MISS BIGELOW'S BABBLE-ON

Confab Of Culturati

by Catherine Bigelow

Double G: “They look so innocent,” cooed a guest at the excloo, sneak-peek dinner at the de Young prior to the opening of the Museum’s exhibition, Gilbert & George.
   Indeed, they did. Dressed in almost matching faun-colored suits accented with colorful ties of their artwork, it’s easy to picture artists Gilbert Proesch and George Passmore sipping tea with the Queen.

The Gilbert & George gallery at the de Young

   Fine Arts Museums Director John Buchanan introduced the dynamic duo as, “their own greatest work of art.”
   But before leading guests into the gallery, he warned, “Due to some works’ subject matter, Gilbert and George might need to provide Mrs. Wilsey with a fainting couch.”
   Well, Mrs. (Dede) Wilsey survived. Even joking she was thrilled to have such a cutting edge show at the de Young, as her idea of “contemporary art” comprises artists like Monet and Renoir.
   Sotheby’s is the show’s lead sponsor, presented in conjunction with the vaunted Tate Modern in London (G&G’s hometown).
   So it was that Sotheby’s poobahs, Anthony Grant (Senior VP of Contemporary Art in New York) and Jennifer Biederbeck (Senior VP of Sotheby’s San Francisco), hosted the swanky supper (served in the Piazzoni Murals room by Taste Catering’s MeMe Pedersen) that included vaunted visitors, too: Tate Modern Director Vicente Todoli; White Cube Gallery owner Jay Jopling; Brooklyn Museum Director Arnold Lehman and the Rijksmuseum’s Jan Rudolph de Lorm.

Gilbert Proesch, Anthony Grant, John Buchanan, George Passmore

   As well as our own sparklies: Mayor Gavin Newsom and Jennifer Siebel; Cissie Swig; Andrew & Mary Pilara; Doug Biederbeck; Ken & Judy Siebel; Frank & Kay Woods; Barnaby Conrad; Becca Prowda & Daniel Lurie; Marion Cope and Judy & Harry Camp.
   The gallery has never looked better — G&G designed and oversaw the placement of each and every work.
   “The museum feels like it has been made for us,” teased Gilbert. “But
not many people realize how rare access like this to contemporary art is.”
   The works of G&G are large-scale, bright, colorful, powerful, clever and, often, comical. “If you squint your eyes,” observed Ann Fisher, “It’s almost like you’re in a church.”
   From afar, they could well be stained-glass windows. But upon closer inspection, the works and G&G themselves are something more, much, much more, altogether.

Sotheby’s P.S.: Roger Barnett and Andre de Baubigny attended the G&G dinner. And their wives, Sloan Barnett and Juliet de Baubigny, and Juliet’s Kleiner Perkins partner, Shawn Byers and his wife, Brook Byers, were also at a Sotheby’s event. But one held at the mother ship in New York.
   That sizzling soiree was the (Auction) RED of contemporary art works (curated by Damien Hirst) on Valentine’s Day in support of the United Nations Foundation to support HIV/AIDS relief programs in Africa that is conducted by the Global Fund.
   Juliet is a (Product) RED board member along with Bobby Shriver, Tom Freston and that hunky heartthrob hero, Bono, who dreamed up the foundation with pal Shriver.
   Organized by the Gagosian Gallery and Sotheby’s Worldwide Head of Contemporary Art Tobias Meyer (also at the G&G dinner the night before with his Sotheby’s colleague, Melissa Siebel who is, yes, the sister of Jennifer Siebel), the auction raised a whopping $42 million in one fell swoop.
  
Brava, brava: Beautiful music was made at the Ritz-Carlton where some 600 Swells gathered for the San Francisco Opera’s 25th Medallion Society Luncheon.
    “At our founding lunch we had just 200,” said Opera Board president George Hume. “I can’t tell you how important the Medallion Society is to the Opera. Its 340 members, which are about 10 percent of all our donors, provide a full 80 percent of the Opera’s annual fund.”
     Among this crowd of current Medallioners were 25 original members, including Anne Giannini McWilliams; Bill Godward; Peggy & Reid Dennis; Cathie & Pitch Johnson and George’s mom, Betty Hume.
   In addition to a post-lunch performance by the dazzling 2008 Adler Fellows (led by director Sheri Greenawald) the equally dazzling Director David Gockley honored two stalwart Medallion supporters with the Spirit of the Opera award.

Harriet Quarré, David Gockley and Dede Wilsey at the the SF Opera’s Medallion Lunch

   “Words fail me in trying to describe what Dede has accomplished not only for the opera but all the arts in San Francisco,” said Gockley of dynamo Dede Wilsey.
   He recalled a board meeting where the topic was fundraising. A note was passed down the table to Gockley who opened it and read, “What’s the matter with you guys? Why haven’t you come to me for a contribution? Just call me and give me a number. Then send an envelope to my house and I’ll mail the check. No stamp necessary.”
   Harriet Quarré, a lifelong opera supporter carrying on the legacy of her parents, Wilson & Mabel Meyer, was also trumpeted.
   “Harriet is not only the founder and former president of the Medallion Society,” Gockley told the crowd, “that also means she has attended over 30 years of board meetings!”
   Gockley was not only impressed with Harriet’s “enthusiasm and evangelism” for the opera but her “people” skills were lauded, too.
   “She is probably the only person I know who, for a parade to celebrate the opera, could convince Placido Domingo to ride a horse.”

Felicitacions: French Consul General Pierre-François Mourier and his wife, Rachel Mourier, hosted a fine fête to celebrate international culture and relations. And non, not those of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
   Rather, ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff was the woman of the hour as glasses of Champagne were raised to toast her induction as a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres.
   Among the cheering culturati: Perloff’s husband, Anthony Giles, and their son, Nicholas; Phyllis & Bill Draper; SF Film Society honcho Graham Leggat; ACT Executive Director Heather Kitchen; Nancy Livingston & Fred Levin; French Consulate cultural attaché Christophe Musitelli; Dagmar Dolby; choreographer Val Caniparoli; Phil & Chris Bronstein, and playwright Philip Kan Gotanda.
   “You are an artist whose vibrant career has contributed to French culture. Your talent, very simply is quite impressive,” pronounced Mourier as he presented the snazzy medal to Perloff. “You embody what we used to call in the 18th century ‘The Enlightenment.’”
   Perloff and company co-present a production of Phedre this summer at the Stratford Festival in Ontario that may make its way to the stage of the Geary Theater.
    “Phedre is like climbing the mountaintop of French culture. It has the most beautiful dialogue I’ve ever heard combined with the most sexual heat of any French play,” enthused Perloff, mischeviously. “Now that I’m a Chevalier, I think I’m finally ready for it!”
  
Backstage Pass: ’Twas a starry, starry night over at Berkeley Rep for the opening of Wishful Drinking, the one-woman show (directed by Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone, through March 30) written and performed by Hollywood royal (and inter-galactic princess) Carrie Fisher. Sparkling among the first-nighters: Star Wars director George Lucas, songbird Bonnie Rait and pal Stefanie Coyote, cabaret performer Meg Mackay, pianist Billy Philadelphia, Jean & Michael Strunksy and Marcia Smolens & her husband, Berkeley Rep Board President Richard Rubin.
   During the show, Carrie cracked to the audience (wherein sat her famous...and infamously divorced...parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher...in separate balconies, natch), “They get back together during intermission and are finally going to raise me right!”
   Back at the Magic Theatre, a world premiere of Tir Na Nog (The Land of Youth) just debuted, this, the latest from renowned author Edna O’Brien.
   Directed by Magic artistic director Chris Smith, the play (through March 23) weaves traditional music and dance (by Riverdance’s Jean Butler) throughout the work, which is billed as a look back on O’Brien’s first (and once scandalous) novel, The Country Girls.
   “But I didn’t even look at The Country Girls,” said O’Brien, who when in town bunks with good pals Ann & Gordon Getty. “In Ireland, songs and music, what is the word? Well, they are just everywhere. They’re in the atmosphere; they are embedded in the unconscious. I love the old Gaelic songs of my country. I suddenly remembered The Country Girls and thought, ‘There was, or is, or shall be, more to that world than just the voyage of these two girls.’
   “So I gathered together all the other characters in my mental landscapes and all the characters I knew from growing up: poets drunks, fraudsters, yearning men. And yearning women.
    “Working with music and dance is wonderfully freeing,” trilled this Celtic Scheherazade. “I wanted to create something new and something old. The depths, the emotions, which are timeless.”
   O’Brien is thrilled to work again with Smith; this is their third Magic production but just the first time Smith has directed O’Brien.
   “We’ve been through the wars together,” laughed O’Brien of their collaboration. “Some of the scenes are only two minutes long, like a river. But the cast and crew is not a piece of nature. We’re people, and chairs, and things. There is a lot to move around!”
  
Big Screen: Another Valentine’s Day celebration, one with a very EssEff flavor, took place at Herbst Theater, where filmmakers Geoff Callan and Matt Kennedy hosted a screening of Pursuit of Equality.

Filmmaker Geoff Callan & Hilary Newsom Callan

   This was a fourth anniversary premiere of the “never-seen before, updated version of the film” chronicling that historic Winter of Love when Geoff’s brother-in-law, Mayor Gavin Newsom, allowed the marriages of some 4,000 same-sex couples.
   The event also served as a pre-rally for the Marriage Equality case, oral arguments for which are currently heard by the California Supreme Court.
    Pursuit event sponsors AT&T and PG&E sent all 1000 guests home with a copy of the film.
   “The point being,” said Geoff, “that now that you’ve seen the film, pass it on to someone else you know who NEEDS to see the film. If for nothing else but to understand the marriage equality issue.”
  
Tasteful Mommies: Arriving home from work, Trevor Traina entered his glamorous Gold Coast crib only to find it filled with well-dressed wee folk careening around the elegant black-and-white marble courtyard.
   “This house was never designed for this,” said Trevor, laughing, even as primary-colored balloons floated against the glass ceiling.
   But with his marriage to Alexis Swanson and the birth of their son, Johnny Traina, last spring, Trevor’s swinging bachelor days are but a glimpse in that rear-view mirror of life.

Shannan Swanson (left) with Liane Weintraub and Alexis Traina

   As such, Alexis was hosting a mommies-and-kiddies’ Tea Party for the launch of Tastybaby. This new line of frozen, organic purees is the brainchild of Alexis’ cousin, Shannan Swanson and Shannan’s best friend, Liane Weintraub, both of whom live in LA with their husbands and young children.
     The ladies each bring their own talents to the company: Shannan is a former private chef who studied at the Cordon Bleu and develops the menu line; Liane is a former journalist who serves as editor of tastybaby.com, a lively website of blogs, new recipes and celebrity-mommy interviews.
    Their colorful, well-designed (and yummy) label of frozen organic baby purée (available at Whole Foods) bears such clever names as Peas on Earth, Kickin’ Chicken and Hip 2B Pear.
      But it’s not just for baby, as Alexis proved at her party. The grown-ups were also munching on Sweetie Pie Cupcakes and sipping Life’s a Peach Bellinis, which were created for Stella McCartney at a Tastybaby launch party at the designer’s LA boutique.
       And filed under the “Wait, there’s more” category, the line also features biodegradable packaging.
      “The visual of organic food is too often dull green or beige,” says Shannan, a sun-kissed blonde by way of Texas. “We wanted to create something that has all the fun of a bag of Cheetos but it’s good for you.”
   For Liane, it was during her first pregnancy that she realized her world was supposed to change.
   “You become a mom and, suddenly, you’re not supposed to be stylish anymore,” said the tall, stylish brunette who also happens to be a goddaughter of Barbara Walters. “That was part of our inspiration in creating a colorful and fun product.”
  
Tasty Tidbits: The Swell set now has a swanky new joint to call their own: Le Club — in the landmark 1250 Jones Building atop Nob Hill — officially (and finally) opened last week.
   This is the latest food venture by native son, Todd Traina, and his partner, Gina Milano. Chef Bob Cina serves up old-school classics such as steak tartare and baked Alaska as well as a a late-night (up to 1 AM and woo-hoo) menu featuring lights bites like fondue and caviar.
   Aside from a pool table in the Billiard Room, guests may also partake of valet service (parking truly is impossible in this tony nabe) or be ferried home in style via a town car bearing the license plate, 2LeClub.
   C’est chic, indeed, sweetie.
   At the Basic Brown book-signing party Wilkes Bashford hosted (photos on pg. 6) for his newly minted literati pal, Willie Brown, a guest asked Da Mayor’s wife, Blanche Brown, to inscribe their book.
    “Blanche signed it, ‘The keeper of all the secrets,’” said Brown, with a hoot. “And that’s the truth, too!”
  
Single in EssEff: The Gazette’s red-hot Eligible Singles’ Party is still in the planning stages. Watch this space or online for an update on the party deets.
 In related news, a Valentine’s Day gathering was hosted at Hyde St. Gallery (near Swenson’s Ice Cream Parlor at the corner of Union) celebrating the works of artist Patrick Madden.
       Within this elegant, jewel box-sized space we met gallerist W. Scott Harkonen, who opened the gallery in December and features local (hyper local — talented Madden is a Russian Hill neighbor) artists.
   But the gallery is sort of a sideline for Harkonen. By day, he’s president-CEO of Comentis, a biotech firm developing drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease, age-related macular degeneration and cognitive disorders. Harkonen also sports the initials, M.D., after his name.
   And ladies? He’s single.

   Catherine Bigelow is a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter and columnist. She welcomes any juicy quips, quotes or anecdotes at catherine@nobhillgazette.com.

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