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.