Offering enlightenment on civic art
Behind the Beaux Arts facade of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium is a building as bland as brick can be. The side that gets the most traffic, along Polk Street, is stupefyingly boring with only a Brutalist fire escape to break up the monotony.
But that is about to change for the first time in 102 years.
Internationally known conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth has won a competition to apply art to the west side of the auditorium, which will be a challenge because he cannot alter or paint even one gray brick.
Using white neon that shines day and night, Kosuth’s design is to break the words “Civic” and “Auditorium” into their etymology in illuminated text. Letters as tall as 3 feet will light the words.
For example, “Civic” will be broken into several ancient languages — there is the Latin
civis meaning “a member of the community,” and the German hiwun meaning “married couple.” The root words will be connected by lines all the way across the wall, which is the length of the block between Grove and Hayes streets. The words “Bill” and “Graham” will not appear on the wall and will not be taken apart for their root meanings.
“W.F.T. (San Francisco),” as the piece is called, is the first public art commission in the United States for Kosuth, who is in his 70s and has work on permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, among other museums. He works in London and New York.
“An important consideration that makes it a special challenge is that it must be accessible to a non-specialist audience, while at the same time providing an enriching cultural contribution,” Kosuth wrote in his proposal.
The budget is $1.2 million to be funded through the Public Art Trust, which was enacted into law in 2012. All private developers in the downtown core are required to put 1 percent of construction costs toward public art. Instead of putting art on their own property, the Public Art Trust allows them to place it in a designated location off-site.
In this case, the developers of two residential developments on the east side of Polk Street have offered to put art on the west side of the street to beautify a city-owned building.
“It can be seen from the steps of City Hall and the mayor’s balcony. You can even see it from Market Street,” says Jill Manton, director of public art trust and special initiatives for the San Francisco Arts Commission. “The project is intended for the public, and the Civic Auditorium is in one of the most public of places, where we see democracy in action almost every day.”
Because the Civic Auditorium is a city landmark, the public is invited to weigh in on this piece before final approval by the Arts Commission.. The proposal and renderings are available at http:// sfartscommission.org.
“W.F.T. (San Francisco)” is the first public arts project that requires a Certificate of Appropriateness from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission, a division of the Planning Department.
If all goes smoothly, the letters will start going up by the end of the year.