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Beaux & Eros
February 12 - April 30, 2006
Reception on Sunday, February 12 from
1-4 pm
Curated by Jerry Emanuel According to the ancient Greeks, people were
originally of three sexes: man-man, man-woman, and woman-woman. Even
stranger, we began as spherical rolling creatures, double-faced,
double-sexed, and four-legged. Zeus, alarmed at our arrogant
self-sufficiency, split us into our current state of complementary
halves that continually seek to reunite. "Each of us when separated,
having one side only, like a flat fish, . . .is always looking for
his other half ... And when one of them meets with his other half,
the actual half of himself, . . .the pair [is] lost in. .
.amazement, . . .and [each] would not be out of the other's sight, .
. .even for a moment (Plato, The Symposium)." Romantic love has,
thus, an ambivalent origin: the gods literally divided and conquered
us, and we attempt eternally to undo that brutal pre-emption. It's a
similarly mixed blessing in that other source of Western culture,
the Judeo-Christian tradition; sex is part of the earthly exile
compensation package, a shameful consolation prize to be enjoyed, if
that is the word, only post-thrion (After Figleaf). No wonder at our
confusion, then, over our unruly and sometimes dangerous appetites.
Western artists have depicted these forces since classical times
with both sensual relish and moral alarm. Countless Venuses,
Judiths, Salomes, Europas, Ios, Delilahs, and Daphnes cavort with or
betray or are abducted or rescued or smitten by innumerable
Adonises, Apollos, Cupids, St. Sebastians, Perseuses, Silenuses,
Samsons, and Zeuses.
Beaux & Eros, which continues the
tradition, commences, appropriately, on Valentine's Day. Although
our holiday theoretically commemorates two eponymous Roman
Christians-a priest executed in 270 CE (Common Era) and a bishop
executed in 273-it actually derives from earlier pagan ceremonies.
The Lupercalia festival honored Juno, goddess of women and marriage,
and Pan, the goat-footed nature god (or domesticity and panic,
respectively). After the festival was modified in 296 by Pope
Gelasius to honor his martyred colleagues, it developed and spread
throughout Europe over the ensuing centuries. In America it evolved
into the hecatomb, or mass sacrifice, of flowers and chocolates that
we know today.
The playful, punning title, Beaux & Eros,
comes from Bay Area gallerist Jerry Emanuel, who curated previous
romantically themed shows in San Francisco. For this inaugural
exhibit at the Peninsula Museum of Art, which promises to become a
tradition, Emanuel selected sixty-one works from fifty-two artists
from all over the country, including two vivid oil pastels, which
debut here, by the celebrated Bay Area ceramist David Gilhoooly. The
drawings, paintings, prints, photos, multimedia works, and
sculptures make for a provocative and diverse show reflecting
current agonies and ecstasies. In purely formal terms, the classic
realism of Bartells, Borso, Canaga, Cox, Golightly, Howard-Page,
Wallin, and Weissblum contrasts with the modernist abstraction and
refiguration of Gilhooly, Harwood, Hutson, Kaldis, Kubow, Leinow,
Stern. In terms of emotional freight, the lyricism (whether
realistic of fantastic) of Allen, Bokhour, Bushnell, Carmi, Delia,
Downes, Flejter, Hill, Leinow, Mansker, Scott, Stevens, and Zich
contrasts with the humor of Blumberg, Bonath, Browne, Featherstone,
Heimburger, Kaldis, Klimaszewski, Kroeger, L'Heureux, and Swenson.
Finally, if we consider the scope of the themes expressed, the
public arena of sexual politics as seen in Alvarado, Badenhausen,
Belair-Rigdon, McEwin, Scheid, Schmidt, Schultz, and Sills contrasts
with the private arena of ambiguous personal narrative as seen in
Aronson, Cross, Hunter, Pierce, Romoff, Torano, Vasilevich, and
Weinblatt.
Of course this schema is an oversimplification
which fails to do justice to the works: artists don't merely
illustrate theories, and many of these pieces operate on several
levels of meaning. Within the context of the exhibition, however,
the multiple perspectives do compete with and complement each other,
as partners do, forming a whole greater than the sum of its parts,
and providing a vibrant group portrait-with sixty-one heads, no
less-of the state of the romantic arts, America, third millennium
CE.
DeWitt Cheng
Beaux & Eros Gala
Provocative
Art
Romantic Music
Scrumptious Refreshments
and
Tango!
"Beaux & Eros", the first annual Gala event
created by the Peninsula Museum of Art to support its Building Fund,
will celebrate the arts of romance just in time for Valentine's Day
at the Peninsula Museum of Art. The Gala will be held Saturday, Feb.
11, from 8 p.m. to midnight in the Museum in Belmont's Twin Pines
Park.
An exhibition of aesthetically wonderful original
art honoring Valentine's Day in all of its moods (romantic, erotic,
humorous, sensual, imaginative, fantastic, surreal) will create the
ambiance for the Gala. |
