Arts & Events

In mid-May the Pierre Bonnard exhibit “Painting Arcadia” closes at the Legion of Honor and the newly expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA) opens to the public. Having just taken in both, I highly recommend the first show which closes Sunday May 15. But don’t rush to see the renovated MOMA; the crowds will be huge for a while, and the museum isn’t going anywhere. 

The theme of these two art hikes was intimacy or lack thereof, intimacy measured by human scale. Bonnard is all about the enclosed private life: the love of women and their bodies, an exultation of the home: the table, books and food, the garden, and family. Bonnard’s canvases have a flat, decorative quality, often eschewing classical perspective for color and composition. Many employ a disconcerting aerial perspective, suggesting that the artist and his easel stood on a ladder. These are works that deserve some contemplation, and I went through the exhibit three times to ensure that I saw them all with the concentration they deserve. 

The first was a casual walk through, made easy by the few who also arrived at opening time. I had seen many of these paintings for the first time in 1966 in Paris but not all because the works in “Painting Arcadia” have been assembled from many museums and private collections. It’s a show not to be missed. 

On my second perambulation, the crowd had thickened, and I used the audio tour, brought out some details that I had missed. After that I had a restful sit-down in the Bowles Porcelain Gallery, and then a final wander through the exhibit, this time at a leisurely pace because I knew that I am unlikely to see these paintings again. 

In the twenty years when I led theater tours to London, I would take Mondays off to visit the impressionists at The Courtauld Gallery until the paintings became good friends, but as much as I like Renoir, I love Bonnard more: the personal intrigue, the heightened relationships to people, places, objects, and his luminous purplish blues that suggest a palette inclusive of ultraviolet light. 

These blues are echoed in the majestic vistas of Lands End, which make a visit to the Legion of Honor a double pleasure, as a continuation of the art walk outside presents some of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin headlands. This is enduring San Francisco, the same enchantment experienced when I first moved here in the 1960’s. It’s a wonderful museum, wonderfully situated like no other, and I can forgive Dede Wilsey all her machinations as President of the Board of Trustees of the Fine Arts Museums for the privilege of such visits. 

By sheer coincidence, my member’s preview at the new MOMA was scheduled for the next day, so I again donned my trainers and got ready for another long art walk because Chronicle critic Charles Desmarais wrote that he clocked 4.3 miles on his initial visit. I chose to start on the seventh floor and work my way down. Whereas the Legion of Honor is all about intimacy and tradition, the new SFMOMA is startling, huge and uncomfortable. In the three hours I traipsed through its glacial halls and galleries, the only chair with a back to be found was in the white box where pop-up lunches were served and where I happened upon some former SFCC colleagues. 

There is much to admire about the new MOMA, especially the second floor exhibit of old favorites that will be free to the public. With the addition come two sets of elevators, the old (red) and the new (silver). The living garden wall on the third floor, the sculpture terraces and galleries that include the wonderful works of Alexander Calder, and the expanded access to impressive photography archives are all inviting. The video installations welcome viewers to an intimate space, none more intriguing than a black box theatre featuring excerpts from Mozart’s The Magic Flute directed and designed by William Kentridge, an animator long championed by SFMOMA and an influence on Berkeley artist Lisa Esherick and others. 

MOMA was enlarged to include the impressive Fisher collection, rich in monumental works by Ellsworth Kelly, Anselm Kiefer, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud and more, much more from the kitsch to the confrontational. Whatever the subject, style, treatment or medium, the irrefutable statement of the new museum and its works of art is simply size. Everything is so BIG. Walking through the spacious halls and down the majestic staircases, I was overwhelmed by the hugeness of it all. Interiors are no longer made like this, except for the lobbies of great hotels. 

We crave public grandeur, which is the main attraction of the new and improved SFMOMA, the Grand Central Station of art museums. One can leave a compact apartment and experience outsized, shouting works of abstraction on huge white walls, expansive visions that obliterate detail and subtlety. Even the portraits are supersized. What animates such enlargement in an alienating urban environment that already dominates and discomfits: is it courage or simply ego? What drives an interior designer to paint a ladies room fire engine red, floor to ceiling? I don’t know, but the subject that most arrested me in my peregrinations was the surrounding cityscape - framed in large windows to imitate paintings or viewed from the upper terraces - the steel, stone and glass canyons of downtown San Francisco. 

No two art trips could exhibit greater extremes of surroundings, tradition, comfort and intimacy. Each has its worth, but see the Bonnard in the few days left, and if and when you go to SFMOMA, be prepared for a trek. I saw members with hiking boots and walking poles. Dress for comfort and bring an energy bar or enjoy the tasty treats at The Sight Glass Café on the third floor for a sugar and caffeine boost. And even though its main staircase is worthy of a Vogue photo shoot or a well -aimed selfie, leave the heels at home.