<< Out There
22 • BAY AREA REPORTER • December 8-14, 2011
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All the newspaper that’s fit to print by Roberto Friedman
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ewspaper is a noun, but sometimes Out There uses it as an adjective. As in, “Oh, that is so very newspaper of you.” Or, “I’m feeling rather newspaper tonight.” Oft-times when catching up with friends, we might say, “Girl, just give us the headlines, because we’re on deadline for a whole lot of body copy.” So we made sure during our recent visit to Washington, D.C., to catch the Warhol: Headlines exhibition now on view at the National Gallery of Art. The show contains paintings, screenprints, photographs, video and film created from Andy Warhol’s obsessive interest in tabloid news, headlines, and the whole newspaper enterprise. Wall text points out that Warhol, who after all got his start as a commercial artist producing drawings of shoes for department store ads, considered newspapers just another product
ripe for the Pop Art treatment. What are headlines, really, but the labels of products called newspapers? To Warhol, a headline like “Eddie Fisher Breaks Down” was just another, more to-die-for variation on “Campbell’s Soup.” There are paintings here based on disaster (“129 Die in Jet!”), history (“President Shot Dead”), the royals (“A Boy for Meg”) and the media whores (“Madonna on Nude Pix: So What!”) (with Keith Haring, from 1985). Stop the presses. Through Jan. 2, 2012. Concurrently, Andy Warhol: Shadows at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington presents all 102 silk-screened and hand-painted canvases of a monumental artwork. Warhol made an abstract image based on a shadow in his studio, then replicated it 102 times, with different background/ foreground color variations. The panels, hung edge to edge along the wall of an entire floor of the Hirshhorn’s circular galleries, form an
unforgettable whole much larger than its parts. Warhol was the 20th century artist who most foresaw our endlessly repeatable present-day digital culture. Through Jan. 15, 2012. Since we were in a very newspaper state of mind after seeing Headlines and Shadows, we stopped in at one of our old haunts, the Front Page bar and grill just off Dupont Circle. This fine establishment displays on its walls newspapers’ framed front pages culled from editions announcing historic news: royal visits, war developments, assassinations. We were perusing the headlines when our bartender introduced us to an elderly man, billiard-ball bald, sitting to our immediate left. “This is Charley. He’s 99 years old, and he comes in here every day at Happy Hour for two glasses of wine, sometimes three. Plus he gets here on his scooter!” OT was duly impressed. Maybe we could be just like Charley in 49 years – minus the scooter, because we’d only kill ourselves puttering around the Circle before we made a single revolution. Still: a veritable role model for an old pressie like us. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA
City lights Out There hit the ground running, to use an unfortunate war metaphor, upon our return to this beloved City by the Bay. First night back we rubbed shoulders with filmies and arts luminaries at a welcoming reception for the new San Francisco Film Society executive director Bingham Ray at Tosca Café. The late SFFS e.d. Graham Leggett was remembered fondly and poignantly. But Ray seems psyched for taking the reins. The next night we were regaled with tales of bygone visits to the erstwhile Burma, now Myanmar, from seasoned correspondents during the unveiling of holiday décor at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. This largest hotel atrium in the world, Portman-designed, looks its most elegant with its many rows of white lights dangling from high overhead: worth a seasonal visit. Then on our “day off” we attended a press conference for news of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expansion. After unveiling its conceptual basis in May, Snøhetta principal architect Craig Dykers was now ready to present the schematic design of the proposed addition to architect Mario Botta’s iconic SFMOMA. By now the design
“Daily News” (c. 1967) by Andy Warhol, screenprint on paper (detail).
of the new building, slated for groundbreaking in summer 2013 and opening in 2016, has been pretty well dissected in the press and online forums, and you can see sketches of the expansion at www.sfmoma. org. As usual, Out There has a few quibbles. Though the design is respectful of the Botta atrium, and the oculus and fifth-floor bridge will remain, its spectacular central staircase must apparently fall victim to a more direct procession up to a new entry lobby on the Howard-Minna St. axis. The staircase, a beauty of many landings built in the building’s signature bands of black granite, will be missed. All the more reason to visit before the makeover, and scope out the LED light installation by media artist Jim Campbell, hanging in the atrium, from its best viewing site, the soon-tovanish second-floor landing (through July 15). In general, the Snøhetta design is, as billed, generous and forward-thinking in its contribution to the SoMa streetscape and urban community. Parts of the new space will not require gallery admission, for example. But there are compromises inherent in any aesthetic decision. The architects’ decision to house administrative and conservation spaces in the building’s top floors, while generous to staff and probably a model of efficiency, means that the gallery spaces will be bereft of the Botta building’s brilliant skylights that make an option of natural light from above. That feature was muchvaunted at the original building’s unveiling. SFMOMA museum director Neal Benezra said that the museum would have to close during part of the construction, and would not pursue an alternate temporary site for the interim but strive during the transformation for a so-
called “SFMOMA without walls” in collaboration with other arts presenters and institutions in the Bay Area. No museum spokesperson would comment on the expected duration of this site closure, but OT heard figures bandied about by unofficial sources to the tune of 30 months. We’ll have to stay tuned for better information. Meantime, for the most part, we like what we see.
Dancers to watch for We’re pleased to be able to pass on the names of San Francisco Ballet School scholarship recipients for the 2011-12 school year. The Bob Ross Scholarship goes to Jeanette Kakareka, 18, from Harleysville, PA, invited to train at SFBS after attending its 2010 Summer Session. The Keith White Memorial Scholarship goes to Miranda Silveira Templer, 17, who hails from Barcelona, Spain. And the Eric Hellman Memorial Scholarship goes to Brett Fukuda, 18, originally from Ridgewood, NJ. Congratulations to all the ballerinas, as we’re sure exciting careers await.
Production dept. Our favorite recent newspaper correction from the New York Times: “The Vows column last Sunday, about the marriage of Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle, misspelled the name of the city in Ireland where Ms. Jacobs had a speaking engagement. It is Cork, not Quark.” And the groom hails from Indiana, not InDesign. Thanks to all the arts writers, photographers, staffies and drivers who showed up for the B.A.R.’s swank annual holiday affair at Palio d’Asti downtown last week. It’s always a pleasure to dine and avail ourselves of the open bar with a diverse group of individuals (sometimes very individual) who can only be described as trés newspaper.▼
SFMOMA expansion, view from Yerba Buena Gardens, architectural sketch by Snøhetta. Courtesy Snøhetta