I met Chris and Bernie at the Palamino Restaurant in Westwood and enjoyed the company, the food, and the surroundings. Two large copies of paintings from the Hermitage hang in the dining room. One is entitled Music and the other Dance by Matisse who was commissioned by a Russian trader in 1909 to do according to Chris. 
Chris then led me to the lobby on the CenterWest building to see the mural shown below. It was painted by Kurt Wenner. Chris tells me that he is also well know for bringing the Italian art of street painting with chalk and pastels to the U.S. in 1986 in an annual festival in Santa Barbara.
Chris and I then strolled to the Hammer to enjoy the permanent collection, (a hello to Dr. Pozzi), and then to see "Made in L.A." and the candidates for the Mohn Family Foundation award, $100,000, to a young artist. I voted for Meleko Mokgosi who was born in 1982 in Francistown, Botswana. He uses painting to "interrogate the very concerns that inform the death drive: the limits of representation, the politics of abstraction, and the mode of viewing enabled by rectangular canvases on a gallery wall." In other words, he uses three walls of large painted canvases to depict the politics and struggles in her native land. We were happy to later hear that he won the first place prize and he lives in Culver City.
Dr. Pozzi by John Singer Sargent....with a touch up by Chris.
Sorry Dr. Pozzi and JSS
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