memories of home that inspired a master

Balenciaga
and Spain
MEMORIES OF HOME THAT INSPIRED A MASTER
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· THE EXAMINER
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THE EXAMINER ·
Most natural-looking
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Thank you
Our gratitude to the following
for their assistance with this
project:
Cover: Cristóbal Balenciaga. Detail of evening
dress of embroidered white satin with bronze
taffeta sash, winter 1950. Collection of The
Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Photography by Craig McDean.
Page 4: Cristóbal Balenciaga. “Infanta” evening
dress, 1939. Photograph by George HoyningenHuene. © R.J. Horst. Courtesy Staley/Wise
Gallery, NYC. Inset: Diego Velazquez, Portrait of
the Infanta Maria-Margarita daughter of Felipe IV,
King of Spain. Louvre, Paris. Photo: Erich Lessing/
Art Resource, NY.
Balenciaga. Scarlet silk ottoman evening coat
with capelet collar, autumn/winter 1954-1955.
Collection of The Costume Institute of The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photograph by Craig
McDean. (bottom) Cristóbal Balenciaga. Bolero
of garnet velvet and black jet embroidery, winter
1947. Collection of The Costume Institute of The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photograph by Craig
McDean.
Page 10: Portrait of Cristóbal Balenciaga (circa
1952). ©Bettmann/CORBIS.
Page 5: (left) Cristóbal Balenciaga. Crimson
silk velvet evening coat with double collar, 19501951. Collection of The Costume Institute of The
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photograph by Craig
McDean. (right) Cristóbal Balenciaga. Rear view of
day dress of black silk bengaline and velvet, winter
1947. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of
Mrs. Eloise Heidland. Photo by Joe McDonald/Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Page 6: (left) Cristóbal Balenciaga. Evening
ensemble of black silk gazar and wool, ca. 1951. Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco. Gift of Elise Haas.
Photo by Joe McDonald/Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco. (right) Cristóbal Balenciaga. Black silk
cocktail hat with silk rose. Collection of Hamish
Bowles. Photo by Kenny Komer.
Page 9: (top left) Cristóbal Balenciaga. Coat
of black silk ottoman, ca. 1939. Collection of
Hamish Bowles. Photo by Joe McDonald/Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco. (top right) Cristóbal
Page 11: (clockwise from top left) House
photograph of evening gown of turquoise silk gauze,
summer 1958. Courtesy Balenciaga Archive. Studio
drawing of ball gown of black tulle, silk-satin ribbons
and silk fringe tassels, winter 1957. Courtesy
Balenciaga Archives. Studio drawing of day dress
of indigo linen, summer 1958. Courtesy Balenciaga
Archives. Cocktail hat of ivory silk satin, 1953.
Originally published in Vogue, October 15, 1953.
Photo: John Rawlings. Sketch and house photograph
courtesy Balenciaga Archives. Portrait of Balenciaga
courtesy AP/File photo.
Page 15: Portrait of Hamish Bowles by Arthur
Elgort.
John P. Wilcox Publisher
Deirdre Hussey Executive editor
Terry Forte Design director
Steven Winn Writer
Longtime San Francisco journalist and
critic Steven Winn wrote The Treasures
of Tutankhamun supplement for the
de Young Museum’s 2009 exhibition. He
has contributed to ARTNews, Humanities, the New York Times and many other
publications. His memoir, Come Back,
Como: Winning the Heart of a Reluctant Dog (Harper), is out in paperback.
The San Francisco Examiner is
published Sunday through Friday
by the S.F. Newspaper Company,
LLC. The Examiner is located at
71 Stevenson St., Second Floor;
San Francisco, CA 94105
Pages 16-17: Photos by Jill Lynch.
Page 21: Cristóbal Balenciaga. Detail of cocktail
dress of rose peau de soie and black lace, winter
1948. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, gift of
Mrs. C. H. Russell. Photo by Joe McDonald/Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco.
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■
21
· THE EXAMINER
Hamish Bowles
Oscar de la Renta
■ Balenciaga, Paris
■ Gael Mamine and the
Balenciaga Archive
■ Agustín Medina
Balenciaga
■ Sonsoles Diez de Rivera
■ Irene Seco Serra and
Concha Herranz,
Museo del Traje
■ Antonio Lopez Fuentes
and Fermín Sastrería de
Toreros
■ Museo Taurino, Madrid
■ Escuela Taurina de Madrid
■ Casa Patas, Madrid
■ Auxi Fernandes
■ Pasiones Flamencas
■ Anton Küng and
The Ritz Hotel, Madrid
■ The Queen Sofia
Spanish Institute
■ Elena Diaz García
■ Simon Butler-Madden
■ Abercrombie and Kent,
Europe
■ The Spanish Tourist
Office, LA
■
Photo credits
20
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THE EXAMINER ·
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187669
THE EXAMINER ·
18
17
· THE EXAMINER
Lacemakers and embroiderers still ply their traditional, intricate crafts
in Madrid, creating materials that Balenciaga incorporated into his
modern creations.
ring in 1947 — was intrinsic to Balenciaga’s bold
aesthetic.
The forces that shaped Balenciaga live on in
every neighborhood, in dress shops, flamenco
dance studios and the cramped apartment of
lacemaker Elena Díaz García. Seated at a dining room table, where she and her husband were
creating a lace first-communion dress that would
take months to make, Díaz García remarked on
Balenciaga’s skill at incorporating lace into his
designs.
“He took traditional lace and made it look
modern,” she said, a swarm of wooden bobbins
clicking gently as she spoke and worked.
Then she made a deeper connection, between
the aspiration of her craft and his.
“What differentiates him from the other great
couturiers,” said the lacemaker, “was the fineness
of his stitching, the ability to hide the sewing and
hide the seams and achieve the perfection others
were not able to do.”
Bullfighting tailor Antonio Lopez Fuentes
offered another perspective. As his male clients
came and went from his shop, piled high with
resplendent capes and trajes des luces (suits of
light), Fermin emerged from the workroom with
a tape measure around his neck. After speaking
for a while about material that must be sturdy
and bloodstain-resistant for the combat of the
ring, the tailor imagined Balenciaga’s synthesizing
point of view.
“When you think of cut and the narrow waist
The spirit of bullfighting thrives in
Spain’s capital city.
Youths practice the
art of the toreadors,
above, hoping to
perform it one day
in, the city’s grand
bullring, left.
of these costumes,” said Lopez Fuentes, “there is a
certain feminine characteristic of the bullfighter.”
Then the doorbell rang, and a Mexican matador
came in to pick up his suit.
Almost 40 years after his death, Balenciaga is
braided into the broad stream of Spanish cultural
life. And for some, he’s etched into the mind’s eye
of memory. Receiving guests at the Royal Suite
of the Madrid Ritz, the designer’s grandnephew
Agustín Medina Balenciaga described his famous
relative as private, self-contained and “aware of his
own talent” yet “not vulnerable to compliments.”
At heart, he went on, this artist who spent his
life making women look gorgeous “was a mystic
person. The work he did was always about a rigorous search for beauty.” — S.W.
THE EXAMINER ·
16
Tailor to
the matadors,
Antonio Lopez
Fuentes creates
traje de luces in his
Madrid atelier,
Sastrería Fermín.
muse Madrid
The
that
is
Cultural traditions have deep roots in Spain’s historic capital
MADRID
tanding by a softly lit display of Balenciaga
dresses at the Museo del Traje (Museum
of Fashion and Costumes), curator Concha
Herranz admired the contours of a sleek black
evening gown. It appeared to be made from a
single piece of supple, molded fabric.
“Balenciaga cut in a way that used as few
seams as possible,” Herranz explained through an
interpreter. “See how he draws the dress out of the
material? He was an architect of fashion.”
Another example of the master’s work caught
the curator’s eye, for the play of stiff and pliable
materials and decorative flourishes that recall a
bullfighter’s costume. Still another dress — with a
prettily scalloped scarlet neckline, primly gathered
waist and a cascade of creamy folded silk that
S
reached the floor — looked “very theatrical, like
a movie dress” to Herranz. It made her think of
Holy Week. “You can just imagine someone carrying candles,” she mused.
Balenciaga sets the imagination aloft. Here
in the country’s largest city, where Balenciaga
ran one of his three Spanish dressmaking shops
before moving to Paris, a visitor can find many
of the sights and cultural wellsprings that fed his
vibrant, meticulous and quintessentially Spanish
art.
Some of those influences are in plain view.
Visit the Museo del Prado and there are the magnificently robed saints by Zurbarán that combine
holiness and visual high drama. Balenciaga knew
them well. At the choice Sorolla Museum, paint-
ings by the Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla
y Bastida brim over with sparkling light and
depictions of the boldly colored native costumes
the couturier often incorporated into his designs.
Inside Madrid’s grand bullfighting arena,
which commands the Plaza Monumental de las
Ventas, a museum displays splendid 19th- and
20th-century matador costumes, capes, caps and
other items of ceremonial combat between man
and beast. Balenciaga admired and emulated the
lavish embroidery and lustrous gold braiding on
exhibit here. And even though he disliked the
spectacle of bullfighting itself, its high-stakes theatricality — vividly preserved in the majestic bulls’
heads on the walls and the bloodied suit revered
matador Manolete wore the day he died in the
15
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THE EXAMINER ·
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188295
•
substance
H
amish Bowles, the guest curator of
Balenciaga and Spain, knows a great deal
about a great many things in the fashion
universe. As European editor at large for Vogue, he
profiles the fashion cognoscenti and embarks upon
experiential journeys, bringing his unique sense of
style to surfing lessons or surviving in the woods.
In 2001, he curated the critically acclaimed exhibition Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Bowles
is also the author of books on Yves Saint Laurent and
Carolina Herrera, as well as the catalogue to Balenciaga and Spain, among others. He’s justly deemed
“the British style maharishi” by Interview.
Like Balenciaga, Bowles found his true calling
early. As a child, he collected clothing from thrift
stores around London. Today he owns more than
2,000 pieces.
A special light comes into the curator’s eyes when
he talks about the Spanish master.
“What’s truly extraordinary about Balenciaga,”
Bowles says, “is that from 1937 to his retirement in
1968 he was constantly pushing himself and honing his design ideas. It’s an extraordinary and very
unusual trajectory. On the eve of his retirement, when
he was in his 70s, his clothes became as abstract and
experimental as anything he had ever produced as a
young man. Balenciaga was never satisfied with resting on his laurels.” — S.W.
INSPIRING HOMES TO MATCH YOUR COUTURE
188556
415.431.8888 | climbSF.com
· THE EXAMINER
&
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13
THE EXAMINER ·
12
THROUGH JUN 5, 2011
Isabelle de Borchgrave uses the medium of
paper to form trompe l’oeil masterpieces
��������������������������������������������
pieces will be included from Renaissance
costumes and gowns worn by Elizabeth I and
Marie-Antoinette to the grand couture
creations of Dior, Chanel and Fortuny. The
�����������������������������������������
to host an overview of the artist’s work.
This exhibition is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of
San Francisco and sponsored by Lonna Wais. Additional support
is provided by Garry McGuire and Nathalie Delrue-McGuire,
Jamie and Philip Bowles, and Elizabeth W. Vobach. Collection
Connections is made possible by The Annenberg Foundation.
Image: Isabelle de Borchgrave, Maria de’ Medici
���������������������������������������������������
Alessandro Allori in the collection of the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Photo: Andreas von Einsiedel
188594
Lincoln Park, San Francisco
34th Avenue and Clement Street
��������������������������������
P
11
· THE EXAMINER
ublicity-shy to the point of reclusive, where you
put it on,” she said. “It just clings
monastically devoted to his craft
to your body so perfectly, and it’s so comand boundlessly inventive in a realm
fortable to wear. The dresses of Balenciaga
that often rewards brash showmanship
are nearly more beautiful on the inside than
and market-tuned imitation, the Spaniard
the outside.”
Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972) was an
It’s an astute and telling remark. A
improbable figure to dominate the fiercely
defining feature of Balenciaga’s work is its
competitive world of 20th-century Parisian
structural integrity, the soundness of the
haute couture. But dominate he did for
garments’ construction from the inside out.
more than three decades, from 1937 to
Whether he was capturing the flare of a
1968, with designs of unequaled elegance,
flamenco dancer’s skirt in a stiff silk gauze
searching innovation, technical mastery
or creating a tiny margin of air between a
and lyrical grace.
woman’s body and the dress for a floating
“Haute couture is like an orchestra, for
and flowing effect, Balenciaga, who began
which only Balenciaga is the conductor,”
his career as a tailor’s apprentice, was a
said Christian Dior, his most formidable
peerless craftsman. Almost alone among
rival. “The rest of us are just musicians,
his contemporaries, he continued to cut
following the directions he gives us.” The
and personally make clothes throughout his
English photographer and designer Cecil
career. Coco Chanel called Balenciaga “the
Beaton called him “fashion’s Picasso,” notonly couturier.” All the others, she said, “are
ing that “underneath all of his experiments
just draughtsmen.”
with the modern, Balenciaga has a deep
Balenciaga came to his calling early.
respect for tradition and a pure classic line.” Born
to a family of very modest means in
His impact and influence were immense, the Basqu
e fishing town of Guetaria on
not only on other designers but on the
Jan. 21, 1895, he made his first coat at age
broader fashion zeitgeist. “Almost every
6. His client was the family cat. At 11, he
woman, directly or indirectly,” declared
stopped an elegant woman of the town, the
Harper’s Bazaar in 1940, “has worn a
Marquesa de Casa Torres, and asked if he
Balenciaga.”
could make a copy of the Parisian suit she
He made his mark not by establishing
was wearing. He did, and well enough for
a generic house style and then tweakher to wear it.
ing it from one collection to the next, as
After his father’s death in 1906, which
many designers did. Instead, Balenciaga
forced his mother to find work as a seamkept pressing on to new modes of seeing
stress, Cristóbal went to work for a local
clothing and flattering the female form.
tailor at age 13. At 17, he made a wedding
And yet no matter how far he roamed, his
dress for his cousin. Two years later, he
distinctive touch — what the writer Celia
opened his first dressmaking shop, in San
Bertin called “the continuity of his style”
Sebastián. Soon thereafter he expanded to
— endured.
Barcelona and Madrid. With an eye on the
Tapping the deep roots of his Spanish
fashion capital of Paris, he bought pieces
heritage, Balenciaga found inspiration in
by Chanel, Madeleine Vionnet and other
flamenco and Velázquez paintings, clerical
French designers for inspiration. His clients
vestments and bullfighters’ boleros. Later, in
included members of Spain’s royal family.
designs that re-envisioned the female silhouPolitical turmoil uprooted him. With
ette with fluid and emphatic gestures that
the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in
flouted the traditional waistline, he created
1936, Balenciaga fled first to London and
his unfitted middy blouse and tunic dress, the then
went to Paris. In 1937, at 10 Avenue
barrel-line jacket and balloon dress.
Georges V, the House of Balenciaga
Balenciaga continued to expand the
opened for business. The place was serious,
envelope over the years, with designs that
almost sepulchral in atmosphere. The workinvoked Picasso and Miró or reimagined
rooms were hushed. Models were forbidden
the baby-doll dress. In 1952, he devised
to show their teeth when they smiled. The
the pillbox hat. Vogue described a buoyant
business was extremely well — and pri1957 mohair dress as “almost the equivalent vately
— run. By the late 1950s, the house
of bubble bath in froth.” He worked in new was
running a higher profit margin than
materials and synthetics while still employDior’s, which had six times the number of
ing his mastery of velvet and lace, damask
Balenciaga’s employees.
and satin. His color sense was sublime
The house closed for a while during
throughout a long and multifaceted career.
World War II. The 1948 death of a beloved
By turns sumptuously sculptural, decepfriend and colleague, the Franco-Russian
tively simple and audaciously abstract, his
milliner Vladzio Zawrorowski d’Attainville,
dresses were at once striking works of art in shook
Balenciaga so badly that he considvarious styles and consistently user-f riendly. ered
closing down again. In 1968, the year
His clients — including Pauline de Roththe student riots inflamed Paris, Balenciaga
schild, Helena Rubinstein and the Duchess abrup
tly shuttered his business for good.
of Windsor — loved wearing Balenciaga’s
He granted a single press interview in 1971
superbly made clothes. They looked beautiand died of a heart attack the following
ful in them and felt pampered and at ease.
year, on March 23, 1972.
Interviewed in her Madrid apartment
“The King is Dead,” mourned the trade
last fall, longtime Balenciaga client Sonjournal Women’s Wear Daily. No one in the
soles Diez de Rivera recalled a yellow dress
fashion world, and the wider universe of
the designer made for her, a piece she still
cultivated taste, would have thought that an
owns. “That dress has only the two seams
overstatement. — S.W.
THE EXAMINER ·
10
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9
· THE EXAMINER
Religious life
To an outsider, the sober, cloaklike drama of some Balenciaga
designs conveys a sculptural purity. “Ecclesiastical and clerical
clothing based on simple shapes and austere styles lent itself
to modernist interpretation outside Spain,” Lesley Ellis Miller
writes in Balenciaga (2005). But for the designer himself,
religious belief and inspiration were powerfully internalized.
He once thought he would become a priest, he attended
Mass faithfully and he displayed crucifixes and religious
statuary at home.
For Bowles, “the dress of the clergy and of devotional
Madonna figures has extraordinary resonance” in
Balenciaga’s work.The use of rich capes, simple cassocks,
nuns’ sculpted wimples, monastic hoods and embroidered
chasubles captures what Bowles calls “the dual nature of
Spanish Catholicism, characterized by the extreme
contrasts of severe austerity and extravagant luxury.”
Bullfighting
Balenciaga himself detested bullfighting and rarely visited the bullrings. But the glamour and sleek
lines of the costumes were irresistible. As early as 1939, his collections featured overt reworkings
of the matadors’ traje de luces (suit of lights), that glittering focal point of confrontation between
man and bull.The taut bolero jacket, with its braid trimming and borlones (pom-pom tassels), turned
up again and again in his work.
In later years, Balenciaga scattered bullfighting allusions widely, using a row of pom-poms on an
evening gown, adding a dramatic cape or playfully expanding and contracting the dimension of the
matadors’ headwear — the black montera or knotted silk headwrap.
Bullfighting remained an integral force in Balenciaga’s thinking. When Adolf Hitler considered
moving the couture houses to Germany during the occupation of Paris, the designer remarked that
he “might just as well take all the bulls to Berlin and try to train bullfighters there.”
THE EXAMINER ·
8
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7
· THE EXAMINER
Dance
If Balenciaga and Spain visitors can’t hear the infectious
pounding rhythms and seductive songs of flamenco, they’re
just not listening closely enough with their eyes. It’s all there
in the notelike flurries of lunares (polka dots), the melodic
sweep of a curved and ruffled hemline and the fluttering
grace notes of flounced skirts.
Characteristically, Balenciaga found his own tunes to play
from the traditional ruffled-train bata de cola dress — using
a single flounce here, a wild explosion of lunares there, a
voluptuous long train somewhere else. No detail escaped
him. He borrowed from the male flamenco dancer’s garb in
wittily reworked hats and torso-hugging forms. Balenciaga
utilized the foliate embroidery pattern from a flamenco
dancer’s shawl in one dress and a red-carnation print in
another.
THE EXAMINER ·
6
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188374
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k s $18
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Tickets
5
· THE EXAMINER
Regional dress
From his extensive travels in Spain, Balenciaga had direct and intimate knowledge
of his homeland’s regional dress. He never
forgot it, working native forms, materials
and embellishments into his own designs
throughout his career.
Fashion historian Colin McDowell
described Balenciaga as “a man homesick for
his own land to whom visual memories keep
returning.” From his own seaside town of
Guetaria, he could summon up the loose-fitting blouses worn by fishermen. In Navarra,
he found the shepherds’ garb he would later
rework into expansive mohair pelt coats.
The velvet bands he recalled from Santander
nursemaids turned up in a 1949 strapless
evening gown.
Bonnets, fringed shawls and other accessories all had their origins in some Spanish
province. Balenciaga always kept his distance
from the press, but he might well have relished Le Figaro’s account of the “bunched-up
effect, washerwoman style” of his 1941 summer skirts.
The royal court
In lavish wedding dresses, ornate theatrical costumes, evening
dresses and infanta gowns, Balenciaga drew on five centuries of
Spanish royalty to fuel his imagination. For a 1960 wedding dress,
the designer worked in bands of white mink to invoke the 15thcentury Queen Isabella’s love of ermine.The deep, pure blacks
in some of Balenciaga’s work summon the 16th-century piety of
King Philip II.
And then there were his costumes for a 1942 production of a
Don Juan drama. Called on by the lead actress to create an “orgy
of colors” in a “riot of fabrics,” Balenciaga turned to 16th- and
17th-century court portraits for a visual vocabulary of velvets,
satins, silk failles and ermine tails. Plumed hats, blooming hooped
petticoats (known as farthingales), armorlike embroidery and ruff
collars all found a place in Balenciaga’s royally inflected artistry.
THE EXAMINER ·
4
Spanish
themes
variations
C
ristóbal Balenciaga spent most of
his career where he belonged, as
an acknowledged master in the
haute couture world capital of Paris. But
his Spanish homeland was the ever-present lifeblood of his work, nourishing every
phase and aspect of his art.
“The impact of Spain remained
extraordinarily potent in his work,” says
Hamish Bowles, the curator of the de
Young Museum’s Balenciaga and Spain
exhibition. In his sustained and richly
varied acts of transformation, the Basqueborn couturier turned what Bowles calls
an “aching nostalgia” for his native turf
and culture into an act of perpetual refraction and reinvention.
“Balenciaga’s inspirations came from
the bullrings, the flamenco dancers, the
loose blouses the fishermen wear, the cool
of the cloisters,” wrote the fashion writer
and editor Diana Vreeland, who mounted
the first major Balenciaga show, at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1973.
The current exhibition, which features
120 pieces from both museum and private collections, sets out to document
the impact of the Spanish culture and
aesthetic on the designer’s work. As such,
it is full of echoes, harmonies and layered
chords. Here are some of the major notes
in this richly chromatic composition.
By Steven Winn
Spanish art
Among the abundant riches of Madrid’s Prado
Museum are several galleries of Velázquez paintings. A number of them, including the enthralling
“Las Meninas” (detail, right), depict the royal
infantas, or crown princesses, in their exquisite
dresses with tight bodices of jewel-like embroidery and trimmings. Not only did Balenciaga
fashion his own infanta dresses, but he also appropriated the lacework from one Velázquez portrait
for a 1938 day suit in this show.
“Goya, whether Balenciaga is aware of it or
not, is always looking over his shoulder,” Vogue
editor Bettina Ballard said. Black lace, mantillas, silk tassels and other details evoke works such as “The Duchess of Alba” by that
Spanish master. In the transfixing treatment of drapery by the 17th-century painter
Zurbarán, Balenciaga found a touchstone for the luscious gathers, bunching and folds in
some of his more opulent dresses.
3
· THE EXAMINER
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asianart.org/bali | 415-581-3500 | 200 Larkin Street | San Francisco
Art, Ritual,
Performance
Feb 25 – Sep11
Asian Art
Museum
In Bali, art lives in
unexpected places
and beauty dwells in
the everyday. Bali: Art,
Ritual, Performance
is the first major
exhibition of the arts
of Bali in the U.S.
Visit and experience for
yourself the vitality and
magic of this unique
Indonesian island.
In addition to
the exhibition, the
museum will present
performances, artist
demonstrations, and
other programs that
provide an experience
as enchanting as
Bali itself.
For details, visit
asianart.org/bali.
Media
sponsors:
187034
187034
This exhibition was organized by the Asian Art Museum. Presentation at the Asian Art Museum is made possible by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities; United Airlines; Margaret and Al Njoo; the Koret Foundation; the Henry Luce Foundation; the E. Rhodes
and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; the Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation; the Walter and Elise Haas Fund; the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation; the Mary Van
Voorhees Fund; and Pacific Gas & Electric; with additional support from the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund. Photo by Gustavo Thomas.