinking, proto-feminist French instructor, Mlle Thibaux.  The lasting, though removed, friendship that is formed between these two characters is the real cornerstone of the novel.  The care that these two widely different women have for each other and the interplay of cultural differences that is explored through each of their developing storylines is truly encouraging.

I’ll resist hashing out the particular plot points that move the story along, because discovering Esther’s own self-discovery is part of the delight that comes with reading this finely written tale.  Esther is an intensely relatable girl (and young woman) precisely because the issues she grapples with are in many ways our own: who are we? How faithful to our culture, our customs, and our communities should we be, especially when they conflict with our own inner urges for individualism?  What will Esther choose to be?  What have we chosen to be?  Lyrical, engaging, and expressive, Carner’s Jerusalem Maiden is a book I want in the hands of every person, young and old, who has a passing interest in the way art can reflect and shape our own paths of self-discovery.

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You can contact the reviewer, Cara Diehl, at cdiehl2385@gmail.com.

[Reviewed by Sarah Melton]

“Portrait of a Girl and Her Art” is not about one girl, but several young female artists, as seen through the eyes of writer, teacher and illustrator Elena Caravela.  While it’s seldom wise to judge a book by the cover, in this particular case it’s feasible. The cover shows a very well-done collage of portraits, showing each of the girls’ unique and vibrant personalities. Upon reading the book (with my own daughter, age 10), we realized that the book expanded upon those portraits with the touching descriptions of each girl, quotes from the young artists themselves about their art, and examples of each of the girls chosen art forms, from paints to pottery to collage.

For adults, this book is a glimpse into the lives of these special girls, and a reminder of the raw, powerful emotions of our own adolescent years.  For children (particularly young girls with an artistic bent), it’s an inspirational book full of like-minded kids and a bevy of projects and creative ideas to incorporate into their own lives.  My daughter was particularly moved by a collage shown, and started making her own work in that medium within the week.

The most touching aspect of the book (to this reader at least) was hearing how art helped each of these girls through one aspect or another of their lives.  One girl used art to express her emotions with growing up amid hardships, where another wished to make others happy with her creations.  Rachel, an artist featured both in the book and on the writers website, stated: “You can draw what you feel and no one will ridicule you or tell you it’s silly.” Quotes like that speak volumes about the issues that affect today’s young artists, if not all youth, who are struggling to freely express themselves without fear of judgment or unworthiness in the eyes of adults and their peers.

This book would be a great gift to a young artist, particularly those who struggle with feeling validity or approval of their expressions, in whatever medium they choose.  Elena Caravela still continues to accept and feature youth artwork on her website, http://portraitofagirlandherart.wordpress.com, and hopes to continue inspiring young artists for years to come.  To learn more about the writer and her art, visit her website at http://www.elenacaravela.net/.

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Sarah Melton can be reached at SarahM@aptosfire.com. You can find a number of Melton’s short stories in the Flash Fiction collections at www.absolute-x-press.com.

[Reviewed by Nick Paxton]

Ayokunle Adeleye’s archetypal foray into the realm of human understanding is both symbolically rich and culturally relevant and, while it does not provide readers with a new found understanding into the vast network of interpersonal human pattern recognition, it provides strong examples for readers to identify with and a solid foundation of knowledge for those wishing to familiarize themselves with social contextualization on a personal level. Heavy biblical references and allusions to humanities prototypes blend harmoniously with lighter bits on the power of human understanding and tips on how to maximize your own personal power. The health information, which explains how metaphysical energies are manifested in the flesh via physical appearance, creating visual reference markers for our cognitive perceptions to process, is both thought provoking and highly entertaining.

Given the translated nature of the book, the writing is fairly well structured and moderately engaging, though some choppy bits and vague pieces will might leave readers disoriented. Though by all means filled with pop psychology, the religious and cultural aspects create a semblance of divine connections that does challenge readers to consider why these structured personalities exist and how they could potentially be a part of a larger blueprint of the universe.

Onto the content itself, the idea that humanities infinite diversity can be summed up in four boxed identities may disgruntle or turn off readers looking for a deeper, more revealing look on the human experience, but the novel makes no gestures of false pretense and humbly asserts itself through clever writing and a true belief in it’s content. Overall, a interesting way to spend a few hours, though perhaps not a reason to drop that psychology textbook just yet.

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You can contact the reviewer, Nick Paxton, at paxton8r@gmail.com.

Author Ayokunle Adeleye (Ayk) currently lives in Sagamu, Nigeria. The Four Generations is currently available for purchase on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Four-Generations-Why-you-things/dp/1456779133.

[Reviewed by Bruce Roberts]

Sometimes great singers lose their best voices as they age. I’m thinking of The Kingston Trio, Paul Simon, even the awesome Old Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra. It’s fact of life: Age can take a toll on the pipes of a singer. Except for Johnny Mathis.

Friday, December 2nd, the 76 year old Mathis performed at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, singing as if he were at the height of his vocal powers. He still flashes an extraordinary range, from his rich baritone, to the highest tenor, all with power or softness as the song demands, without a single wobble or crack, or backing down from a single challenging note.  The vocal range and quality that have carried him on a long and glorious singing career are still very much intact.

Matching his stature as one of America’s great singers, the Paramount Theater is one of America’s great theaters. Built in 1931 by noted architect Timothy Pflueger, this Art Deco masterpiece, after extensive renovations completed in 1973, is a jewel in the Oakland entertainment scene, and on the National Register of Historic Sites. Ironically, though he grew up in San Francisco, this was the first time Johnny had ever played the Paramount.

A few downsides: On a few songs, Johnny had the help of back-up singers—on tape– totally unnecessary with a voice like his. Between his sets, the audience was entertained by Gary Mule Deer, who had them in stitches with joke after joke—many of which were “borrowed” from the internet. Still, Mule Deer does an outstanding Johnny Cash impression that left the audience wanting more. Finally, Johnny, of course, gets to choose his own songs, but instead of building to one of his many showstoppers, he chose to end with a non-Christmas Latin beat medley that showcased the band more than his voice. And for a Christmas junkie like me, any show billed as a Christmas show should be at least three-fourths Christmas songs, but that was not to be.

None of that detracts though from the essential truth that Johnny delivered, really delivered, on every song before a huge audience of long-time fans.  Applause erupted only two or three notes into the introduction of most songs by this audience that seemed to know him and his work very well. “Misty,”  “Secret Love,”  “The Twelfth of Never,”  “Stranger in Paradise”—these were just some of the showstoppers that caused explosions of applause, even as the song began. His Christmas repertoire included “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosted Windowpanes,” “The Christmas Song,” and “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.”  An energetic and passionate “We Need a Little Christmas” seemed the dominant song in this set and had feet tapping everywhere.

When the book of Great American singers is written,  Johnny Mathis—the teenaged track sensation from San Francisco’s Washington High—will be ranked right up there with Frank Sinatra,  Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole,  Barbara Streisand,  ranked right up there with the best in the land.  My only real problem with the show was that my wife elbowed me every time I tried to sing along.

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Bruce Roberts is a poet and ongoing contributor to Synchronized Chaos Magazine. Roberts may be reached by at brobe60491@sbcglobal.net.

[Reviewed by Martin Rushmere]

[Reviewed by Christopher Bernard]

PUT A SPELL ON YOU

Maurice Maeterlinck was to theater what Debussy was to music and Mallarmé to poetry: one of the first explorers of the infinite universe of the indirect, the oblique – “the mystery that lies … just out of sight” – called Symbolism, without which modernism and its enormous and still flourishing progeny would have been inconceivable.

His play “Pelleas and Melisande” has had the status of a legend since its premiere in 1892, influencing musicians like Sibelius, Schoenberg and Fauré, as well as playwrights, and forming the basis of Debussy’s only completed opera. The title, in fact, may be more familiar to music mavens than theater fans.

And yet, without Maeterlinck’s foray into a form of drama that hints and feints at the splendors and horrors of human life (rather than barreling at them, bare-knuckled, gritted-teethed and glaring), suggesting depths of meaning and feeling through a balance of fairy tale, melodrama and a kind of naturalism of the dream – thus turning the modern soul into its own bravest spectacle – the modern dramatic tradition that began with Strindberg and late Ibsen, and continued through the surrealists, the absurdists, Beckett, Bernhard, and Kushner, would have missed half a continent of human experience. And it would have lacked much of the courage and power, the audacity and imagination it has shown ever since.

Which makes one all the more grateful for the often magical and wondrous production of the play by The Cutting Ball Theater in San Francisco. They have taken on the play’s considerable challenges of interpretation and emerged victorious, creating a spell that, once you have entered it, you may not want to leave.

The play’s storyline is simple enough, even slight: a tissue of allusions to fairy tales, folk tales and romance taking place in a nameless kingdom in a vaguely medieval era, following the plight of a young princess found in a dark forest by a middle-aged prince who bears her home and makes the mistake of marrying her when there is far more likely mate for her in the form of his own brother. What makes the play a masterpiece that, in the right hands, defeats the dangers of its own dating is the playwright’s approach: the oblique poetry, the elided psychology, the leaps in time, the dream-logic, the almost cinematic abruptness of scene changes. Maeterlinck’s means are sometimes too blunt or obvious (as in the many allusions to Rapunzel), but this production solves the problems thus caused by using, in ways one can only suspect the playwright would have applauded, indirect, “poetic” devices like pantomime rather than more “naturalistic” methods that might have broken the play’s delicate spell.

Indeed, throughout, director Rob Melrose wisely builds on the mysteries and obliqueness of the text, allowing the audience to dwell in its enchantment and never over-emphasizing either the romantic excesses or the peculiar psychology of the fairy-tale-like characters.

The small Taylor Street theater creates a warm intimacy. Most of the action takes place on a long, narrow platform with the audience seated along either side; a corner of the stage opens to a pool of water, water being both a potent symbol and a beautiful “objective correlative” of the world of the lovers, their passion and their fate. Precise and discreet lighting and a finely wrought web of music and sound perfect the mise-en-scène. The action is often, discreetly, choreographed, a ballet of gestures and brief tableaux.

But none of these efforts, beautifully worked out as they are, would be of any use without getting the acting right – and here the soul of the production goes from success to something more impalpably pure. Caitlyn Louchard’s Melisande is altogether admirable in a difficult role, built largely on reactions and silences, and her variety and sureness of touch make the lost princess entirely believable. Special kudos should also go to Paul Gerrior as Arkel, an old, king-like figure, whose sorrow is to be left at the end forlorn, with a baby in his arms, and his castle, with its surrounding forest of darkness and the poisoned lake beneath it, a mortuary. The supporting roles are also wrought with great sensitivity and care. Joshua Schell’s Pelleas and Derek Fischer’s Golaud are thoroughly worthy and avoid the pitfalls of sentimentality and melodrama the parts can easily slip into, though sometimes their brimming American “good health” in parts that need an evasive neuroticism to be completely convincing shows through despite their best efforts.

Gwyneth Richards’ two brief scenes (as Arkel’s wife and as head of the servants), not least because of a fine voice and meticulously gauged line-readings, were among the most memorable of a production filled with memorable moments.

The production is a triumph, though that sounds way too pompous for a piece of such intimacy and delicacy and grace. It’s a must-see for anyone in the Bay Area who cares about theater.

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Christopher Bernard is a San Francisco writer and founding editor of Caveat Lector magazine.