Posts Tagged ‘LACMA’

At LACMA on Saturday night, a girl in a white Victorian dress sat on a bench with her hands folded, looking pissed off. A photographer from the clothing company Clockwork Couture stood a few feet away.
“Want to sit in her lap?” the photographer asked me.
“I think I’m okay,” I said. The girl looked so familiar, I had to ask. “Have you ever watched True Blood?” I asked.
She stared at me. “I know what you’re going to say,” she snapped. “Lorena, right? I hear it all the time.” She looked coldly into the camera as it flashed.
I guess I don’t blame her for being pissed off. I would be too, if I had to pose with bystanders at the fourteenth annual LACMA Muse ‘Til Midnight event, where the clothing was Victorian, the food supplied was chips and salsa, and there was an open bar. The tickets were $40 for non-members, $25 for Muse members, and it was hard to see what all the fuss was about.
The event sounded great, in theory: a neo-Victorian dress-up night at the museum, coinciding with the Thomas Eakins and Catherine Opie show, Manly Pursuits. Eakins painted wrestlers and rowers in intimate situations in the late 1800-early 1900’s, while Opie currently photographs teenage football players and surfers. Connecting the two artists requires a stretch of imagination, but the show is a valuable statement about the forced efforts and vulnerability of masculinity.
However, the Muse ‘Til Midnight event didn’t have much to do with the show, or with anything at the museum. The event was described by a Yelp user like this: “A full line-up of entertainment with open bar in an unique environment for $25-$40? On a Saturday night? In Los Angeles? Even including parking? Do I need to keep asking rhetorical questions?” Unfortunately, the event became a Los Angeles situation in which too many good ideas were not executed properly, with too many people in attendance to leave such margin for error.
After waiting in a long line, guests were ushered into the museum’s main plaza where Dusty and the River Band played and video projections flashed on the walls. Two performers on stilts made their way through the crowd, surrounded by a thick circle of photographers, documenting the “insanity” for various nightlife blogs. Two stilt-walkers, a couple of dancers and some people in costumes didn’t seem like enough to justify paying $40, but let’s not forget about that open bar, which included “100% Agave Tequila, Blackheart Spiced Rum, Hpnotiq Liqueur, Pernod Absinthe, and FIJI Water.” It seems that people will spend any amount of money to get sloshed while wearing a corset.
Maybe next time, LACMA should make dressing up for the event mandatory, as the people who were wearing full neo-Victorian garb looked to be having the best time. Many people wore costumes from Clockwork Couture, a “steampunk” line that mixes Victorian clothing with modern touches, while others had improvised their own costumes. A thin blonde woman and her chunkier date wore matching top hats and lace-up boots, trailing long feathers behind them. Another woman wore a corset and a matching flowered neck brace, and many men (and women) sported fantastic moustaches.
At ten o’clock, everyone was ushered into a much longer line leading to the roof of the Penthouse suite, only accessible by an elevator. (Too bad for the claustrophobes.) The roof offered a nice city view of the Variety building, along with some mysterious devices, including a giant telescope and various contraptions used to “measure electrical phenomena.” A stage was set up for a burlesque show, and a dancer in chalky makeup tiptoed around the crowd en pointe as flashbulbs popped all around her.
Nearby, a man wearing suspenders rested his foot on a stack of pillows. “I sprained my foot, but this is awesome,” he declared, looking at the dancer. “Look at this. Look at her. Can you believe it?” I could believe it, though next time I would prefer to look at photos of the event rather than attend. Despite the congestion, chips and salsa, long lines and limited number of performers, it seemed like many people had a wonderful time. Never underestimate the power of a little absinthe.

- By Cassandra McGrath

For mose information about LACMA, and any upcoming Muse events, please visit www.lacma.org/membership/Muse.aspx, or call 323-857-6000.

The Edition Jacob Samuel exhibition, titled “Outside the Box,” celebrates LACMA and the Hammer Museum’s joint acquisition of the collection of 43 print portfolios produced by Jacob Samuel in collaboration with a host of international artists from 1988-2009. Samuel generally works with intaglio techniques, such as aquatint and engraving, but his deployment of these techniques is as varied as the group of artists he has worked with over the twenty-two years of his studio’s existence. Above all, he responds to each individual artist’s concepts and visions, helping them translate their practices into a reproducible medium. Samuel offers expertise and guidance, but in his own words, he “just show[s]up.” The finished prints themselves run the gamut of styles, from abstraction to representation, from seeming spontaneity to carefully planned and arranged wholes, from the organic to the mechanical. This range of practices and subject matter makes for a compelling exhibition.

Among the most intriguing portfolios were those that emphasized process or performance. Marina Abramovic’s Spirit Cooking, as its title implies, was envisioned as a metaphysical cookbook of sorts. The images themselves are sometimes gestural and indexical—images were scratched into the ground with the artist’s fingernail, or spit bites performed with actual spit, or handprints done in acid-resistant ground. The images interact with the printed text, complementing it with gestural impressions that somehow relate to the words, and by creating a rhythmic separation that distinguishes one ‘recipe’ from the next. Ed Moses’ Abstraktion and Apparition is a series of etched abstractions that seem at once spontaneous and carefully crafted. Spontaneous, because the organic forms recall abstract expressionist paintings, and crafted, because these images are executed in a highly process-driven medium.

Also on display is Samuel’s expertise and skill as a technician. James Welling’s Quadrilaterals and Jene Highstein’s Five Works both rely on dense patches of black without irregularity, while the images from Josiah McElheny’s White Modernismare barely there, ghostly white on white forms. Joe Goode’s Storm Trees series features fluid and amorphous illustrations, while Barry McGee’s Drypoint on Acid prints rely on a process that allows the artist to draw directly onto the plate, mimicking the original pencil drawings.

Jacob Samuel is an interesting figure—a master printer whose collaborations have intersected the careers of some of the most celebrated artists of the day—and “Outside the Box” tries very hard not to let you forget it. Certain placards perhaps go into too much detail about superficial aspects of Samuel’s relationships with the artists (i.e. Did you know he shares a common interest in jazz music/rock music/surfing with artist X?). Certainly Samuel’s resume is impressive, and the brief documentary and interview in the exhibition brochure explain how these relationships are important, but at a certain point the information begins to seem gratuitous or redundant.  This criticism is minor compared to the depth and breadth of work on display.

- By Joe Capezzuto

“Outside the Box” will be on display at the Hammer Museum through August 29^th, 2010.  The work on display can be seen atwww.editionjs.com.

At around 4:00 PM on Sunday, June 27^th, Guy Hatzvi of Farmlab, in association with Metabolic Studio, was rushing down to Marina Del Rey to find a replacement pump for the installation project entitled “Bldg. 209: Garden Folly (Indexical of Strawberry Flag)” that was to officially open to the public at the LACMA Campus in the next hour. Fortunately, he knew exactly what he was looking for: it’s a type of aeroponic generator that allows for a nutrient-rich water solution to be drip-fed through a series of I.V. tubes connecting a system of sick strawberry plants. The project was conceived by Lauren Bon, the founder of both Farmlab and Metabolic Studio, and her team of dedicated employees had been setting up the installation all week. But at the last minute, of course, the original pump broke down, and it was up to Guy to get a new one up and running by 5:00 PM.

This one task—obviously essential to the success of Bon’s operation on its opening night—was actually just a small tributary within the vastly ambitious constellation of works now going on at LACMA under the title of EATLACMA. In a sentence, this one-year-long, multi-faceted commitment from the Museum sets out to delve into the social, artistic, cultural, environmental, and humanitarian meanings behind natural food growth. In fact, this undertaking is so large, it’s hard to do it justice in a simple blog post, so I’ll just focus on the garden installations for now:

Along with “Bldg. 209: Garden Folly (Indexical of Strawberry Flag)”—which itself is indexical of a much larger work entitled “Strawberry Flag,” located three miles west of LACMA at the Veterans Administration of West Los Angeles (a bus will soon be available to take visitors in between the two sites)—there are also five other installation gardens on or around the LACMA campus.

One is called “Promiscuous Production: Breeding is Bittersweet” by the National Bitter Melon Council (yes, it exists). This tunnel-shaped, bamboo structure doubles as an experimental breeding ground for the hybrid, never-before-seen, BitterSweet melon. Through the age-old process of cross-pollination, visiting participants can actually partake in the experiment themselves by attending a series of day-long events intended to promote community, generate discussion, and—don’t forget—make melons.

A little bit further east is “Food Pyramid”—conceived by Didier Hess—which is a solar-powered, aquaponic garden that simultaneously questions the traditional food pyramid most Americans grew up on; presents an eco-friendly, soil-free alternative to gardening; and cultivates all the necessary ingredients for a delicious fish taco—including the Tilapia. It’s also aesthetically pleasing, peaceful to be around, and fun to contemplate with friends.

Just off the southeast border of the LACMA complex, on the corner of Wilshire and Curson, sits your typical traffic circle, the median point between pedestrian walk signs, the border between east-bound and west-bound traffic. But now there is also a garden of radishes, as planned and planted by Islands of LA in a project they call “The Roots of Compromise.” The traffic island itself is controlled by a variety of bureaucracies, and together, they agreed upon the root vegetable of the radish as the appropriate plant for their shared circle of land. The resulting food is representative of this small, but successful compromise.

Way over on the west end of LACMA, a crooked, polygonal potato garden lays flat and almost unnoticeable between the Ahmanson and the Art of the Americas buildings. But, according to the little placard placed in the soil, amidst at least 12 types of potato plants, “The varieties [of potato] exist as a result of coincidences, accidents, planning, violence, and careful custody over thousands of years. Through tracing their different backgrounds, a history of human desire appears.” The placard also directs viewers to a website, allowing them to cellularly interact with the incredible stories behind each strain of potato. The website is www.potatoperspective.org, the project is titled “The Way Potatoes Go 8000-BCE-Present: A Potato Perspective on an American Matter,” and was developed by sa Sonjasdotter in collaboration with the communities of the Potato Park (yes, it too exists).

Finally, on the north end of the LACMA campus, just below 6^th street, there stands a small, Roman theater of sorts, not unlike a miniature version of the restored Theater of Caesaria. Beginning November 7^th, this is the site of what shall be known as the “Public Fruit Theater,” a magical little installation concocted by the people of Fallen Fruit. In this theater, there will be only one performer (depending on how you look at it, that is), and that performer is a tree. Visitors are invited to come watch the growth process of this concrete-locked tree as if they were witnessing the slow arc of a character’s development on stage. In this way, the episodic relationship between the tree, the viewer, and also the other audience members creates a story, much like the ones we look for in theatre.

But back to Guy, and his aeroponic generator. Come 4:30 PM, he’s able to make it back to LACMA, and set up the device just in time for the first waves of curious onlookers. I observe the fragile configuration of hanging strawberry plants he helped set up, each interconnected by small life-lines of dripping nutrients, each literally holding on by a thread of survival, completely dependent upon one pump. I know it’s supposed to be representative of the plight of the Veterans in Los Angeles, but it’s also symbolic of the six gardens themselves, and beyond that, EATLACMA as a whole, and beyond that, the city of Los Angeles. I could go on and on, but you should probably just visit for yourself, and that way, become part of the garden.

For more information on EATLACMA, please visit http://eatlacma.org/about/, or call (323) 857-6000.

Along with many other lucky visitors last week, I got a chance to see the inside of the brand new, as yet un-opened Resnick Pavilion, the latest addition to the already massive LACMA campus. The 45,000 square-foot wing was opened to the public for one day only—what LACMA termed a “flash visit”—allowing museum-ers to get a glimpse of the freshly painted, immaculate Renzo Piano construction.

The room (if you can call a closed-off, one-acre section of land a room) was nearly empty; no brochure stands, no explanatory plaques, no museum guards, not even other guests. It was just me and the sole installation on view, which was Walter de Maria’s “2000 Sculpture,” composed of—you guessed it—2000 pieces of intricately arranged polygonal rods, amounting to a rectangular grid the length of the entire Resnick floor.

De Maria is an artist who deals mostly in the worlds of enormous, tactile, mathematical systems, and a sculpture of his seems like the perfect testing grounds for the architectural specifications of the Resnick wing. Not only is the space large enough for such a monumental piece, but the natural lighting system—as provided by adjustable skylights above—illuminates the entire installation with an even, cool elegance. (I was told by a museum staffer that when the skylights are closed, the room becomes pitch-black).

The openness of the Resnick Pavilion, at least at this stage, is its key ingredient.  In fact, it’s almost intimidating in that it dwarfs a sculpture made out of 2000 separate pieces. But it is also a flexible space. One can easily envision large catered events taking place there, or possibly sectioning off the room into multiple exhibits. Any way you look at it, the new wing is a perfect compliment to the BCAM next-door (the first-half of Renzo Piano’s master vision), a more complex, densely structured building. And I look forward to the first three shows planned for the new space: “Eye for the Sensual: Selections From the Resnick Collection,” “Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915″ and “Olmec: Masterworks of Ancient Mexico.”

For more information about LACMA, please call (323) 857-6010, or visit www.lacma.org.

On my phone, I can store hundreds of contacts, dozens of messages—both text and voice—I can take photos, videos, and surf the web. But can a mobile device, such as my cell phone, store inspiration? Does it hold objects of historical, artistic, and/or scientific significance? Is it a genuine platform for discussion and representation of the human condition? Put more simply, and yet ultimately more complex: can a cell phone be a museum?

Most pro-Tweeters and social network-mongols—who would text yes to any and all of the questions above—will point to the Iran election as the tantamount example of mobile technology meshing with social and political phenomena to enact positive, realistic change. This is difficult to argue, as is the often belabored fact that such technology has radically altered the way in which we communicate. In Japan, for instance, the keitai shosetsu, or the “thumb novel”—a literary publication broadcast solely to cell-phones—has gained incredible popularity, with sites like Maho I-land generating millions of amateur novels, many of them going on to huge successes as tangible books.

Both the Iranian election and the keitai shosetsu would lead one to think that mobile networking may have a place within the world of museums. But as a casual user (and I believe that drug terminology is appropriate) of Twitter and Facebook, the main issue is not whether a cell phone can be used as museum, but how often the muses are overwhelmed by oblivious, shameless, and not-so-shameless marketing.

Which brings us to LACMA’s latest venture: Cell Phone Stories, a three-month-long chain of stories—much like keitai shosetsu—not told in first-person or third-person, but in an all-together new mode of narrative: cell-phone-person. Artist Steve Fagin conceived the project, and brings together a diverse grouping of commissioned authors, ranging from actor Rainn Wilson, to chic designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy, to supply the tales.

Sounds interesting enough; I’m a huge proponent of using literature as art (LACMA’s other, less-publicized project, Word Without Pictures, is borderline brilliant), and the idea of telling your story walking is appealing to me (and Jonathan Lethem).

But there’s an odd catch. All of the stories/essays have to revolve around LACMA.  I suppose this is to bring up the idea that a museum is not just a building—after all, one can be mused anywhere—yet I can’t get over the idea that it’s all a clever marketing ploy.

The first story to appear publicly as a part of the Cell Phone Stories project was one by performance-artist Rich Bott. It began at 1 PM on May 29^th, and combined brief text messages with even briefer cell-phone videos, which can be seen here. The initial installment: “Jacques Debierue sculpture reported missing STOP LAPD on the scene STOP Continental operative Richard Bott on the scene STOP.”

Clearly Bott was setting up an absurd art-heist mystery of some sort (by referencing a fictional sculptor), though I don’t claim to understand the repeated usage of “STOP,” which continued throughout his hour-long “text-performance”—a sort of hard-boiled detective story that had him speaking to a “wise-cracking lamp,” getting tips from a nude “prostitute” in a Picasso painting, and finally catching the thief and recovering the stolen sculpture. The problem is none of this was very clear at all, and any sense of drama that could be generated from the natural cliff-hangers of episodic text messaging was lost in translation.

Furthermore, I didn’t get to see, or even imagine, much of the museum at all. To me, the magic of a museum is the same magic of a church or a mosque or a synagogue; it’s a temple. When you walk into the LACMA, or the MOCA, or the MET, or the MOMA, you enter into a different frame of consciousness. You’re supposed to temporarily let go of the world of money, and traffic, and work, and advertising, and yes, cell-phones. There’s a reason why they’re not allowed. And while I love the idea of a global museum, or even a museum of the imagination, LACMA’s Cell Phone Stories has yet to provide one.

Cell Phone Stories runs until September 6, 2010, and can be accessed by texting “LACMA” to 67553, or by visiting their Twitter account at http://twitter.com/LACMA.

When I was a young, impressionable, and far too enthusiastic (okay, fine: totally nerdy) college student, I jumped at the chance to fulfill a required GE credit by taking a class called “The History of Opera.” I grew up singing opera, but it wasn’t until I explored the academia behind the music that I was able to truly realize that German opera, especially that of Richard Wagner, was the most dramatic, intense, goose-bump inducing music of all.

Just a few days ago, my friend, colleague, and fellow opera student/patron Nicole C. wrote an article for our beloved site on the current German invasion of Los Angeles arts institutions, Das Ring Festival ist Upon Us.  According to Nicole, the LA Opera has spent a whopping $32 million dollars producing the definitive Ring Festival, including its production of the four operas that comprise Wagner’s famous Ring Cycle (a feat unto itself), and a wide selection of events, exhibitions, and concerts at many of LA’s cultural havens. As a Wagner aficionado and someone who thinks German culture is wunderbar, I gladly hopped on this Nordic bandwagon and visited LACMA’s current exhibition Myths, Legends and Cultural Renewal: Wagner’s Sources.

First with the bad news: after visiting two of LACMA’s box offices and confusing three separate security guards in what seemed a futile attempt to be directed toward this exhibition, I started to believe that the existence of the show was some sort of myth or legend. I was starting to feel as if LACMA’s heart was not in this exhibit, but finally, my fourth attempt at harassing a museum guard proved victorious, and I was led to a small, dark, hidden room, approximately the size of a walk-in closet.

The good news: even though tiny, the exhibition did teach me something about the essential role that myths and legends play in cultural renewal.  Reinvented and passed down through the generations, myths and legends are a constant inspiration to artists.  Germany’s mythological heritage was best captured in the 19^th Century in the work of Richard Wagner.  Wagner’s operas utilize subject matter from the Edda (a collection of Norse tales from the 13^th Century), and on the Nibelungenlied (verses rooted in pre Christian oral traditions, which in the High Middle Ages were codified into an epic poem). During Wagner’s time, these once lost and forgotten traditions were renewed upon the discovery of manuscripts, which contributed to the renewed German national identity and the development of Romanticism.

The exhibit begins with a series of sixteen postcards (c. 1894-96) based on the watercolors of Emil Nolde.  I have always been mesmerized by mountains and the monsters that inhabit them; my favorite part of The Matterhorn ride at Disneyland was when the Abominable Snowman lumbers out from behind a cropping of rocks to growl a warning to the bobsled team whizzing by.  Nolde apparently shared my dangerous attraction to mountain creatures.  His paintings portray the anthropomorphization of Germany’s alpine peaks and reveal the fantastical presence of mountain monsters.  Some of my favorite scenes within these postcards were silly, cartoon humans running away from the spirit of the mountains, while the faces of old men, with their long white beards serving as the snow capped summits, laugh maniacally.  I was able to understand why this series of postcards became so popular in modernist Germany, for the realm of fantasy came to life, and the spirit of Mother Nature was more attainable than ever.

On the far wall of the exhibition, Henri Fantin-Latour’s Tannhauser on the Venusberg (1864) represented the international fascination with the legends utilized in Wagner’s work.  Latour, who considered himself a French Wagnerite, fell in love with Wagner’s operas in the early 1860s after attending a performance of Tannhauser.  His painting is a study in modernist technique, and reveals the incident when Tannhauser, a knight and poet, finds the secret home of the Venus of Teutonic legend.  In this painting, Latour offers an alternative to popular genre painting and achieves unison of gestures, staging, and poetic sources.  The painting itself looks like a drowsy, unconscious dream state, perfectly representing the transformation of myth to reality.

The finale of the exhibition is Achim Freyer’s set design and installation, based on the prototypes for the LA Opera’s 2010 production of the Ring Cycle.  Freyer, the director and designer of the the Ring Cycle, belongs to the post-World War II generation that felt alienated from a national culture left in ruins and misrepresented by the horrific plunder of the Third Reich.  In an effort to redeem his culture, Freyer strives to recuperate the idea of Wagner for our own age. The abstraction of his drawings brings to mind the sense of the absurd and the surreal, but also eliminates any specificity of time by pulling the audience into an everlasting present. A true Wagnerite, he managed to never waver from the composer’s stage direction and vision.  His allusions breathe life into his productions, and withhold a sense of universal significance. Just as Wagner hoped for his Ring Cycle to be eternal, Freyer’s representations are freed from the constraints of time.  Too bad the installation looked like a makeshift Halloween haunted house in some wacky neighbor’s garage.  I can only imagine Freyer throwing a fit at LACMA’s sorry production value.

In all honesty, this exhibition is worth seeing if you’re an avid German history fan, or like me, get embarrassingly excited about anything and everything Wagner. Otherwise, I might advise that you spend your weekend doing something else. With a little bit more time, PR effort, and space, the exhibition could have been much more enlightening and rewarding.  I give LACMA credit for joining the Ring Festival effort, but for Pete’s sake, what good does it do if you can’t find the exhibition?

-By Brittany Krasner

Myths, Legends and Cultural Renewal: Wagner’s Sources is on view through August 16^th. Visit http://www.lacma.org/art/ExhibWagnersSources.aspx for more information.

Wagnerite or not, the Ring Festival is upon us.  Let me explain.  If you haven’t heard, LA Opera spent $32 million on producing the ultimate Ring Festival that not only presents Richard Wagner’s infamous Ring Cycle, but also features an array of events, lectures, and concerts offering tons of things to do for German-loving Angelenos.  Starting this evening alone, one can find a visual exhibit on Maria Callas at the Italian Cultural Institute in Westwood, a Ring Cycle discussion panel chatting on “From Nietzsche to Star Wars: The Wagnerian Power of The Ring,” and at Los Angeles Conservancy, see the German influence on Los Angeles’ mid-20th-century landscape.  Who knew Wagner made such an impact on so many aspects of our lives?

There’s one truth I’ve yet to unveil.  I’m not really a Wagner fan.  Yes, Wagnerites, Tristan und Isolde is undeniably gorgeous and the famous aria at the end, “Liebestod,” is truly glorious.  But his Ring Cycle, which features four full-length operas from Das Rheingold to Gotterdammerung, is simply not my cup of tea.  Putting personal preference aside, though, LA Operas tour de force Ring Festival is a triumph of peering into what makes such an infamous piece of classical music tick.  There will be, over the course of the next few months (now through June 2010), lectures detailing Wagner and his influences paired with art exhibits, free film screenings “for opera lovers,” and of course, full length masterful productions of Wagner’s Ring Cycle.  In full.

The Cycle itself is four operas, each longer than the last.  There’s Das Rheingold and Die Walkure, which LA Opera produced during their 2008/2009 season and Siegfried and Gotterdammerung which both go up this season in June, finishing out the Cycle.  All four productions were designed by the controversial and avant-garde set director Achim Freyer and will be performed under the very accomplished tutelage of conductor James Conlon.

The Ring Festival is a huge accomplishment for the arts in Los Angeles.  Not only will it bring arts lovers of all shapes and sizes to our fair city, but it also derives its allure from many of LAs various attractions from food trucks (like Let’s Be Frank hotdogs) to the Hammer Museum and from LACMA to Griffith Park Observatory.  There’s rarely a better reason to cross the city in a German-and-opera-filled fury as there is now.

The show on at the Geffen Playhouse, Nightmare Alley, is also connected to the Ring Festival.  Running now through May 23, the show is based on the 1946 Gresham novel about the dark, wild world of “carnies, cons, and clairvoyants.”

The full schedule is about as long as a novel, proving again that LA Opera has gone above and beyond with this Festival.  Ticket prices range from free to $10 to $2000 (for really good front orchestra seats at the opera itself, calm thyself).

Regardless of my personal relationship with Mr. Wagner, when I say enjoy the show, I really do mean it. Really. Enjoy… Just make sure you bring your flask.

The Ring Festival has begun! Click here for more information on the Festival and click here for information on the Cycle itself. Click here to see the LA Times’ complete guide to the Ring Festival.

It’s not hard in this day and age to be disillusioned with the idea of America. Documentaries like Food, Inc., Religulous, and Sicko present ample evidence that we have veered a great distance from the America envisioned by our forefathers. Whether they be social, political, religious, or economic, my generation rarely sees beyond the fissures in our disintegrating national culture, and the art world is no exception. As an Art History major with a focus on 18^th Century British and French art, I’m not likely to grab the car keys and rush myself to an American art exhibition. I was playing for team Euro-snob.  But after my visit to LACMA’s newest exhibit, American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915, I’m writing this article with my tail between my legs.

The exhibition’s 75 paintings universally express what it means to be an American, and how artists played a critical role in characterizing the American identity and experience. Wandering from room to room in LACMA’s American Stories, the viewer will observe the progression of American history through art, from the tense and politically charged pre-revolutionary era through the brink of World War I. The exhibit showcases art from a broad range of subject matter, including immigration, exploring new frontiers, industrialization, and family life, all subjects that were popular for American artists seeking to capture the sweeping changes that distinguished the fabric of our nation.

Some of the most revealing early American artists dared to dig beneath the young country’s façade and hint at the darker side of a culture tainted by slavery and violence. John Singleton Copley’s “Watson & The Shark” (1778), recounting a young British merchant’s brush with death, is among the more dramatic, attention-grabbing works in the exhibition. The expert depiction of heightening tension, accelerating winds, and a mounting sense of disaster are reminiscent of history paintings of the Great Masters. Beyond the theatrical re-telling of Watson’s spectacular rescue from a shark attack, the painting symbolizes a small community, struggling through crisis to save one of its own. This sense of survival, possible only by the unity of the people, resonates throughout the cannon of American art and history.

Paintings of everyday life and familiar scenes of leisure bring intimacy to the exhibit’s portraits of early America. William McGregor Paxton’s “The Breakfast” (1911) uses a subject matter that appears frivolous to set a mood of loneliness and frustration. Paxton’s sense of humor is tempered by a strong adherence to academic technique that gives his painting a serious and significant tone. A wealthy woman sulks as her husband, unaware of her isolation, reads the morning paper—a symbol of his engagement with the outside world juxtaposed by the conflicting situation of his female companion. She is shielded from the outside world, not only by the drawn blinds and curtains of her breakfast nook, but by the impenetrable domestic sphere that society forced her to inhabit.

While I looked upon “The Breakfast,” two women behind me snickered as one of them did an impression of the aloof husband, “Oh honey. Why are you so upset? Don’t I give you everything you want with your maids and beautiful home?” I couldn’t help but snicker along with them. It was an experience we all could identify with in some way or another, whether it is because we are women, or American, or simply empathetic for a person who sometimes feels seen, but never heard.

Indeed, it was impossible to wander through American Stories without comparing the paintings to my own personal experience of being an American. Familiar scenes that transcend the confines of time, including John Lewis Krimmel’s “Fourth of July in Centre Square” (1812) and Lilly Martin Spencer’s “Young Husband: First Marketing” (1854), warm the heart with their familiar portrayals of urban daily life. Francis William Edmonds’s “The New Bonnet” (1858) and William Glacken’s “The Shoppers” (1907-08), make one chuckle at the predictable scene of the American woman’s affinity for shopping, while alluding to the rapid growth of mass world consumerism. It is through these strikingly recognizable narratives, most of which are presented with references to slavery, pre-suffragette sexism, and mass consumption, that we are able to further understand our controversial history and absorb the significance of the courageous and distinctive genre of American art.

So whether you’re sporting a “Freedom Isn’t Free” bumper-sticker on the back of your Ford pick-up or reading this article on your iPhone while in line for your cappuccino at Intelligentsia, this exhibition will unquestionably change and expand the way you think about our national art. It is with the highest esteem that I admit that American Stories did me proud.

-By Brittany Krasner

American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 is on view at LACMA through May 23^rd.  For more information on tickets and viewing hours, visit www.lacma.org.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and LACMA are both about to come into a little bit of an inheritance.  The private collection of Sidney and Frances Lasker Brody, which is filled to the brim with enviable works, will go up for auction at Christie’s in May.  According to the LA Times’ Culture Monster, The Huntington is set to get a share of the upcoming sale, while LACMA will be the lucky recipient of a 12-by-11-foot mural that the Brody’s commissioned from Matisse.  Go back. Read that again.  They commissioned a mural, called “La Garde,” from Matisse.

The Brody’s served on both museum boards and their collection and their house are both points of pride for art and architecture lovers in Los Angeles.  Christie’s has estimated that the sale will garner $150 million especially considering that they’ll be auctioning off works by Picasso, Giacometti, Braque, and Degas.

Click here, or here, to read more about it.  Wonder if we can afford anything up for auction!

It seems only natural to combine our two first loves – art and food.  Yet that combination is rarely accomplished in a tasteful manner — that is, until recently.

The artist group Fallen Fruit has pioneered a considerable effort that is changing the way we view Los Angeles’s urban landscape, one tree at a time.  Fallen Fruit, founded by Matias Viegener, David Burns, and Austin Young, mapped areas of Silver Lake that have public access to fruit trees — i.e. free, locally grown, organic food.  This project continues to connect those with too much and those with too little of that good stuff.

Fallen Fruit’s next big project is at LACMA and is aptly titled EATLACMA.  Both today and tomorrow, Fallen Fruit will be giving away free fruit trees to kick off their year-long investigation into food, art, culture, and politics.  And keep your ear to the ground as their program unfold seasonally, including the exhibition Fallen Fruit Presents the Fruit of LACMA and day-long event in November.

An apple a day never tasted so good – or so free for that matter.

For more information about Fallen Fruit, click here.  For more information about EATLACMA, click here.