At the end of the dreary dirt center of the Civic Center Plaza, cranes appeared on Monday morning.
Ever since the lawn was taken out for Alice Waters' Slow Food Nation extravaganza last summer, and the Patrick Dougherty tree sculptures came down in February, the plaza has looked a bit forlorn.
Coming to the rescue is a huge statue by the 45-year-old Chinese performance artist Zhang Huan of a three-headed, six-armed Buddha that has arrived in San Francisco just in time to complement the Shanghai exhibit at the Asian Art Museum.
The installation has been going on all week, involving a huge crew from Oakland's Atthowe Fine Art Services and multiple cranes.
According to an interesting post on the San Francisco Art Commission website, which is sponsoring the world premiere of this piece:"Three Heads Six Arms is part of a series of monumental works depicting the fragmented extremities of Buddhist statues. The series was inspired by Zhang’s discovery of religious sculptures that had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution for sale in a Tibetan market. He began the series in 2006 shortly after moving from New York City to Shanghai where he retired his performance art practice and embraced a more traditional approach to artistic creation."
The installation continues all this week, culminating in a dedication ceremony next Wednesday, May 12th at 10AM. This will be followed by a "conversation" with the artist and Jay Xu, the director of the Asian Art Museum, at 7PM. Admission to the event on the second floor of the museum in Samsung Hall is free.
The statue is slated to stay in San Francisco until 2011 and should be a fun new neighbor.
Illustrating once again that there are only twelve people in the world and the rest is done with mirrors, the first person I ran into at the San Francisco Symphony on Saturday evening was Superior Court Judge candidate Michael Nava, who was listening to bird songs from plush toys in the Davies Hall gift shop. "It's almost my favorite part of going to the symphony," he confessed. "Do you like the music of Messiaen, with all its bird calls?" I asked, and Nava replied that he did.
This was the last bit of lightness we would hear that evening as the program consisted of Robert Schumann's Fourth Symphony from 1853 followed by the huge "Lyric" Symphony for Soprano, Baritone and Orchestra by Alexander Zemlinsky from 1923.
The guest conductor was the 70-year-old Christoph Eschenbach, who started his career in the 1950s as a piano soloist, and then transitioned into conducting in the 1970s, making his American conducting debut in San Francisco in 1975. Since then, he's had music director posts in London, Houston, Zurich, the Ravinia Festival, a recent controversial stint in Philadelphia, and in the latest news has just been appointed music director in Washington, D.C.
I had never seen him before and had no idea what to expect, so it was a bit surprising when he strode onto the stage looking like Ben Kingsley playing Doctor Evil. His conducting of the Schumann symphony was forceful and loud and Germanic, and though it was a legitimate way to play the music, it also didn't allow for much humor or dynamic contrasts and by the end of the first half of the program, I felt battered.
Having listened to a recording all week of the "Lyric" Symphony, I knew it was going to be loud and over-the-top, but the music is also exquisitely beautiful in that plush, overstuffed, Viennese turn-of-the-century monster orchestra way. The 50-minute piece consists of seven songs from Rabindranath Tagore's "banal poetry" (according to Mr. Nava) charting the rise and fall of a couple's love affair.
The baritone and the soprano tag team as soloists in each song, with Christine Schafer and James Johnson doing their best to project over the huge ensemble with varying degrees of success. The composer certainly didn't make it easy for his singers, which may be one reason the piece is so rarely heard. The orchestra did a superb job with the music but again the conducting was way too forceful and insistent. By the end, it felt as if I'd experienced a first class German mauling, which is not really my cup of tea. If this does sound like it might be to your taste, Eschenbach is returning this week to the San Francisco Symphony with Beethoven and Brahms for a German Musical Rolfing Session, Part Zwei.
The Catharine Clark Gallery in Minna alley next door to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art was hosting a fundraiser Friday evening for Michael Nava's Superior Court Judge campaign, which is coming into the home stretch for the June 8th election.
Arriving late, there was still a lively group of stragglers, including (left to right above) the newly published graphic novelist Stefan Salinas, the very genial campaign manager Bryan Terhune, and ubiquitous Supervisor 8 candidate Rafael Mandelman.
Michael was posing with friends and supporters, such as Donal Godfrey (above left)...
...while the lawyer David Waggoner wandered among the art and flower arrangements.
The event was something of a family affair, with Nava's legally married spouse George Herzog (above) helping to clean up the party, joined by his Berkeley cousin Judy Herrmann (below).
Catharine Clark (below left) has been in the art business in San Francisco for the last twenty years, in the Hayes Valley, then 49 Geary and now in her Minna Alley gallery, where she represents Andy Diaz Hope and Masami Teraoka, among others.
After thanking Catharine for her hospitality, I confessed that the world possibly needed Michael Nava more as a writer than as a judge, and Catharine replied, "Maybe the world would be a better place if artists spent some time in public service."
