The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

I roamed through the new exhibits at the Geffen and enjoyed them very much.  The first is called "Blues for Smoke."  This is described as a major interdisciplinary exhibition exploring a wiide range of contemporary art, music, literature, and film throught the lense of the blues and "blues aesthetics."  There are works by more that 50 artists fromt the 1950's to the present.

Bob Thompson "Garden of Music" 1960
Complete with lollipop trees and figures in expressive color and rough-hewn shape, this painting plays homage to the jazz musicians the artist knew, admired and regularly enjoyed listening to while painting.  The musicians in the middle of the painting are, from left to right:  Ornette Colemann (saxophone), Don Cherry (trumpet), John Coltrane (sax), Sonny Rollins (sax), Ed Blackwell (seated with drum) and Charlie Haden (bass).  The artist included his self-portrait, the figure in the broad-brimmed hat in the lower right area. 

The other exhibt is Taryn Simon:  A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters I-XVIII.  The artists photographs are mounted in themes and displayed on the walls in a huge room.  This was produced between 2008 and 2011.  The artist traveled around the world researching and recording "bloodlines" and their related stores.  "In each of the 'chapters' that make up the work, the external forces of territory, power, circumstance, or religion collide with the internal forces of psychological and physical inheritance."  The sujects include victims of genocide in Bosnia, test rabbits infected with a lethal disease in Australia to reduce their unmanageable population, the first woman to hijack an aircraft, and the living dead in India.

"Blues for Smoke" exhibit painting of James Baldwin, 1955 by Beauford Delaney