LACMA & LA Film Festival

Last Thursday I felt the need to go to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). It's free after 5pm for LA County residents and open until 8.

Coincidently that night, the museum's theatre was hosting a screening of "Beauty is Embarrassing" as part of the LA Film Fest. After looking at art I was able to catch this great documentary about under-appreciated artist Wayne White.

LACMA is the largest encyclopedic art museum in the western United States with over 100,000 works of art in its collection, spanning the Ancient World, Islamic Art, Korean Art, Japanese Art, Southeast Asian Art, Latin American Art, Modern Art, and Contemporary Art housed in a campus of 6 large buildings on Wilshire Boulevard in Central Los Angeles' Miracle Mile neighborhood.


The setting and architecture of the Getty Center are spectacular, and hype and fame has made that the busiest art museum in Los Angeles. LACMA on the otherhand, has long held the superior collection but not attracted as many visitors nor been able to draw praise for its buildings. This is starting to change as LACMA attracts more people with its new building additions, new artwork (especially contemporary pieces), and popular special exhibitions (Tim Burton last year, female Surrealist artists this year, etc).

On this past visit, as I approached the LACMA campus, I began to take note of the space and how I related to it. The trialectics of being were evident- as I felt a sense of historicality, sociality, and spatiality that was all at once perceived, conceived, and lived.

One of the things I like best about LACMA is that it is a public institution in the middle of the city so it feels welcoming and loiter-friendly like a public library or public park. The Getty on the otherhand feels like a wealthy man's private fortress atop the masses of Los Angeles.

The newer red-trimmed buildings (completed in 2008 and 2010) by Renzo Piano, have a subtle sophistication. Adjacent to them is LACMA's newest famous contemporary large scale piece, Levitated Mass, which is a massive boulder suspended above a trench that visitors can walk under. It was closed when I was there but has since opened to the public.
The most subtle art installation at LACMA is the deliberate planting of various palm trees around the campus by landscape artist Robert Irwin. Palm trees and Los Angeles seem intertwined but most of LA's palm trees are reaching old age and due to shifting environmental concerns, palm trees will not be planted along public streets or maintained by LA's public tree department in the interest of lack of shade and water usage concerns. Someday, when you want to see palm trees in Los Angeles, you might have to go to LACMA to see Irwin's palms.

Of these large scale contemporary pieces that LACMA has amassed in recent years, none is more famous than Urban Light by Chris Burden. Comprised of 202 vintage street lamps from around Southern California, Urban Light marks the entrance to LACMA's central main plaza and is one of the most popular spots in LA to photograph and in which to be photographed.

 


This main entrance plaza also hosts one of LA's top bars and restaurants, Ray's & Stark Bar. I've had coffee here and it was truly epic. Note the FOUR types of complimentary sugar.
 
After collecting my thoughts here, I walked into the Ahmanson Building (one of the older buildings from 1965), briefly appreciating the Art of the Pacific Islands galleries

and the European 20th Century Modern art galleries,

but being spellbound by Tony Smith's Smoke (1967), a large scale piece that takes up the central hall of the Ahmanson Building.
 
With little time before the film was to begin, I ate at the Plaza Cafe and decided to check out the Contemporary Art collections in depth. The Plaza Cafe has a gourmet salad bar featuring farm-to-table fresh food.

Outside of the Ahmanson near the cafe, was an installation that visitors could interact with. It was a large structure with dangling yellow cords and visitors could walk through it.
 
At the contemporary arts building, I made my way to the top of the "Red Spider", the architect's name for the jumble of red-trimmed escalator and stairway intersections on the side of the building.

From here I could get a good view of central Hollywood and the Hollywood sign

of the large apartment complex known as Park La Brea (a twin to Park Merced in San Francisco)

and of the Sunset Strip and West Hollywood skyline
 
but most delightful for me was the the the ability to capture the magic of the ethereal way the smog swims through the trees and hills of Los Angeles. I took many pictures of this trying to convey the magic of this sight, a chemical reaction with the sun to produce a murky quality of light.

I also noticed how the Pacific Design Center looked like a large ship sailing through the cityscape.

People making their way into the contemporary arts building drew my attention back to the museum and I walked in. Inside the top floor was a collection of pop art-esque large plastic sculptures - a stack of plates              and a wildly contorting bed.

There was also a collaboration between an architect and Israeli dance group studying the movement of human limbs in their sockets.

On the ground floor of the building was Metropolis II  by Chris Burden, a room-sized construction of roadways and buildings. Last year I took a picture of the team setting up this piece

and now I was able to see it as a finished awe-inspiring product.

Crowds gathering for the film festival signaled that it was time for the film

so I made my way to the ticket line

and into the Bing Theatre.

It was a nice experience since I got to see a remarkable fim about a cool artist, as well as see him in person in attendance and Paul Reubans (Pee-Wee Herman) was there. The audience was chill, some people dressed up and some (like myself) not.

 Overall it was refeshing to be at one of my favorite places in Los Angeles (LACMA), and to check out the LA Film Festival and luckily catch a really cool film.

When I left, Urban Light was fully illuminated.