by Nina Beckwith

1st appeared 28 September2000

NINA'S ARTS NOTES

Peaceable Kingdoms

The dear old De Young Museum is going out in glory.

The Museum closes on December 31 to be replaced in 2005 by a shining new structure on the same site in Golden Gate Park.

But what a wonderful farewell! The old De Young’s last two exhibitions are both glorious, the kind to draw you back time and time again from now until the end of the year. The UCSF Parnassus community is just a lunchtime hop, skip and jump away, and both of these shows would be great weekend fun for the whole family.

Edward Hicks, a Pennsylvania Quaker called America’s greatest and most beloved folk painter, and Chiura Obata, a Californian of Japanese origin who taught for many years at UC Berkeley, lived a century apart and depicted very different worlds, but their grand common theme was nature.

At some time, many of us have seen one of Edward Hicks’ paintings of lions lying down in harmony with lambs in leafy forests, bears with cows, leopards with baby goats, and angel children hovering over them all in The Peaceable Kingdom.

From this delightful show we learn that Hicks, who lived from 1780 to 1849, painted Peaceable Kingdoms almost all his life. No fewer than 27 of them are on view at the De Young, along with a delightfully imagined Noah’s Ark, pastoral scenes of early 19^th century farm life and historical views, such as Washington crossing the Delaware. William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania and also a Quaker, is often shown by Hicks in the background of a Peaceable Kingdom signing his treaty with the Indians, one of the few that was respected.

This exhibition comes to us from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center at Colonial Williamsburg. Its Curator of Museums, Caroline J. Weekley, has written a very fine illustrated book about Hicks and his Kingdoms which is available in the Museum shop.

In adjoining galleries at the De Young are enthralling paintings and drawings by Chiura Obata (1885-1975) whose art encompasses both traditional Japanese and contemporary European and American techniques and conventions.

Obata was born in Japan and began his art studies there with sumi, the Japanese black ink he employed throughout his career along with watercolor and colored inks. (At this show there is a short video of Obata later in life creating scenes and a lifelike fish with only a few magical ink brushstrokes.)

Obata emigrated to San Francisco in 1903, encountering a period of anti-Asian racism. While learning English, he supported himself by working as a domestic servant and as an illustrator for Japanese-American papers. His sketches made in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire remain among its most important artistic records.

Obata was deeply influenced by his encounter with the California landscape and by the writings of the great naturalist John Muir. A visit to Yosemite in 1927 was a turning point in Obata’s life. Many of his poetic portraits of Great Nature are in the De Young show, including the large, startlingly vivid Sunset, Sacramento Valley of 1925. He wrote of another painting called Lake in High Sierra: "Man’s very soul and body seem to melt away into the singular silence of the surrounding air."

To reach a broader audience, Obata created the World Landscape Series -- a portfolio of 35 woodblock prints of California scenes which took Japanese artisans 18 months to complete. (Some are available on cards in the Museum shop.)

In 1932 Obata was appointed an assistant professor of art at UC Berkeley where he taught until he and his family were sent to a desert internment camp in Topaz, Utah, in 1942 and again after his release in 1945 until he retired in 1954. He made many very moving sumi drawings of the camp experience. Some of them with his journals and letters are included in a book edited by his granddaughter Kimi Kodani Hill called Topaz Moon: Art of the Internment published by Heyday Books, Berkeley, and available at the Museum shop.

Human figures almost never appear in Obata’s work. An exception is the full-length portrait of his wife called Mother Earth, being donated to the SF Fine Arts Museums by the Obata family.

EDWARD HICKS FAMILY DAY at the Museum is Saturday, October 7, from 10:30 until noon. Special programs for children.

OBATA FAMILY DAY is Saturday, November 4, same hours.

Children free after Museum admission.

De Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, 75 Tea Garden Drive. Open 9:30 to 5, Tues. through Sun., to 8:45 p.m. first Wednesday of the month when admission is free. Information 415/863-3330.

Or rather Frank Loesser’s "HCA," which opened the American Conservatory Theater season as a world premiere adaptation of the 1952 movie starring Danny Kaye about the Danish author of the famous fairy tales.

Direction and choreography are by Martha Clarke, famous for having actors and dancers fly through the air which happens to almost everyone in this large wired cast. The main characters have doubles who fly, and there is even a chimney sweep who does nothing else but fly.

The good Frank Loesser songs are there -- "Wonderful Copenhagen," "No Two People," "Thumbelina" and "The Ugly Duckling" -- and Sebastian Barry has written a new book. The star is John Glover, Tony and Obie Award Winner for Terrence McNally’s "Love!Valour!Compassion!" and he is very good as Hans Christian Andersen (he flies, too, as does his top-hatted double).

Glover is a fine actor and holds it all together, or tries to. He has a superb scene at the opening of Act Two when he stands alone on the stage -- -nobody flying around -- and tells the story of the teapot who becomes a broken flowerpot but is happy to hold a bud which will bloom. Otherwise the show seems disjointed though it’s fun to look at and the Dickens-era costumes are wonderful. What’s missing is Danny Kaye’s manic energy.

Frank Loesser’s Hans Christian Andersen, evenings at 8, Wed. Sat. & Sun. at 2, at A.C.T.’s glorious Geary Theatre, Tickets at Box Office Geary at Mason, 4l5/749-2228, or online & BASS outlets. Closes October 8.

The wonderful Chancellor’s Concert Series is about to begin its new season.

If you’ve been to these concerts you know that they are a deeply rewarding interval in the working week. If you are new, do try to get to at least one of these lunchtime musical offerings to understand why they have become a precious campus custom.

The musicians are all first-rate; most of them are from the SF Symphony and/or are faculty members at the SF Conservatory of Music. The atmosphere is relaxed. But these concerts have become so popular that it isn’t easy to find a seat unless you get there right on time- -- or a little ahead.

Free Chancellor’s Concert Series is at noon on Thursdays at Cole Hall, 513 Parnassus.

12 -12.15: Seating and brown bag lunch okay

12.15 -12.45: Concert (eating discouraged)

Below is the fall schedule of concerts. Check updates at the Empact! Presents website :

A San Francisco resident for 20 years, Nina Beckwith is a longtime arts writer and music critic and a former Time magazine overseas correspondent. She was founding editor of the UC Berkeley Library newsletter Bene Legere and worked for six years with the late Dr. Peter Ostwald, Director of the UCSF Health Program for Performing Artists.

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