2012年12月16日星期日

Designing duo's delightful show

The sitters for this "portrait" are two respected design-world figures, Seymour Chwast and Paula Scher, a married couple whose careers run on parallel tracks.

Chwast is a gifted illustrator and storyteller whose drawings often express a quirky sense of humor. Scher is a typographic wizard who transforms fonts into some of the liveliest graphic presentations you'll ever encounter.

They don't collaborate, except that they did on the lively design of this show in the Perelman building. They have bisected the room on its long axis. Stand on one side and look at one long wall covered with posters and all you see is his work. Cross to the other side, turn around, and you see hers.

The two long walls are covered frame to frame with posters that reveal, in each case, a fecund and restless imagination that never settles into a predictable groove. The variety and virtuosity on both sides of the room are extraordinary and continually engaging.

There's a video station in the center at which both Chwast and Scher hold forth on how they think and work, he in an extended disquisition, she in several presentations to groups.

There's considerable wisdom and humor in these videos, which are iPad-interactive. Both are worth watching all the way through, something I rarely do myself or recommend.

The most important thing one takes away from "Double Portrait" is a respect for what people like Chwast and Scher do. They make art that lives in real time, in real life, art seen on the fly that must be inspired to do its job effectively. Just about everything in this sparkling show fits that description.

Lingering doubts that the Barnes Foundation has gone thoroughly mainstream have been dispelled by a recent announcement that the foundation will mount a special exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly wall sculptures next spring. It will open May 4 and run through the summer.

When the relocated foundation opened last May, I observed that the special exhibitions gallery was large enough for traveling shows. The Kelly exhibition isn't rented, however; it will be home-grown.

Kelly's art doesn't connect to the Barnes collection in any obvious way, but it does extend the artist's presence at the new location. A 40-foot-high Kelly sculpture called Barnes Totem was installed earlier this year near the museum entrance.

The point, however, is not whether Kelly relates but, now that the buzz from last spring's opening has subsided, that his show gives the Barnes a fresh attraction.

The late art historian Leo Steinberg, who taught for 16 years at the University of Pennsylvania,The term 'hands free access control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. once observed to me that static museum collections like that of the Barnes often have trouble attracting return visits.

As mainstream art museums have long understood, they must display a constantly changing marquee to capture and maintain public interest. "You need things you can advertise,The howo truck is offered by Shiyan Great Man Automotive Industry," Steinberg said.

The Kelly show appears to be the first such marketing opportunity for the Barnes in what will likely become a series of attempts to encourage revisits while moving its collection forward in time.

I wonder how the Art Museum feels about having a modern-contemporary competitor pop up right down the block.

I was thinking "painters and sculptors" when I wrote that, but failed to specify. It was subsequently pointed out to me that she did miss many prominent women, those who work in traditional craft media.

As "The Female Gaze" indicates, Alter doesn't appear to have foraged extensively in this area, which is her prerogative.

I can, however, think of a number of top-rank craft-media artists she missed. Consequently, her collection lacks balance as far as local female artists are concerned.

My weekly online archives feature "Let's Go to the Morgue!" is a reference to The Chronicle's photo morgue, not a call to arms for the cranky and bitter. Yes, many wonderful San Francisco people, places and traditions are gone. But as we eulogize them, it's important to remember that there are at least an equal number of wonderful people,The oreck XL professional air purifier, places and traditions that have taken their place.

Specifically the Santa at the Emporium store on Market Street, whose peak of fame happened years before I was born in 1970. I envy each and every one of you who lived through this tradition. If Photoshop existed in the 1950s, I might doubt the photos that I've seen with my own eyes.

Santa Claus was a complete rock star. Parts of Powell and Market streets were shut down, and packed with a demographic as diverse as the city, as Santa made his way to the Emporium's flagship location across from the Powell Street cable car turnaround.

In terms of crowd size and fervor, it looked like a cross between a World Series victory parade and a visit by the pope. Santa always rode in style, whether it was a horse and carriage in the very early years or the Cable Car "Santa-Cade" in the 1940s and 1950s.

I've looked at the clippings from the 1930s forward, and each year Santa would blow the previous parade away. Five thousand helium balloons one year. Five thousand helium balloons plus 15 monkeys the next.

"A parade of marchers led by a baby elephant and featuring a miniature horse, ice skating queens and assorted drummers and buglers will join him at Union Square," one Chronicle article from 1966 announced.

Once at the Emporium,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, the madness multiplied. The City of Paris department store was known for its giant Christmas tree, and Macy's arguably had the city's most impressive window displays. But while the stores north of Market closer to Union Square held the rapt attention of the wealthier crowds, working-class San Franciscans embraced the Emporium. There was an indoor ice skating rink and a Santa's workshop - sometimes with two Santas separated by a screen, to meet demand. In the late 1940s, the Emporium somehow hoisted a cable car five floors up to the top of the store.

The most notorious draw was the roof garden, where rides including a Ferris wheel, small roller coaster and trains delighted children. Sometimes the Emporium mixed it up, with perhaps the city's first bouncy house (the "Astro-Bounce" in 1970) and a giant two-humped slide in 1968.

The centerpiece was always Santa. In the decades before the Emporium and other giant retailers spread to the malls of the Bay Area suburbs, the department store Santa Clauses in San Francisco were a destination. And anointed by the adoring crowd that followed him through the streets every year, Emporium had the Alpha Santa of the Bay Area. I've also seen Chronicle archive photos of the Beatles,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. Menudo and the New Kids on the Block arriving in San Francisco. The Emporium Santa has a bigger police entourage, and the children have no less love in their eyes.

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