The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • Page 143

ART NEWS The Newport Harbor Art Museum netted about $32,000 with its fifth annual BLACK 4 WHITE BASH last weekend at Fashion Island-about the same as it netted last year, bankruptcy or no bankruptcy. Nearly 1,000 attended the outdoor dinner-dance and sampled delicacies by local restaurants. i' Mmn. I ft I Lot Angeles Times So Angeles tme orange county SECTION THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 1995 1 MM Taking On a 'Star'-Shattering Role HIGHLIGHTS By JAMES GRANT SPECIAL TO THE TIMES iMEW YORK Patrick Stewart's life changed inextricably after two decades of distinguished work as a stage actor was reading it while filming the last few days of the "Star Trek" movie. I just thought it was so brilliant and ultimately so moving that it felt as if I had no choice but to do it.

We were filming on top of this finger of rock in the Nevada desert shooting some violent action sequences with Malcolm McDowell. It was 119 in the shade and I was sitting there reading the script. Well, I completed it and found that I needed both wardrobe and makeup to help me because my face was streaming with tears and the tears dripped off onto my spacesuit. Were concerns expressed by your agents and managers that portraying a gay role might cause rumors to circulate about you? This topic really interests me. I'm asked it in every interview about I have a girlfriend in Los Angeles Wendy Neuss, a co-producer on "Star Trek: I don't refer to that in any Please see STEWART, F10 "'Cr.

with PATRICK STEWART long association with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, scored rave reviews for his performance as Prospero in the New York Shakespeare Festivals production of "The Tempestf' in Central Park. But for the moment, as he sips his lentil soup in a tony mid-town restaurant, the chameleon has humor and the big screen on his mind. Question: You obviously know a flashy role when you see one. What appealed to you about playing a gay interior decorator in Answer: For about a year or so, I've been talking to my agents about what I should do and I kept saying that whatever that first piece of work is, it must shatter Jean -Luc Picard. I had seen the play in Los Angeles and I was sent the screenplay and when he landed the part of Capt.

Jean-Luc Picard on "Star The Next Generation." He went from reciting "Henry IV" to chasing Klingons in a spacesuit during the show's run from 1987 to 1994. The fiercely intelligent and immensely charming British actor, 54, stars in Orion Pictures' "Jeffrey," due out Friday. In the film based on writer 'producer Paul Bud-nick's hit Off Broadway play, Stewart plays a gay interior decorator whose sizzling wit helps hide the pain of watching his longtime lover die of complications of AIDS. He also appears opposite Leslie Caron in another comedy, "Let It Be Me," an Rysher Entertainment film that casts him as a ballroom dance instructor, due out Oct. 20.

Last month, the actor, who has enjoyed a 7 I I. j. i I 5', l.t EDIB BASKIN Onyx Actor Patrick Stewart, on his role In "I had no choice but to do it." GOING, GOING: After five years of disappointment, anchor Ross Becker has decided to leave KCOP when his contract expires in September in fact, to leave L.A. and what he calls its "sold-out, disgusting, tabloid" brand of TV journalism. Fl "S3.

Concerto Ties Him to His Past Music: Pianist Xiang-Dong Kong of Irvine will play Rachmaninoff's Second tonight at the Bowl. The piece serves as a sentimental link to his mentor and homeland. SUCCESS STORY: Pianist Xiang-Dong Kong, the youngest prizewinner of the Tchaikovsky Competition, continues on his successful path: The Irvine resident has a new album in the works, a five-CD series of Chinese piano music, and a film based on his life is also underway. He performs tonight at the Bowl. Fl ODD LOT: There's something odd about "Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven" show at the San Diego i Museum of Art, something that doesn't add up.

Reviewed by Christopher Knight. Fl LOOSE FETE: Singer -songwriters I Robbie Allen and D.D. Wood re-' formed their old band Gypsy Trash for the first time since 1989, turning in loose, unpretentious rock during a 40-minute show at the Blue Cafe in Long Beach on Monday. F2 MAN AND METAMORPHOSIS: Berlin-based pianist Walter Norris overcame a sometimes noisy crowd at Spaghettini on Tuesday with strong improvisations, expanding familiar tunes into something larger than their usual selves. Reviewed by Bill Kohlhaase.

F3 MAESTRA: Sian Edwards, only the fourth woman to conduct the Philharmonic at the Bowl, brought distinction to a program that included brilliant Beethoven with the Beaux Arts Trio. Reviewed by Martin Bernheimer. F4 EDGY: Working-class barflies grope their way to higher ground without a moral compass in John Patrick Shanley's edgy, well-cast comedy "Savage in Limbo" at the Zephyr in Los Angeles. Reviewed by Philip Brandes. F8 By BENJAMIN EPSTEIN SPECIAL TO THE TIMES IRVINE For some listeners, Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto might seem a sentimental warhorse.

In the life of Xiang-Dong Kong, how- ever, the work has become a rhapsody on a theme, with variations unfolding for him even when he was a youngster in Shanghai. "For me to play this piece is not simply to play a concerto," said Kong, 26, who will perform it with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Sian Edwards, at the Hollywood Bowl tonight. "In China, my mentor was Prof. Da-Lei Fan, a great teacher and great human being. We were like father and son.

He died two years ago at the age of 47. "During the Cultural Revolution he would hide away to listen to the concerto on an old LP," Kong said at his home last week. "It was his favorite piece. He covered the windows and doors with a blanket so that the neighbor wouldn't hear it. He toured as a pianist, and he always wanted to play the Rachmaninoff No.

2, but that Please see KONG, F2 i ii urn MW h'jr? i n. mi" W.n, -'-( i -i rtji CHRISTINE COTTER Los Angeles Times gives so much memory from my past," says Xiang-bong Kong. 'When I play the Rachmaninoff Second Concerto, it i 'Pi' Quotable 'Gauguin' Show Doesn't Quite Capture Revolution 'The saddest thing, I think, is that despite the best efforts of a lot of people who really do care about TV news, what is left behind is no soul, no credibility. haven't made any Rom Becker, anchor for KCOP-TV Channel 13. Fl ART REVIEW I I If" Index What Goes On F2 Movie Guide F3 Morning Report F4 TVi Tonight's schedule F14 He's Had Enough of'Sold-Out'News Television: Anchorman Ross Becker says he's leaving KCOP, sickened by compromising and tabloidization.

By STEVE WEINSTEIN SPECIAL TO THE TIMES LOS ANGELES For 10 years he was a hotshot, muckraking in the time-honored Edward R. Murrow tradition for the CBS TV station in the country's second-largest market. He won Emmys, went undercover to expose local white supremacy groups, anchored the news on weekends. But, unable to cajole his way to the anchor desk at KCBS-TV Channel 2, Ross Becker jumped ship five years ago, leaving the network -owned station to accept an offer to front the news at independent KCOP-TV Channel 13. It looked good on paper.

KCOP was sinking millions into reviving a virtually nonexistent news department. He would be its centerpiece with an anchor-sized salary. But virtually no one watched, and now, after five years of disappointment, frustration and failure, Becker has decided to leave KCOP when his contract expires in September in fact, to leave Los Angeles and what he calls its "sold-out, disgusting, tabloid" brand of TV journalism altogether. "We missed a great opportunity," said Becker, 42. "The company gave up on it too soon and none of it worked out like I thought when I took the job five years ago.

I think where Please see BECKER, F6 By CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT TIMES ART CRITIC SAN DIEGO When Paul Gauguin first visited the small village of Pont-Aven in the summer of 1886, he was painting in the descriptive, Impressionist style that had become a standard for advanced art in Paris. By the time he returned to the village 18 months later, the standard had become a dull routine, a manner whose principal artists were well on their way to recognition and influence, leaving little room for also-rans. The 39-year-old former stockbroker was destitute and despondent. He had abandoned his wife and children, and his early promise as an artist hadn't come to much. Pont-Aven, a quaint little village of 1,500 on the Brittany coast southwest of Paris, had been an artists' colony that attracted painters from throughout Europe for many years.

He hoped it could become his own version of the Barbizon forest: a place apart from the supposed Please see Fll )M TODAY IN OC LIVE Does a skull and crossbones on your shoulder make you a walking work of art? Not quite. But in "Eye Tattooed America," at the Laguna Art Museum through Oct. 8, we are shown how tattoos and more traditional artworks fit together. Also: the Pullout Movie Guide, the 11-Day Calendar and more. San Diego Museum at Art Emile Bernard's Symbolist "Yellow Christ" is among works in "Gauguin and the School of Pont-Aven.".