SEPHER YETZIRAH meets contemporary art. (Okay, I'm not sure where Shrek fits in, but otherwise it works.)

Start your view at the huge blue cube
Jun 2, 2008 9:15 PM (1 day ago) by Janos Gereben, The Examiner

SAN FRANCISCO

From Genesis to Shrek to music for the Hebrew alphabet, the first exhibits in the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s new building are unusual, imaginative and noteworthy: “In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis,” “From the New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig” and John Zorn’s “Aleph-Bet Sound Project” will be on view Sunday when the 24-year-old institution celebrates the grand opening of its new facility with special programs and free admission.

The bold structure, on Mission Street between Market Street and Yerba Buena Gardens, was designed by Daniel Libeskind. Its most striking feature, a huge blue cube resting on its corner, is the venue for Zorn’s music project, for which the MacArthur Fellow has commissioned sound and music based on letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The structure itself — with a 65-foot ceiling, walls converging at striking angles and 36 diamond-shaped windows providing the light — channels the Hebrew “yud,” the letter used in writing the name of Adonai or God (or, properly, G-d). The official name for the cube is the “Stephen and Maribelle Leavitt Yud Gallery.”

Zorn, 54, is best known for integration of jazz, klezmer, improvised and contemporary music. His sound project aims at linking the alphabetic symbols found throughout Libeskind’s architecture with the new museum’s mission of “rethinking tradition.”

Zorn’s mandate is to assist musicians as they embrace the Kabbalistic principle that the ancient Hebrew alphabet is a spiritual tool full of hidden meaning and harmony.

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“In the Beginning” exhibits the multimedia and sound-installation works of seven artists — Alan Berliner, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Ben Rubin, Matthew Ritchie, Kay Rosen, Shirley Shor and Mierle Laderman Ukeles — “in dialogue” with historical, rarely displayed works about Genesis.

There are illuminated manuscripts from the Medieval and Renaissance periods; 18th- and 19th-century drawings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and William Blake; modern and contemporary works by Auguste Rodin, Marc Chagall, Barnett Newman, Jacob Lawrence, Ann Hamilton and Tom Marioni.

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