From India to France, SF is offering up a cosmopolitan bouquet of art for the weekend
Pissarro’s People’
“Pissarro’s People,” opening this weekend at the Legion of Honor, brings together more than 100 paintings, showing his humanistic viewpoint through portraits of his family and paintings of working class people. Pissarro was the most modest of the impressionists, the most committed to their ideas, the most politically radical, and for us, the least known.
Those who believe impressionism viewed the world through misty idealistic glasses should ponder Pissarro's commitment to "our modern philosophy, which is absolutely social, antiauthoritarian and antimystical ... a robust art based on sensation,"- a philososphy expressed in paint in this exhibit.
Pissarro may have looked like an old testament prophet but he was always the most politically radical of the Impressionists; the exhibit includes an album of his political drawings along with a series of utopian landscapes representing life after the hoped-for social revolution. [Oct. 22-Jan. 22, $6-$10, Legion of Honor, 100 34th Ave., Lincoln Park, S.F., (415) 750-3600, www.legionofhonor.famsf.org]
Opening at the Asian on Friday: Maharaja, the Splendor of India's Royal Courts. There is a lot more than jewelry on view in the show although what there is dazzles. The beautifully installed exhibit offers a panoramic view of almost 200 years of Indian history, told through the art work of Indian's many kingdoms. From the first European contact in the 17th century to the end of British rule in the 20th, the show traces the steady increase of European influence and the decrease of the power of the Maharajas. The power that they displayed through conspicuous consumption was largely illusory. But that of the British Crown was real and becomes the core of the story told in this exhibition.
Richard Serra Drawings at SFMOMA. SFMOMA has six of his sculptures, and eight more will be seen when the Donald and Doris Fisher Collection opens in the museum’s new wing. The show features about 70 drawings from some 40 years of Serra’s career, along with sketchbooks tracing his ideas and methods. Since 1974, Serra has made wall-size abstractions using oil-based crayons. [Oct. 15-April 8, $11-$18, SFMOMA,
151 Third St., S.F., (415) 357-4000, www.sfmoma.org]
http://www.examiner.com/museum-in-san-francisco/richard-serra-drawings-at-sfmoma
Alcartraz: Symposium on Justice and Freedom
In programmatic partnership with the National Park Service, We Players - a dynamic young theater company, has been creating site-specific theater events addressing the themes of incarceration, isolation, justice and redemption on Alcatraz Island since 2009. This October 2011, the company will culminate the historic three-year artistic residency with a four day symposium exploring justice and freedom through diverse media. Symposium events will occur throughout the island and will include: performance art, music, dance, visual art exhibitions, guest lectures and panel discussions with formerly incarcerated artists as well as victim awareness activists.
http://www.weplayers.org/
SF Open Studios, Weekend 4
The city's northeast is the focus for Weekend 4, October 22 & 23, including Fort Mason, the Marina, Pacific Heights, Russian Hill, North Beach, and the Financial District. Fort Mason is a particular hot spot that weekend. Bay Area Printmakers, a collective of more than 25 artists, as well as The Nocturnes, a Bay Area based collective of night photographers, will both be setting up shop at Fort Mason.
http://www.artspan.org/
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