Monday Morning Museum 2011

Andreas Achenbach - German Landscape Painter - 16 May 2011
Eugène Atget - French Photographer - 31 October 2011
George Wesley Bellowa - American Ashcan School Painter - 4 July 2011
Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat - French Academic Painter - 15 August 2011
Félix Henri Bracquemond - French Art Nouveau Engraver - 21 November 2011
Pieter Bruegel The Elder - Flemish Nothern Renaissance Painter - 31 January 2011
Annibale Carracci - Italian Baroque Era Painter - 9 May 2011
Mary Stevenson Cassatt - American Impressionist Painter - 14 March 2011
Paul Cézanne - French Post-Impressionist Painter - 23 May 2011
Alvin Langdon Coburn - American-born British Tonalist Photographer - 14 November 2011
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - French Realist Painter - 27 June 2011
John Constable - English Romantic Painter - 5 December 2011
Lucas Cranach the Elder - German Northern Renaissance Painter - 18 July 2011
Edgar Degas - French Realist / Impressionist Painter and Sculptor - 21 March 2011
Eugène Delacroix - French Romantic Painter - 12 December 2011
André Derain - French Fauvist Painter and Sculptor - 10 January 2011
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins - American Realist Painter - 10 October 2011
Walker Evans - American Social Realist Photographer - 4 April 2011
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin - French Post-Impressionist Painter - 21 February 2011
Francesco Lazzaro Guardi - Italian Rococo Era Painter - 25 July 2011
Katsushika Hokusai - Japanese Ukiyo-e Printmaker - 8 August 2011
Winslow Homer - American Maritime Art Painter - 24 October 2011
Edward Hopper - American Scene Painter - 26 December 2011
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky - Russian-born French Expressionist Painter - 6 June 2011
John Frederick Kensett - American Hudson River School Painter - 11 July 2011
André Kertész - Hungarian-born American Photographer - 30 May 2011
Gustav Klimt - Austrian Art Nouveau Painter - 7 March 2011
Joseph Christian Leyendecker - American Golden Age Illustrator - 19 December 2011
Édouard Manet - French Realist / Impressionist Painter - 19 September 2011
Francesco di Giorgio Martini - Early Italian Rennaissance Painter and Sculptor - 7 November 2011
Oscar Claude Monet - French Impressionist Painter - 14 February 2011
Berthe Morisot - French Impressionist Painter - 3 October 2011
Charles Nègre - French Photographer - 1 August 2011
William Lamb Picknell - American Landscape Painter - 5 September 2011
Robert Rauschenberg - American Pop Artist - 28 March 2011
Pierre-Auguste Renoir - French Impressionist Painter - 3 January 2011
Hubert Robert - French Rococo Era Painter - 17 October 2011
John Singer Sargent - American Portrait Painter - 13 June 2011
Elsa Schiaparelli - Italian-born French Desinger - 28 November 2011
Georges-Pierre Seurat - French Pointillist Painter - 25 April 2011
Charles Rettew Sheeler, Jr. - American Precisionist Painter and Photographer - 26 September 2011
Cindy Sherman - American Photographer - 17 January 2011
Edward J. Steichen - Luxembourgeois-born American Tonalist Photographer and Painter - 7 February 2011
Thomas Sully - English-born American Portrait Painter - 2 May 2011
Joseph Mallord William Turner - English Romantic Painter - 22 August 2011
Anne Vallayer-Coster - French Rocco Era Painter - 28 February 2011
Anthony van Dyck - Flemish Baroque Era Painter - 12 September 2011
Vincent Willem van Gogh - Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter - 24 January 2011
Rembrandt van Rijn - Dutch Baroque Era Painter and Engraver - 18 April 2011
Jacob van Strij - Dutch Landscape Painter - 20 June 2011
Jacometto Veneziano - Italian Early Renaissance Painter - 11 April 2011
Johannes Vermeer - Dutch Baroque Era Painter - 29 August 2011

Image: "Monday Morning Museum" logo created by Adrean Darce Brent

A Taste Of MOCA In The Morning

It was in May of 2003 that I last visited the Museum of Contemporary Art located in Los Angeles. On that Spring day I “Saw the Lucian Freud exhibit (mainly nude portraits – very harsh in the portrayal) and Laura Owens exhibit (she doesn’t like to name her works – everything seemed to be “Untitled”!). Treescapes with animals seemed prevalent…” – personal journal, Thursday 1 May 2003. A return was long overdue and I was happy to do so at the suggestion of fellow museum visitor, Sharon.

In travelling to the museum, I first stopped at the Music Center with the intention of photographing the in-ground water fountain at its various spouting levels. Unfortunately, it was only bubbling at the surface with no spouting at all. I did take some shots anyway – no sense in wasting the opportunity even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. However, the surprise on the Plaza was a public music activity known as Drum Downtown. Between photographing the fountain, I thoroughly enjoyed listening and watching people drum out various rhythms under the guidance of a leader. Although I didn’t participate (had a specific time to be at MOCA), I would definitely do so given the chance again.

The Walt Disney Concert Hall was on my way to MOCA and I took a few photographs at the building and from across the street. Back in October 2009 I had photographed the Hall, but I didn’t really like many of the pictures – perhaps today’s will appeal to me more. Anyway, after this interlude I continued on my way to a day of museum walking. Arriving at MOCA ahead of Sharon, I didn’t have to wait long before she arrived. Told her about the Drum Downtown and, as she lives in downtown LA, I asked if she had ever done that activity. Sharon said that she had heard of it, but hadn’t participated. Normally the entrance fee to MOCA is ten dollars, but Sharon is a member of KCRW, a local radio station, so showing her membership card allowed her to get two tickets for the price of one. So entrance to the museum cost us only five dollars each! Love bargains!

After the usual administrative activities in the museum lobby (checking my backpack, getting a pencil, learning photography restrictions), we began the visit with the Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective exhibit. Now I had never heard of Arshile Gorky until Sharon mentioned it was his works that were showing at MOCA. The only Gorky I was aware of was Maxim Gorky, the writer, and it turns out that Arshile had changed his name to Gorky after his arrival in the United States – a new start, a new identity. MOCA is the third and final stop of the Gorky exhibition (having previously been at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the Tate Modern). It was time to experience Arshile Gorky.

The layout of the exhibition was such that there were two entrances into it and fortunately we entered at the one that started at the beginning of Gorky’s artistic career, not at the end of it. One of Gorky’s early works was “Park Street Church, Boston” 1924. I was drawn to this “impressionistic” style painting because of my love of Impressionism and was delighted to see that the subject was a building I have seen in person; though now there are taller buildings near the church than when Gorky painted it. An unexpected, but nice visual reminder of where I come. The influence of Paul Cézanne on Gorky can be seen in the still life “Pears, Peaches, and Pitcher” 1928 through his use of a similar palette and the simplicity of the objects and their placement in the painting. Because she had seen items in the MOCA gift shop depicting another Cézanne inspired work by Gorky, Sharon was looking forward to actually seeing it in the exhibition. However, it turned out that “Staten Island” 1927, which had been in the Philadelphia Art Museum leg of the exhibition tour, had not traveled to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, there were about sixty exhibition works that weren’t included in this final leg of the tour.

Continuing through the exhibition (a decent flow, but with a number of “dead end rooms”), we came upon “The Artist and His Mother” 1926-36, a portraiture which is based on a photograph of Gorky and his mother taken in 1912. Sharon pointed out that there are no details to the hands – the fingers are not detailed, primarily just a mass of color. This tendency in depicting the hands in this manner can be seen in other portraits e.g. “Woman with a Palette” 1928 and even in his “Self-Portrait” 1937. I do find it interesting that a person whose life work depends on the use of hands would depict them in such an undistinguished way. What are the reasons behind it? Was Gorky ambivalent about his art and was conveying that through the relevant body part or was it simply a stylistic choice with no meaning behind it whatsoever? Just some questions to ponder. My favorite Gorky piece is the abstract painting “Organization” 1933-36. I like the brightness of the colors and the boldness of the shape outlines and even though, as an abstract, it may not technically have definition; I find more precision in it than in the Gorky portraits and especially in a later abstract titled “Painting” 1944 in which the colors are muted and the shape outlines seem tentatively drawn.

In the middle of the exhibition was a timeline of Gorky’s life on two of the walls and it offered some insight into the factors and events that provided the palette of his life and work. Always good to know something of an artist’s life – it can bring a sense of clarity, on the viewer’s part, to their work. As we continued wandering through the space, we discovered two versions of a 1943 work titled “Waterfall”. Unfortunately they were not in the same room and an easy direct side by side comparison could not be made of the light and dark paintings. This was a problem I found with how the exhibit was hung – many finished works and their studies on opposite ends of a room or in different rooms altogether – and as one who minored in the Visual and Performing Arts, I can tell you that I would have gone crazy going back and forth to take notes for a paper on the comparison of two works that logically should have been hung together (I know, art is not always logical).

However, there was one “dead end room” where all the works belonged together and which I call the “Betrothal Room”. The works were a Study, “The Betrothal”, “Betrothal I”, and “Betrothal II”, all created in 1947. How wonderful it was to view all the versions of a work in one place. What a concept! Although the “Betrothal Room” was near the end of the exhibition and thus finishing up on a positive note; there was still “Agony” (a 1947 abstract painting in red, whose study was, of course, on the other side of the room), to be had as we headed towards the Permanent Collection.

The display agony for me in the Permanent Collection was an exhibit of black and white photographs from the 1960s that had all the title/descriptions of the photos on one side of the exhibit wall instead of having individual titles underneath the photographs. I like to know what I’m looking at right away and not have to figure what that is from a list of titles at one end of the photographic display. The titles have to be written anyway, so why not place them where they would be of the most benefit. On a positive side, out of the current selection from the Permanent Collection on view, I really liked “Lisp” 1968 by Edward Ruscha and “Reciprocal Relation, Per I, II” 1969 by Alfred Jensen. Sharon was interested in a work by Robert Irwin and plans on learning more about him. And oh, there was another set of black and white photographs displayed in the Permanent Collection and the titles were placed underneath each one. Hurray!

After finishing the morning at MOCA, we stopped at the museum’s gift shop where Sharon bought a “Staten Island” 1927 magnet and I purchased some cards and a CD of music from Gorky’s homeland of Armenia. It was time for lunch and (surprise, surprise), we ended up eating at MOCA’s café called Lemonade. It was good to sit outside and eat very healthy food after walking inside for such a long time. Long, but enjoyable despite my criticism of the exhibition structure. After our pleasant lunch, we walked down the street a ways until Sharon found a short cut back to her home. We parted there and I went to catch the bus that would return me home.

Images:
Left: “The Artist and His Mother” 1926-36 by Arshile Gorky is from the website moca.org
Center: “Organization” 1933-36 by Arshile Gorky is from the website moca.org
Right: “The Betrothal” 1947 by Arshile Gorky is from the website moca.org

Around The Center Of Getty

After taking a roundabout route (stuck traffic on the 405 and a surface street detour), Robert (Event Coordinator for the outing), his good friend Tamara, and I eventually arrived at the Getty Center. The afternoon began with the tram ride up the hillside to the art complex. The last time I was here was on Sunday 23 November 2003, which was for a then LAPC event led by Ingrid. Today, when we exited the tram at the Arrival Plaza, I took a photo of the sculpture titled “That Profile” by Martin Puryear. We took the stairway from the Arrival Plaza to the Plaza Level and the three of us began the Getty afternoon with the exploration of the Garden Terrace and the Central Garden.

Tamara, who had recently assisted in a Biology class that was studying Botany, was especially excited to see all the plant life and flowers in the garden. We slowly wandered our way down the terrace and I snapped shots of the small waterfall that outlined our path to the garden. We went around and down into the Central Garden, admiring the different flowers and the unobtainable plant maze at its core. Shot a number of the plants and flowers as we walked inside the garden. Such a variety of colors and forms to please the eye and to inspire an artist’s palette. However, the needs of a different type of palate required attention, so after making our way back to where we began, nourishment was next on the day’s agenda.

First we checked out the menu and prices at the Restaurant on the Plaza Level, but as tempting as the lunch menu was (the prices weren’t), we opted for the Café on the Lower Level. Our gastronomic fuel choices were a sandwich for Tamara and salads for Robert and me. I had an antipasto salad and orange juice which were good and a welcomed change from my usual fare. Guess the walking up and down stairs (some of the time) put me in a healthier frame of mind.

After the prelude of flowers and food, it was time to discover what framed and free-standing art the Getty Center had to offer us. We made the obligatory stop at the Information desk to pick up materials to help us during our visit. At the conclusion of a short discussion on our possibilities of where to begin, we headed towards the East, as in the East Pavilion.

We entered the East Pavilion on the Plaza Level and on this level of the pavilion Sculpture and Decorative Arts are displayed. Two of the pieces here I really liked were – “Basin with Scenes from the Life of Cleopatra”, designed by Bernardo Strozzi and sculpted by Francesco Fanelli and “Side Table”, designed by Johann Paul Shor. Both pieces are from the Seventeenth century, but appeal to different aspects of what moves me artistically. While slowly walking through the exhibits, Tamara had moved faster and had headed to the Upper Level of this pavilion which displays Seventeenth century European paintings. When Robert and I met up with her, Tamara expressed a desire to see Impressionist paintings. And surprise, that’s when I found out we both like Claude Monet! Tamara asked a guide and he said that the Impressionists were in the West Pavilion. We headed out West.

Monet and other Impressionist painters are on the Upper Level of the West Pavilion. Of the four works of Monet’s that the Getty has, I like “Still Life with Flowers and Fruit” and “Sunrise (Marine)” - the former because it is not a type of painting usually associated with Monet and the later because it reminds me of “Impression, soleil levant” which is in the Marmottan Museum in Paris. It is also on this floor that Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” is located. Tamara was happy that she had seen the Impressionists, so we proceeded to the South Pavilion by going outside and walking on the connecting terrace between pavilions. Great views of Los Angeles from the Getty’s hillside position; however, there was a distant haze that prevented complete clarity of the sights.

Arrived at the Upper Level of the South Pavilion which displays Eighteenth century paintings. After walking around the floor, Robert mentioned a painting he had seen on a previous visit that had been displayed in a small dark room with just three spotlights illuminating the portrait. Of course he wanted to see it again and after he described it to one of the museum guides, Robert was told the painting was in the East Pavilion. So we went back East, traveling once again on the outside terrace and I took some shots of one of the statues there. The work that Robert wanted to see was the “Portrait of Agostino Pallavicino” by Anthony van Dyck. The portrait is now in a large exhibition room with general lighting. Glad we were able to find Robert’s painting.

The final stop of the day was the Museum Store. Of course I bought postcards – of the museum and of Monet’s and van Gogh’s paintings mentioned above. As we waited on the platform for the tram to arrive, I took one final shot of the sculpture “That Profile” across the tracks. Robert was kind enough to drop me off near my home, saving me a bus trip. I enjoyed the visit to the Getty and I hope it won’t be long until I return.


Images:
Left: Central Garden from the website getty.edu
Central: Side Table from the website getty.edu
Right: Still Life with Flowers and Fruit from the website getty.edu

A Hammer Of An Afternoon

Miraculously arriving on time (avoid late morning naps) to meet Sharon, a former work colleague, at the Hammer Museum was an omniscient start to the afternoon. Our art adventure began in the lobby with the Jonas Wood exhibition – graphic representations of plants in bold oil colors on linen. My favorite plant was “Untitled (Big Blue and Yellow)”. From the lobby, we were lead up the staircase and to the Hammer courtyard by the Rob Fischer wall sculpture of wood gymnasium flooring with hand-painted signs titled “Few Landmarks and No Boundaries” consisting of interconnecting linear forming open squares. A welcoming trail leading to visual treasures.

At the courtyard we saw the café area with its many foliage and numerous small tables and chairs in which people were relaxing and enjoying a repast. As this was Sharon’s first time in the museum, I pointed out to her the Billy Wilder Theater (site of lectures and films) and the location of the street entrance to the courtyard. This is a pleasant oasis in the midst of Westwood. Then it was upward to the next floor where the major Rachel Whiteread exhibit was installed. (I’ll skip the backpack annoyance I encountered - suffice it to say my wishes prevailed.)

Rachel Whiteread’s retrospective exhibition consists mainly of her drawings and some accompanying sculptures. Her work is a tour through a household – staircases, tables and chairs, floorings, mattresses [favorite piece – “Untitled (Double Amber Bed”) – in rubber and high density foam], rooms, doors, baths – all while using correction fluid, ink, collage, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, enamel paint on paper and graph paper, There are also representations of one off projects – holocaust memorial (“Maquette for Holocasust Memorial”), water tower (“Drawing for Water Tower VI”), Trafalgar Square (“Trafalgar Square Project”), village (“Study for Village – 1st”) – using varnish, ink, pencil, photographic collage, acrylic on graph paper and museum board. And in a wall-mounted display case are objects that Rachel has collected over time – shoes, tree branches, glassware, rocks, dollhouse items, anatomical specimens. Additionally, Rachel collects postcards which she transforms into another type of art.

From a current day British woman’s drawings, Sharon and I transitioned to a past century Dutch man’s prints. The last time I saw Rembrandt’s works in person was at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in the late 1990s. So it was a real treat to experience his art once again. Later in the afternoon I would buy a postcard of “Landscape with Three Gabled Cottages beside a Road”. Rembrandt works on plates, sheets, objects using etching, burin, drypoint. Whatever eye I looked at Rembrandt’s work in the past, I came to today’s viewing with my photographer’s eye. Seeing the same image in various intensities of printing, reminded me of the black and white photography printing I did in Paris earlier this century. It’s a whole new appreciation on my part for the work and artistry Rembrandt employed to produce his prints.

Moving on from drawings and prints, the next stop on the art adventure trail was an Italian woman’s, Luisa Lambri, photographs. Primarily the exhibit consists of outdoor images, in various contrasts, as seen through two skylights in the Sheats-Goldstein home. Luisa is mainly an interior architectural photographer, while my own photographic interest is the exteriors of structures. Her image that I like best is “Untitled (Sheats-Goldstein House, #16)”. For printing, Luisa uses Laserchrome.

The adventure path continued onto the Armand Hammer Collection – works that make up the museum’s permanent collection. This was the collection that Sharon was most interested in seeing. I have seen this collection several times in the past. The first time was when it was housed in the Palm Springs Desert Museum. Art lover and artist Tony Bennett was also in the museum the day I visited. That was my first realization that the singer had an interest in art. And from this collection, my favorite piece is “The Boulevard Montmartre, Mardi Gras” by Camille Pissarro. However today, I would actually buy a postcard of the collection’s “Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt” by Alfred Stevens.

Our afternoon art adventure road ended in the museum’s bookstore, where I bought the aforementioned postcards. While looking through the sale section in the bookstore, I came across a book titled Paris: Contemporary Architecture. So Sharon and I browsed through the book and I told her which of the included structures I had visited or knew of its existence (La Grande Arche, Bibliotheque Nationale, La Villette et. al.). Amazingly, the bookstore was playing Edith Piaf’s “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”, as we looked at those images of beautiful Paris. An afternoon that begins with the art of a living American man and ends with the music of a deceased French woman – what’s to regret? Rien, mon ami, rien!

Images:
Left: Untitled (Red and Pink on Tan) and Untitled (Big Blue and Yellow) from the website hammer.ucla.edu
Center: Few Landmarks and No Boundaries from the website hammer.ucla.edu

Right: Untitled (Double Amber Bed) from the website hammer.ucla.edu