Roaming through LACMA on a Thursday

There was a vibrant energy at the museum yesterday as out-of-towners and families flocked to the museum.  I made my way to David Hockney's videos of the countryside of Yorkshire, England.  His Landscape Videos (2011) were even more fun to experience for the second time.  The videos shown in a multi screen grid - 18 screens.  Hockney has taught me about seeing.  The eye only sees small areas at once and then skips all over the scene to take it all in...in this case, 18 times.  He fixed 18 cameras to his car to record multiple views as the car moved through various landscapes.  The lower cameras focus on the grasses and wild flowers in the fore ground.  The middle camera focus on the mid view areas and the top cameras focus on the more distant views.

I sat on a comfortable chair and enjoyed the ride. 

I then strolled over to the top of the Broad Building to view the works of "Agnes Varda in Californialand."  Agnes was born in 1928 in Belgium and became a photographer in Paris.  She belonged to the "Riv Gauche (Left Bank)" cinema movement.  She made many fictional/documentary films.  During her career, she visited Los Angeles in the 1960's and '80's and these photo's are on display.  LACMA has collaborated with the Film Foundation and the Annenberg Foundation to preserve four of her films.  Her newly restored films are being shown.  She created a shack with its walls and roof covered with one of the last two 35 mm prints of her film "Lions Love (...and Lies)" which she describes as a radical Hollywood hippie film that she made in 1969.  She also created a big collage where she pinned stills from the film and wrote out lines of dialogue.

The Film Shack

The Collage with clips of her film and scrawled dialoge

"Self-portrait in pieces," 2009

Looking out through the film walls

Film Cans Furniture in the Shack

"Two Children in Front of a Chicano Mural, East L.A., 'Mur murs'," 1980

"Tai Chi Group in Front of a Blue Whale Mural, Beethoven Street, Venice," 1980

Nearby were several new acquisitions by the museum.

"M.I.A." 2011 by Brenna Youngblood, U.S. b. 1979

"Second to None," 2011 by Ry Rocklen, U.S., b. 1978.  This sculpture was mad of trophies and parts.  The artist from L.A. has a particular interest in the overlooked and the unseen.  He reclaims found objects and materials and gives them a second life as a sculpture.  The trophies were once won and then discarded.