Pageant Looks to Its Future

Sweeping away the clouds of controversy that have plagued the Pageant of the Masters for more than a year, festival organizers held an early preview of next year’s show. The theme: “Beyond the Horizon.”

The move was an effort to quell doubts about the festival’s future and entice enthusiasts with “living pictures” or tableaux vivants, organizers said. Heated debates over whether the popular festival should be uprooted from its traditional Laguna Beach setting and moved to San Clemente ended last month when five of the seven Festival of the Arts board members were recalled.

“People were concerned that there wouldn’t even be a festival next year,” said director Diane Challis Davy. “What we wanted to do is to assure them that, yes, there is a festival and it’s bigger and better.”

Scheduled July 7 through Aug. 31 at the Irvine Bowl in Laguna Beach, the 2001 Pageant of the Masters showcases a preliminary new lineup of 38 works of art.

Davy said she associates the 2001 theme with space odysseys and symbolically looking into the future. In fact, part of the program is dedicated to space as “the final frontier” and includes an oil painting titled, “On the Rim” by American astronaut Alan Bean that shows two spacemen near a lunar vehicle peering down the edge of a lunar crater.

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The festival also ventures, for the first time, into the exotic. Selections include Paul Gauguin’s painting “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” and religious art from the Himalayas.

The program will open with three traditional oil paintings by American artist N.C. Wyeth, father of painter Andrew Wyeth.

It then delves into contemporary Native American art and other works from the 18th century to the present. Only two works are from previous shows--”Against the Odds,” a bronze by American sculptor Robert Grieves, and the finale tableau, Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”

Reaching way out West to another frontier, the show will feature legends from the silver screen such as John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. The broad theme allows for such flexibility, Davy said.

“This year, we particularly want to touch on art from [Asia], which we’ve never done before,” Davy said. The repertoire also includes hand-colored lithographs for the first time.

Setting new boundaries, Davy said, the program will contrast lighthearted works and those with grave themes such as “Tornado Over Kansas,” a piece that depicts a family fleeing into a shelter, and Manet’s “The Absinthe Drinker,” one of a series of paintings looking at the gritty underbelly of Paris in the late 1800s.

“The pageant in the past tended to be more conservative and had certain taboos like not showing war memorials, or shying away from difficult subjects like death and addiction,” Davy said. “I thinks it’s good to have darker images to contrast with the frivolous, humorous pieces that we’re presenting. It makes for better variety and more emotional contrast.”

Davy said the 2001 theme is appropriate as the event moves into a new chapter.

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Three new board members were elected in November and two were appointed last week. All five board members made an appearance at the preview. As far as the festival’s future, things are looking brighter and the mood is upbeat, organizers said.

“Hopefully, all the changes will bring the festival back to normal,” said David Young, a board member newly reelected for a three-year term. (Young resigned in July in protest of moving the event to San Clemente.) Also elected to the board in November were Bruce Rasner and Scott Moore. Robin Hall and John Rayment were appointed last week.

“San Clemente is pretty much history as far as I’m concerned,” Young said. “I think the entire staff feels a sense of relief. The staff and artists are in a much better mood than they have been in the past year and a half.”