Tuesday, July 31, 2012

LACMA Looks



I'm probably infringing all kinds of copyrights here.  But.  I do it for you.  Wanna see what's up in the art world in L.A.?   Contemporary art has been much in the news over here lately.  A big deal has been made about this:  THE BIG ROCK.  


Otherwise known as.....Michael Heizer's Levitated Mass.  What do you think?  I'll tell you what I think at the bottom of the post.


You will find old friends at LACMA.  (Picasso.)


Some might be a BIG and very pleasant surprise: Matisse (!)


And then you will find the very unexpected.  As, for example, this quilt made of cigarette silks from the "Common Places: Printing, Embroidery and the Art of Global Mapping" show.  (You know what cigarette silks are?  Or you can guess, can't you?)


Go to the museum website here to see a better picture of Chris Burden's Metropolis II.


I know, I know, you could have done this when you were 10, with your erector set and Scale-X-trics.    And five of your favorite uncles and thirteen kids from school that you could actually stand. But you didn't.  And now it's too late. It's pointless to try to best this effort.  Just come and see it and be mesmerized.  Is it art???????  

Do you care, really?  It's just so cool to watch those little cars go round and round and round.


Barbara Krugers "Untitled (Shafted)" installed in an elevator shaft in the Broad building


Robert Therrien: it's not even "Untitled".  It has no title.  Accordingly, Mr. Paradis thinks Mr. Therrien is a very lazy artist.

("How hard is it to think up a title?!")


Richard Serra.  One of the most hated artists in NYC in the 1980's.  Now in the 21st century, it is hard not to be reverent once you've walked around one of these eternally awe-inspiring tilted arcs.  Maybe they actually really need to be experienced INSIDE a giant interior space.  vs. a windy public plaza where federal  employees are trying to eat their lunches.


Here's a  handy way to keep track of what's going on at LACMA.  I'm adding it to my blogroll.

Oh yeah and p.s., the big rock??????  Meh!

Too bad.  It was very expensive.  The installation:  looks like it was designed by someone who's usually building shopping malls.  Besides we have much bigger rocks than that all over L.A.  They're called the Sierras.  Go ahead, tell me what you really think!

For more on LACMA, start with this post from last month.









3 comments:

  1. Dans les musées d'art contemporain, je me pose la même question que toi... mais, au fond, j'éprouve des émotions, même si, souvent, elles se terminent pas un grand éclat de rire et me font dire que certains sont des escrocs (habiles, comme tous les escrocs) qui font de l'"art" une petite escroquerie mentale. Toutefois, dans le lot, des visions que l'on n'aurait pas - même en rêve - nous sont offertes, tout comme des sujets de discussions sans fin. Et comme tu dis, certains ont beau dire, j'aurais pu le faire à la maternelle, ils ne l'ont pas fait... Au fond, j'aime... je trouve toujours une idée à explorer dans ce que je regarde, au-delà des émotions... un petit fil à tirer, un tremplin vers l'ailleurs...

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  2. I'm with you on Richard Serra - reverence is a great word to describe the feeling walking through/in/around one of his sculptures elicits. As to the big rock... I’ll have to withhold judgement until I have had an opportunity to pass beneath it. It looks like it would produce a very uncomfortable sensation of pressure on passing beneath it... which could be interesting? But, yeah, not a patch on the Sierras!

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  3. cheers for the info. i would love to come and stroll over there, for a day or two...
    n♥

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