PAGEANT REVIEW : A Celebration of the Human Element in Art

Laguna Beach’s Pageant of the Masters has always taken the long view, delighting its adherents and annoying those who decry the event’s lack of contemporary relevance.

In the pageant’s 56th year, the grounds for the debate were never so clear as during the narration for the showing of “Spirits of the Chinese Pagoda,” sculptures of legendary beings that watch over the rooftops of Chinese villages.

No mention is made of the current repression in China, in which the Communist leadership is carrying out mass arrests of artists and film makers along with the usual political suspects. Instead, the Chinese art is presented in nearly timeless fashion, with narrator Thurl Ravenscroft noting, “As this Eastern land opens its doors to the West,” the spirit-statues “bid welcome and offer their blessings to all.”

The brief historical reference is to China’s previous opening to the West at the turn of the century. But given current events, the irony of that hopeful view is inescapable.

Over the years, the pageant has either avoided the temptation to comment or--as detractors have charged--lacked the courage or imagination to do so. Its milieu is human diversity as recorded by the Monets; the Van Goghs; the Renoirs; the ancient Greek, Roman and Hindu sculptors, the “masters” whose works outlived the immediate. The thrust seems to be of eternal consequences, the things of the soul. The thread connecting all these, we are told by the narrator, is beauty, which requires of the viewer the ability to appreciate.

Because of the pageant’s nature--the posing of live models for a minute or so in re-creations of artworks--people are essential to the enterprise. You will not see a modern work on the order of “White Dot on Black Background” because it does not meet the pageant’s twin criteria: It does not have people in it, nor is it beautiful to more than a handful of people who must explain why it is beautiful.

In this sense, the pageant is a bald-faced thumb of the nose at the current art world, and at current philosophies that, in ratchet-like fashion, relegate human beings a notch lower every year in the cosmic scheme of things.

Within the context of the pageant’s history and mission, one would have to conclude that director Glen Eytchison succeeded this year as well as in any in conveying an appreciation of human diversity and beauty--without controversy, or at least current controversy.

The pageant opens with a nostalgic look at Laguna Beach’s founding through a series of sepia-toned photos tracing the city’s beginnings from a patchwork collection of shacks by the seaside in the 1880s to an artists’ colony confident enough to put on its first Festival of Arts in the summer of 1933. The first pageant artwork ever presented was “Girl of the Golden West,” in which Josie Durkem Rice, the original model for the 1914 Louis Betts painting, reprised her role. This was re-enacted this year, as were James McNeil Whistler’s “My Mother,” followed by Sir Thomas Lawrence’s “Pinkie” and Sir Thomas Gainsborough’s “Blue Boy,” also mainstays of the early pageants.

Then it is on to the current offerings, starting with Donna Schuster’s sunshine-dappled “On the Veranda,” followed by the guardian Chinese spirits, the Currier & Ives’ skating-pond paean “Winter Pastime,” Maxfield Parrish’s lush “Garden of Allah,” Gaston Doin’s lively “Carnival” and several other works before the first-act finale, a multiscene presentation and history of Hopi kachina dolls.

The crowd-pleasing Hopi exhibit, which takes place on several spots on the hillsides around the Irvine Bowl as well as on the stage, employs a historical narrative and sound and lighting effects simulating a thunderstorm to tell the story of how the kachina dolls are used as spirit surrogates to ward off evil and to chastise wayward children. It all hangs together nicely.

Other works presented range from an Etruscan fresco circa 480 BC to an ancient Egyptian necklace to Ken Auster’s “Pier Shot,” a 1988 watercolor depicting two surfers approaching the moment of truth in front of pilings at the Huntington Beach Pier. This last was not quite as well received as some of the others, perhaps because it lacks the detail characteristic of the early masters’ works. It doesn’t look as if it was as hard to bring off, and difficulty of execution is a criterion for eliciting oohs and ahs.

Despite the pageant’s overall lightness of mood, some of the works conceivably could be controversial, or thought-provoking, depending on the viewer’s ideology. Louis Maurer’s 1895 oil, “Great Royal Buffalo Hunt,” depicts an Indian slaying a buffalo as Buffalo Bill Cody looks on as a co-conspirator. Animal-rights activists can’t be happy about such a work presented in nonjudgmental or even approving fashion.

Women are sent a mixed message at one point in the program. A Nepalese bronze, “Durga Slaying the Demon,” recounts the epic battle when the Hindu goddess drives out an evil demon lord by magically changing her shape. In the incarnation at hand, she sports 18 arms. It is a stirring sight, and it could be a fitting symbol for the modern woman who is supposed to--and often does--do it all. But just as the females in the audience might be starting to hum “I am woman, hear me roar,” the next work presented is “Conversation Plaisir,” a 19th-Century painting by Victor Gabriel Gilbert that depicts a group of women quietly enjoying a day by the river--doing laundry.

Well, at least women are anything but under-represented in the pageant’s works. And women get a break two presentations later with a male nude under glass, George Thompson and Tom Vincent’s 1961 “Orpheus.” This acts as a counterbalance for Robert Krantz’s “Fantasy of Wings” earlier in the program, which features a naked young woman surrounded, but not obscured, by sea gulls.

During the entire pageant, an orchestra fronted by music director-composer-conductor Richard Henn showed sprightly versatility in as eclectic a program of accompaniment as one could imagine.

Also adding to the mood--or, more appropriately, moods--were anecdotes and quotes in the narration from commentators as disparate as Mark Twain (“I don’t like work--even if someone else does it”), James McNeil Whistler (who, when confronted by a student who had announced “I paint what I see,” answered, “Yes, but the tragedy of this is when you see what you have painted”) and current humorist Dave Barry (New York “is the only city in the country with an official arm gesture”).

Lighthearted moments in the program were provided by the Tiffany Circus Collection, a colorful group of figurines of circus performers, and by the Victorian Valentines, a series of lacy, ornate paper cutouts that celebrate romantic love.

Oops, there they go, trumpeting traditional values again. No wonder the cynics hate this pageant. Chaste romantic love is so uncool, don’t you know, in an age of herpes, AIDS and palimony suits. And, of course, unrealistic.

Well, they haven’t seen anything yet.

The pageant delivers a coup de grace to cynicism in a finale that, while infused with Christian symbolism, transcends religious doctrines through a careful narrative.

Since 1936, every pageant but one has ended with Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” This year, the presentation is preceded by a quote from da Vinci, who explained his quest in painting Jesus’ disciples this way: “There could be no greater challenge than to reflect the intent of a man’s soul.”

At this point, confirmed cynics might be advised to close not only their eyes but also their ears, for the narration ends with the words of Saint Paul, who declared that the way of the righteous is to cling to “faith, hope and love.”

No, the pageant will probably never include “White Dot on Black Background,” or “Keg O’ Plastic Inner Tubes.”

But then, that’s not what it’s all about.

The Pageant of the Masters continues through Aug. 27 at the Irvine Bowl, 650 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Show time: 8:30 nightly. Tickets: $9 to $35, including admission to the Laguna Beach Festival of Arts, an exhibition by local artists and crafts people that is running concurrently on the festival grounds. Admission to the festival only is $1 to $2. Information: (714) 494-1145.