A Living Painting at LACMA

Reading the interview with James Turrell last night, reminded me that I had been meaning to go to the museum to revisit a favorite work, Thomas Wilfred's Luccata, Opus 162, which has been installed into a wall beneath a staircase of the Hammer building for several years.

I went to this huge museum to see this single work, and planned to leave after spending a half hour watching the changes in this living painting. I needed a break after being a tech nerd with my new iPad all day yesterday--and this was a sort of visit to an Art Oasis. I'm going to try to do this more frequently, and report back on the experiences, hopefully inspiring others to take a couple hours off every week or so, and spend time alone with something beautiful. Just be with it, and see how directly you can connect.

The concept goes back to the famous book by Julia Cameron (could that really have been published 30 years ago?), "The Artist's Way. She called this activity, the "Artist's Date," and she believed it was very important to go solo.

Spoiler alert: It might be better to see "Luccata," before you take a peak at this photo and description of the mechanism that makes the magic happen.

I really enjoyed seeing Krunk Foo Battle Battle last month, a mash-up of Westside Story with contemporary Hip Hop dance moves. The production by the East West Players at their theater in downtown Los Angeles, was filled with energetic numbers from a talented cast. Here is a more detailed review from the Bamboo Curtain blog.

Interview with James Turrell

The very smart director of LACMA, Michael Govan, flew out to visit his friend James Turrell, and had a conversation about Roden Crater, the influences of growing up as a Quaker, and a surprising statement about the relationship between artist and viewer.

Here is the link to the piece in Interview Magazine.

Outside Toulouse, France, I discovered the best artwork I've ever seen at a rest stop--leave it to the French to bring high culture to the highway. The piece, called, "Le Tour de France dans Les Pyrenees," consists of a sort of steel Mobius strip on which larger than life cyclists ride up and down the 'hills.'

It was completed by artist Jean-Bernard Metais in 1996. I love the fact that the base of the sculpture was surrounded by tile plaques quoting both sportsmen and intellectuals like Roland Barthes thoughts about "Le Tour." The philosopher Barthes was the inventor of semiotics. I remember reading his "Empire of Signs," when I was undergraduate school, a work that described the symbolism underlying many of the common objects and foods of Japan. Funny that he also wrote about a bike race.

Culver City Art Walk - 2010

A bit reluctantly, I went on the Culver City Art walk yesterday. My hesitation was due to past visits when much of the artwork seemed conservative; even lackluster.

I won't dwell on the work that was dull or bad, except to mention that there was one (alleged) artist owned space where a patio with 12 huge, horrible spattered paint canvases, disturbed my hopes for this event. As my friend said, "it looks like the colors came from the paint mixing mistakes pile of Home Depot." Worst of all, this guy has been there for seven years, and as with any crime I think there should be more severe punishment for repeat offenders.

On a more positive note, we saw appealing sculptures at two of the galleries along the east side of La Cienega. We crossed to west side to srutinize a vertical garden on the walls of an anonymous building, which had intrigued me for some time while driving past. It turned out to be The Smog Shoppe, an event space. There was a wedding taking place this afternoon allowing us to peek into the interior. Walking along the outside we admired how beautifully installed and maintained the selection of plants were on these walls. I have always wanted to live in one of the walled gardens, of the sort called a Carmine, in Granada. Here was the hip update to that concept. I did some research the following morning, and I've provided a link to The Smog Shoppe, which was created by a very interesting designer-artist named Miguel Nelson, who has also turned his downtown loft into another event space. Now I just have to get invited to some event there!

Next stop, Blum and Poe gallery. Even though I always admired the fact that they were the ones that kicked off the whole Culver City gallery movement, I've actually never cared much for their space or the work I've seen there. But this was their new mega-gallery and it was incredibly impressive. The largest, or certainly one of the largest galleries in Los Angeles, it is a beautifully designed sequence of differentiated interior spaces. To your right as you enter there is a very appealing, though private, art research library. We then entered a series of rooms, which fortunate for me were filled with works by Tim Hawkinson, who is perhaps my favorite Los Angeles-based artist. As usual, an excellent show. Upstairs, there was a more rustic space, wood floors exposed trusses, showing perhaps 15 huge redwood sculptures by J B Blunk, well known to me from my explorations of Bay Area furniture artists.

Blum and Poe obviously have incredible confidence, and what they've created makes a lot of the nearby galleries feel like amateur efforts. Since it's only two blocks from my own studio, I look forward to many repeat visits.

We continued down Washington Boulevard, becoming more selective about which galleries we would venture into. Why do some gallery owners think that anyone can enjoy looking at artwork in a hot, stuffy space, with incredible humidity? When I go to openings at physically uncomfortable spaces, I usually turn on my heel, without even looking at the work.

A few nice galleries, and a couple of spaces that were focal points for the cigarette smoking tattoo crowd. They had burnout, it was a beautiful day outside, and it made me wish that we had weekly, or daily promenade spaces, like many Spanish cities do.

All in all, the kind of day, and the kind of event, that makes me glad I live in Los Angeles.

We finished up at Royal-T, a cafe and gallery.

Last time I went there, I had dragged a friend about six extra blocks to show it to him, but our entry was prevented by a line of 150 teen girls, and teen-like adult women waiting dutifully to be allowed entry to the boutique in order to purchase the just-released, latest and greatest, "Hello Kitty" product. Yikes!

This time, no line. We wandered through the 10,000 or 12,000 square feet of space which features beautiful bowstring trusses, and exposed brick walls. There is an art exhibit secured behind thick plexiglass barricades, and in the middle of the space, there are perhaps a dozen café tables. The most novel thing about royalty is the fact that the servers there wear French maids costumes. Pity that all of them are girls.

This is my second time eating at Royal-T. It's affordable, friendly, and the service is excellent. I enjoyed my veggie burger, and my friend liked his chicken Katsu sandwich. I had a very nice, and large, French beer, and all was right with the world.

Dividing the Light - James Turrell

I visited James Turrell's 'light and space' piece at Pomona College on Saturday. I had last seen it two years ago, after the symposium in honor of the opening of this work. At that time, I was a little overwhelmed after several hours of conversation from the speakers at the symposium, and I enjoyed "Dividing the Light," but wasn't really able to focus on it. When you have an artwork that is large-scale, but also about subtle effects that can only be experienced over time, you really have to be careful to create a circumstance where you can give yourself over to what is happening in the moment.

The work is a large canopy floating over a square arrangement of stone benches. The ceiling of the canopy is illuminated by lights that shift in color and intensity according to programs created by the artist. There is a large square aperture punctured through the center of the canopy, like a frame for a particular portion of the sky. Below the opening is a black reflecting pool.

If you ever studied Joseph Albers', Interaction of Color," you would immediately understand the forces at play here. According to the principle of simultaneous contrast our brain tries to establish a neutral field, upon which we evaluate the color of various objects. So if you spend half an hour in a room illuminated by pink light, and then step outdoors, everything seems to have an weirdly bluish cast for a few minutes.

Even though I know the science of how this works, I was amazed at the power of "Dividing the Light." The canopy is eliminated by Lavender light for the first 20 minutes or so, and the sky color through the aperture looks fairly natural. Then, in just two or three minutes the light colors switches to Turquoise, and the sky becomes much more gray. I kept comparing the color of the sky through the aperture, to the sky color to the west, as the sun was setting. At first, they seemed to match, but as the color effects on the canopy became more dramatic, the sky above contradicted the "outside" sky.

I didn't really expect more than a few people to visit this case on a Saturday evening. It's best to get there 30 to 40 minutes prior to the Sunset. The "show" begins 25 minutes before sunset, and continues for about an hour. As I approached the courtyard, I saw several people walking towards it from other directions, and I heard a fairly loud rumble of conversation. And in fact the benches surrounding the reflecting pool were nearly filled and there were about 50 people in attendance.

As is typical, when people are waiting these days, there was a fair amount of e-mail checking, text team, looking at things on mobile phone browsers. There was a nice mix of young and old, and no surprise that this looks like a fairly affluent and educated bunch of people. Several families were there, and what I thought would feel restrained and spiritual, felt more like the beginnings of a family picnic. Anyway, I didn't mind, because the last thing I wanted was some guard telling me not to take any pictures, or not to talk. Once the event began, the audience became very focused, and conversation involved only that delighted sharing of something unusual and beautiful.

The work held people's attention, and they were patient enough to let the color effects develop. About 40 minutes into the program, there were some sudden and dramatic shifts in the intensity of the sky seen through the aperture. It made me happy to see that this work by Turrell, who is one of my favorite artists, was being received with enthusiasm.

In addition to the sky phenomena, a seconary aspect of this piece is just watching the other people watch the sky.

Near the end of the hour, I experienced a dramatic compression of time. It seemed like 10 minutes before I had seen a bright blue sky near dusk, and then, very suddenly, a star appeared in blackness. If you just stare through the aperture, after 45 minutes the edge between aperture and canopy blurs; and at least to me, pink and blue flashes appeared at the edges, and the sky was ink black through the hole, with a bright planet near the zenith. The canopy became very bright white with a pinkish cast. It was the color equivalent of someone suddenly shifting a zoom lens. I thought it was totally effective in producing an intense experience of the transition from day to night.

See this piece for yourself. I took a number of photographs during the program, and not unexpectedly, the objective camera kept "seeing" the same damn colors that were monotonously similar due to the lack of the an overlay of brain processing. I can't think of any other experience that has made me more aware of what my eye 'sees,' in contrast to what my brain was making of the image.

The brochure for "Dividing the Light" says it open to the public Sunday and Monday, from 10 AM to 8 PM. But since it's in an open courtyard on the beautiful Claremont colleges campus, I would assume you could visit on any evening. It's located behind two buildings on the corner of College Way and 6th St. in Claremont California. More information is available at www.Pomona.edu/museum

Brian Eno at Cal State Long Beach

I went to see the new Brian Eno art exhibit at its opening on Saturday night, arriving about 6 PM. There was supposed to be some sort of gallery walk-through, and I was expecting a big crowd based on Eno's celebrity in the music world, so I was a little surprised to see only 40, or so, undergrad students milling around on the lawn. Things definitely looked very low key.

I walked into the gallery, or rather the museum, at California State University Long Beach. To enter you have to shove your way through some heavy blackout curtains in the doorway, which seemed a bit fussy, since the first space consisted of eleven small, colorful digital prints. This was a beautifully proportioned space with bright red walls and dramatic spotlighting of each work . The prints were signed in 1/50, Brian Eno. If a famous musicians name weren't attached to them what I think? "These are handsome, and facile, and there is some variety from one piece to the next. I am however unpleasantly distracted by the prints that have little cartoon characters scribbles in them. That seems trite."

The installation and lighting of these pieces is impeccable. But on some level, don't the bright red walls feel like a gimmick? If I saw these 11 pieces hung close together on a white wall, what would I think of them? Probably just that they have rich color and look expensively printed, and have been designed by someone very capable in using illustrator. Nicely decorative, but really, not a lot of meaningful content.

Next, you enter a very large 'L'- shaped space, with charcoal gray walls, and an array of flat-panel TVs in a sort of daisy pattern on the end wall. There are six dark gray sofas which are filled with people, respectfully watching what turns out to be a slowly morphing display of designs and colors on the 12 screens. This is what Mr. Eno means by that title: "77 million paintings". It's very colorful and pretty. I enjoy the slowness of the shifts in color and patterns, which is like going to a demanding but rewarding avant-garde film. On one level, it's great that people are willing to sit there for half an hour in order to experience it, when they might more too typically spend Saturday night at slambang Hollywood film.

But what does this mean, I spend about 20 minutes with it, and I can't for the life of me really discern any cogent message. I recall a critic's line from 30 years ago in which he described the work of a San Diego-based pattern painter as "the thinking man's tablecloths."

Also, when I spend time watching evolving colors and patterns on a video display I can't help but compare it to the work of one of my favorite artists, Jennifer Steinkamp. No contest. Jennifer's work is rousing, technically brilliant, sometimes metaphorical, other times just so jazzy and precisely installed that it leaves me with a warm glow thinking all is well in the art world.

While the Brian Eno works are beautifully installed, I can't discern any intended meaning. Maybe his point is that intention is of no interest, and that it's best to let the machine generate both the sequence of colors, and the music which is part of this experience. I've enjoyed his collaborations with Talking Heads, and in the 70's respected his ambient music; not that I listened to it for days on end. Maybe I am missing something in this slowly evolving video piece, because it reflects his ambient aesthetic to which I never felt a great connection. I also find myself comparing what's on these flat panel screens to the large show Bill Viola had at the Getty several years ago. While I found that show a little grandiose, there were individual pieces in which you've viewed an actor emoting in slow motion and it was very evocative, albeit cool in a sort of pseudo scientific way.

It might be, that the Eno exhibit is better experienced without the crowd. It's up until December 13th, so I'll give it another go, and see if my perception changes.