David Bonetti — former art critic for S.F. Examiner
David Bonetti, an incisive and passionate art critic for the San Francisco Examiner in the late 1980s and ’90s, was found dead in his apartment in Brookline, Mass., on Wednesday, shortly after returning from his annual visit to San Francisco.
Bonetti was discovered slumped in a chair while listening to classical music by his apartment manager who came in to change batteries in a smoke alarm, according to Amanda Doenitz, a close friend who spoke to a police detective in Brookline. He was 71.
Bonetti was the art critic for the Boston Phoenix when he was recruited by Examiner Publisher Will Hearst in 1989, in a bold move to beef up the Examiner’s art coverage when it was the broadsheet afternoon daily.
From the start, Bonetti stood out for his commitment to the Bay Area art scene in all its venues no matter how small, garage galleries being a favorite. He was an early and ardent advocate for gay and queer artists, along with all forms of high art and low art. The only thing he could not abide was kitsch.
“As a critic and colleague, David was smart, funny and bitchy — all good qualities,” said his longtime editor Paul Wilner. “As a writer, he was clear on his likes and dislikes. And while funny in conversation, he was serious and committed to his beat.”
Among Bonetti’s causes were saving the Piazzoni murals from destruction when the old Main Library was transformed into the Asian Art Museum. They are now at the de Young Museum. He also championed a mammoth Richard Serra sculpture that was deeply controversial and never installed at the Legion of Honor.
“He was very lively, very opinionated and lots of fun,” said Sandra S. Phillips, curator emerita of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “He was also very knowledgeable about the art that he was focused on. If you get into an argument with him, you had to know what you were talking about because he could tackle you very adroitly.”
Bonetti was openly gay and lived in a rambling apartment building known as the Yellow Bordello in the Duboce Triangle. All forms of gay photographers, painters and photographers lived there. In addition to promoting gay artists through his criticism, Bonetti was a collector and owned work by Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman and Jerome Caja, a San Francisco eccentric who used nail polish to paint perverse iconography on tiny thimbles and pieces of cardboard.
“David arrived at the apex of the high queer era in San Francisco,” said queer historian Gerard Koskovich. “It was a time period that saw an extraordinary political and cultural response to the darkest years of the AIDS crisis and the extreme attack on LGBT people during the right-wing culture wars.”
Urbane and intellectual, Bonetti never drove a car but got around. Bonetti regularly traveled to Los Angeles and New York to review important exhibitions and went as far as Berlin when Christo wrapped the Reichstag in 1995.
“His out-of-town reviews brought sweeping grace and a sense of the adventurous excitement of the art world to Examiner readers,” Wilner said.
After the Examiner merged with The Chronicle in 2000, Bonetti became uncomfortable in his role on the combined staff. He ultimately took a buyout in 2002 and decamped for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to become a national art critic.
He was in St. Louis for seven years, then moved to Boston where he’d grown up. He was a freelancer and wrote about opera for the Berkshire Fine Arts, a website. He also made an annual winter trip west to San Francisco.
A year ago, he brought a small package to Koskovich as a gift. It contained two Caja paintings, which Koskovich will be donating to the GLBT Historical Society as being “From the David Bonetti Collection.”
In late March, Bonetti arrived for his annual visit to San Francisco and stayed in the tiny guest room at the Mission District home of Phillips and Stephen Vincent. He spent an afternoon at SFMOMA and was moved to tears by “The Train” exhibition on the funeral train of Robert F. Kennedy.
As he left, “I thought, ‘How wonderful it was to have him as a friend,’ ” Phillips said. “I was looking forward to seeing him next year.”
Bonetti continued to Los Angeles to visit Amanda Doenitz, an art appraiser who had met Bonetti when she worked at Fraenkel Gallery. Doenitz noted that Bonetti was overweight and taking a variety of medications to combat high blood pressure.
On Saturday, he and Doenitz went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he stocked up on art books. When they rode an elevator up to the galleries, Bonetti stepped off and was immediately confronted with “A Group of Animals” by Sir Edwin Landseer. Bonetti launched into a passionate dissection of the 19th century painting that attracted a crowd, as if he were a tour guide.
“That was just so David,” Doenitz said. “His infectious enthusiasm and the depth of knowledge about the whole range of art.”
As Bonetti boarded a bus for the airport and his overnight flight to Boston, he yelled over his shoulder at Doenitz: “I want to continue this conversation!”
A memorial service is pending. Survivors include a brother, Gary Bonetti of Milford, Mass.