A Pilgrimage to the Duqal Palace : Tony Duquette’s Miracle on Geary Blvd. Enshrines Angels, Bedpans in a Mix Unmatched

A dank bay wind skitters trash along Geary Boulevard, one of the ever-shifting lines of demarcation separating “in” San Francisco from “out.” A typically underdressed pilgrim from Los Angeles hunches into the gust, teeth clenched, eyes downcast.

On the sidewalk in front of a bulky brick building are splotches of paint: improbable lavender with random accents of aqua. This must be the place!

The pilgrim pushes through large green doors, faintly Moroccan, into a dark foyer. From deep in the caverns of the huge rambling structure come the sounds of hammering, hingeing, hemming. Hawing.

Eyes adjusting to the dark, the pilgrim stumbles up two canted flights of stairs to another lobby, also faintly lit. Beyond is the main hall, bigger than a ballroom. From the nave comes a light that’s more than a light. A radiance.

Blinking, the pilgrim shuffles forward.

Inside, the temper of the thoroughfare is twisted inside out.

Here the jaw drops, the eyes lift.

Inside is splendor.

They call the old Temple Beth-Israel the Duquette Pavilion now. You have to call it something.

Artist Tony Duquette calls his glorious gallimaufry of sight, light and sound a “celebrational environment.” You have to call it something.

Hutton Wilkinson, director of the Duquette Foundation, wrestles with words and loses on decision. “How,” he asks, “do you communicate the incommunicable?”

You don’t, really. You just go into the place and stand there and let it communicate with you .

The celebration opens Thursday night with a benefit gala for le tout San Francisco, as well as half of Los Angeles, on their own personal pilgrimage.

On Friday, the green doors will be open for the first time to the public, which is what it’s really all about. Open to St. Francis’ constituency, as it were. Tony Duquette’s, too.

Flying blind in the face of Wilkinson’s dictum, a few inadequate words to describe Duquette’s latest--maybe greatest--endeavor.

Up close, it’s easy. Up close are feathers and buttons and shells; fabrics and roots and crocodile skulls; rusty door handles and airplane propellers and a dozen plastic bedpans, sliced in half and painted gold.

A step or two back, description is difficult but not yet impossible. This implausible assortment, this junk (“found objects” is the artists’ euphemism), has come together into forms, albeit forms touched by a wand. Forms less easily identified by the mind than by the spirit.

‘A Very Interesting Barn’

Some of the forms even have names, but by no means all. There are the “turning tower,” the “solar icons,” the “prayer totems,” the “pillars of Apollo.” There is a “moon monstrance” made of coconut shells, a “wall of masks” of barnyard animals: cows, sheep, wolves, lions. . . . Wolves and lions? “It’s a very interesting barn,” Duquette concedes.

Mainly, there are what Duquette, conducting a personal tour, calls “these things. . . . “

“These things,” splendid as they are, nevertheless remain Duquette’s “bit players, character actors.” It is in the main space, the Hall of Dropped Jaws (why not?), that the pilgrim is truly transported.

It must be seen, and felt--even more than artifacts, Duquette creates moods--with the interpretation left entirely to the observer.

To one pilgrim, the overall effect is as if Jesus, David, Muhammad, Buddha and all the other Greats of the Game had gotten together one night over a goblet of ambrosia and kicked around the idea of a Palace for the People, a place where one would not worship but rather rejoice. Flat-out.

Centerpiece--depending on which way you are looking--is a gigantic sunburst of iridescent green, echoed from behind by another in gold. (“It’s made from the pipes of the vandalized organ,” Duquette says--tubes of twisting, rusting metal when the artist chanced upon the ruin of the former synagogue. “We restored the pipes, painted them. . . . We didn’t want to lose their power.”)

Under the sunburst, a statue of St. Francis--namesake of the city--surrounded by birds. It was Francis, of course, who preached a sermon to the sparrows, who wrote the “Canticle of the Sun,” who petitioned the Pope barefooted. Here, he appears to be garbed in harlequin tights.

“It’s leaves, really,” Duquette says, “but I like the harlequin image. Among other things, he was called ‘God’s juggler.’ Also ‘the saint of saints,’ which is why his halo is red.

“His has been a marvelous spirit to work with. Of course, he was also the first hippie.”

Duquette may be the last, or at least the latest, a comparison that does not entirely displease him.

Facing St. Francis, in the “front” of the hall, is another merry old sol, this one a fiery flare of stained glass.

To the sides, a new set of Duquette’s renowned and exquisite tapestries, each a trompe l’oeil, each with its subtle surprise, even its little joke. Humor and glory are not incompatible.

Stitched into the “Underseas” tapestry are brightly colored fish, raised as if part of a quilt; they’ve been cut from San Francisco’s famous Oriental kites.

“Valentine to a Mythical Bird” is made entirely of the feathers of game birds--all of whom, it is rumored, died quietly in their sleep.

The bejeweled center of the “Sun” tapestry was snipped from a Balenciaga gown worn by Diana Knowles, the Dollar Line heiress.

Above the tapestries the walls are dark, a most Duquettish phenomenon.

In a corner, the artist whispers to a volunteer electrician, “Throw the switch.”

From behind a thin scrim, they appear, proud, lambent, alive and well in San Francisco:

Los Angeles’ own Angels!

In what used to be the synagogue balcony loom Michael, the generalissimo; Gabriel, the dude; sociable Rafael, spooky Azrael, airy Ariel; gentle Zadkiel, plumed Uriel, lute-hearted Israfel.

Twenty-eight feet tall, they stand sentinel to St. Francis, glad to be visiting, a little homesick.

Not by any stretch of faith are the Angels the sole reason for Duquette’s purchase of the big building on Geary. Undeniably, though, they are part of the reason.

“It all came together,” Duquette says. “You have to be very careful when you say this,” he adds, looking heavenward like Fernando about to deliver a screwball, “but you know, I think it was really meant to be.”

The Angels, of course, were on his mind. Conceived and presented as a gift to the City of Los Angeles, they had passed a celestial hour (two years in human time) at the Museum of Science and Industry, adored by hundreds of thousands. Then the Angels were gone, lying dismembered in a storeroom. Resurrected in Emmanuel Presbyterian Church for a time. Then dismembered again.

In all of Los Angeles, no one was willing to give them a permanent home.

“I suppose they’re waiting for Tony to die,” Wilkinson says in a rare dig at his native city. If so, they should hold their breath as tightly as they grip their wallets.

“I was driving along Geary,” Duquette continues, “and suddenly there was this enormous ruin.” The temple had been gutted by fire, vandalized almost beyond recognition; 46 lawsuits were pending against its owners. Ergo, it was affordable, and lovable at first sight, at least to a man who finds beauty in bedpans.

“For a long, long time,” Duquette says, “I had been thinking of doing for San Francisco what I had done for Los Angeles. I’ve always been totally involved with St. Francis.

“Then there was always the thought of the Angels in storage, broken up into sections and hating it. I do have a little responsibility to them. I asked to have them loved, and they were, and then it was taken away from them.”

Once a day, as “payment” for her volunteer work, Phyllis Robbins asks to have the lights put on, just once, in the main hall. “You don’t get tired of the Angels,” she says.

Aside from a handful of workmen and a secretary, Duquette’s “environments” all are executed by amateur volunteers. “I’m convinced,” says Duquette, “that the love that goes into every stitch, every staple, becomes a part of the celebration.”

Love there is, and amazement, and blind faith.

In a cluttered room, Jdon Menear nails large cloth panels to a wall. (“I got the panels from an Egyptian wedding feast,” Duquette says, beaming. “There’s still food on them.”) Jdon also has painted both wood and steel railings to look remarkably like marble: “I just make myself think like marble and imagine where the veins would be.”

“Everything is simple, but nothing is,” says Keith Morrison, portrait photographer-turned-master maker of “things.” “It’s boggling: embellishment on embellishment on embellishment. And then, magically, beauty!”

Ray Dolby, of course, has offered help on the sound system, and wife Dagmar has tentatively offered the use of an old post-card rack. Duquette jumps at the chance.

“If you like that,” Dagmar says, “you’ll love our dumpster.”

“I’ll be over tomorrow,” Duquette says.

Hutton Wilkinson waves a paintbrush at a downstairs hall: “We’ll have the opening-night diner here. Then upstairs for the performance.

“Ray Bradbury has written us his own canticle, recited by Charlton Heston. The music is composed and played by Herb Alpert. . . .

“I know it looks a mess, but we moved up the opening two months so Liza Minnelli could be here. Which is good. If Tony didn’t have a deadline, he’d just go on designing and making and changing. . . . “

It is night now.

A dank bay wind skitters trash along Geary Boulevard.

A pilgrim steps out, leaving open the front door. The foyer is now illuminated beyond illumination.

A passer-by stops, looks in, and up.

“Hoo-EE!” he says.

Exactly.