Hammer Museum Visit

I met my friend Teri at the Hammer Museum in Westwood on Thursday to check out a couple of new exhibits.  We were first greeted by the Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth exhibit with a mural on the wall of the staircase entrance to the museum.  It features a map of HIV diagnoses in the United States as of 2009.  The description states that the work was created using Bradford's signature process of excavating through layers of paint and drywall.

This excavated wall painting is entitled "Finding Barry," 2015. Since 1999 the museum has commissioned artist to create twenty-nine site-specific projects for the lobby wall.  By removing paint and layers, the artist creates his map by exposing the layers of previous art.  The installation name refers to the California painter and graffiti artist, Barry McGee (b. 1966) who created a mural there in 2000.  

This close up of the map is New Orleans and the Louisiana Delta.

"The Next Hot Line," 2015, mixed media on canvas.

"Untitled," 2015 mixed media on an unstretched canvas.

"Dead Hummingbird," 2015, mixed media on canvas.

"I Don't Have the Power to Force the Bathhouses to Post Anything," 2015, mixed media on canvas.

"Rebuild South Central," 2015, mixed media on canvas.  The description states that this painting is inspired by a photograph taken shortly after the 1992 riots that besieged South Central in the wake of the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating Rodney King.  This painting/collage incorporates layers of signs and other materials, which are sanded, leaving only a trace of the original color or image.

We then visited the exhibit entitled "Perfect Likeness: Photography and Composition."  Here are a couple that I particularly liked:

"Peas and Pickles," 2014 by Roe Ethridge.  Dye sublimation print on aluminium. 

 "La Brea Avenue in the Snow," 2011 by Florian Maier-Aichen, chromogenic print using digital manipulation to "draw" in nonexistent snow and adding cars from different decades.  There is never snow on La Brea Avenue.

Finally we visited a beautiful exhibit in one room by Joseph Holtzman.  this exhibit includes a group of paintings dating from 2006 to 2011.  His paintings are on slate or marble.  They are largely abstract but include representational imagery that functions as a provocative symbolism situated within fields of color and pattern, according to the posted description.  With each piece he applies thin layers of oil paint to the surface.  He then uses razor blades to carve and cotton swabs to spread the paint on the support.  The artist also created the design and interior decoration for the room to stage his paintings.  The result is that I wanted to recline on the comfortable furniture, relax and enjoy the paintings and ambiance. 

 This is the way I like to appreciate art.

 "Robert Offit Dying of Aids, 1989," November 2006, oil and acrylic on slate

 The green ceiling gives off a green glow throughout the room.  The red of the carpet and on the slip covers of the furniture feels joyful.

 "Frieda Holtzman, with the Phases of the Moon," 2009, oil on marble

 "Carl Skaggard," 2011, oil on marble

 "Mary Todd Lincoln, 1880," 2007, oil on marble

 "Balbec Springtime," 2007, oil on marble

"Jane Austin, November 1815," 2007, oil on marble

My artist friend Teri enjoyed the ambiance too.

Carmina Burana performed at the Hollywood Bowl

 Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the L.A. Master Chorale and the National Children's Chorus in a performance of the hour long Carmina Burana written in 1936 by Carl Orff.  It is based on 24 poems from the medieval collection of secular songs.  The first and last movements are called "O Fortuna." The soloists were Jozelle Harvey, soporano (in red in the middle), Brian Mulligan, baritone and Lawrence Brownlee, tenor.

The words celebrate the bursting of spring.  We all celebrated as Gustavo inspired extra energy. to the over 200 musicians and singers on the Hollywood Bowl stage.  The 18,000 seat arena was nearly full on that Tuesday night and the audience responded in a shouting standing ovation.  The L.A. Times review headlines are "Yowza."  The performance was repeated on Thursday.

The Last for photos are by Lawrence Ho of the L.A. Times.

The Art of Corita Kent

I visited the Pasadena Museum of California Art yesterday and greatly enjoyed the works of Sister Corita Kent.  She was born Frances Elizabeth Kent in 1918 in Fort Dodge, Iowa and moved with her family to Southern California when she was a young girl.  She entered the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles after graduating from high school and became Sister Mary Corita.  She graduated from Immaculate Heart College and received her MA at U.S.C. in art history.  She taught elementary school children in British Columbia and then was brought to Immaculate Heart College to teach art in 1947.  She left the order in 1968 and moved to Boston where she died of cancer in 1986.  

She created hundreds of serigraph designs for posters and murals. She also designed the LOVE stamp for the U.S. Post Office.  She was active in human rights and anti war movements.

According to the posted descriptions, she was influenced by the POP ART movement, mixing bright, bold imagery with words taken from religious, and commercial sources.  She motivated her students to discover new ways of experiencing the world and to seek out revelation in the everyday. The motto at the IHC art department was "we have no art; we do everything as well as we can," a proverb borrowed from the Balinese.

"Creativity belongs to the artist in each of us.  To create means to relate.  The root meaning of the work art is to fit together and we all do this everyday.  Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating - whether it is a loaf of bread, a child, a day."  Corita Kent.

In addition to viewing the art, I watched a PBS video on her life and was moved by what she accomplished.  Her words still move many.

"Morning," 1976, Samsonite suitcase prototype

Corita and Buckminster Fuller, Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, 1965; Preparatory recto and verso studies for cover of Motive, 1966

Corita in Maine, 1975

Artwork for the Love Stamp.  Notice under the word Love, "is hard work." 1985

"Corita's move to Boston led to a distinct change in the style of her work...she shifted away from an art of direct social engagement toward quieter, more introspective statements...more contemplative and personal."

"...the circus alphabet include some of Corita's wittiest and most stylish works."

"Untitled watercolors," 1981-85. "In the early 1980's she began to paint watercolors outdoors throughout New England.  Corita relished the immediacy of watercolor in contrast with the complex process of printmaking.  Her last major series, the watercolors represent the final solitary phase of her lifelong engagement with the world."

"Chavez," 1969

"the lord is with three," 1952

"admirable exchange," 1951

Cover of Newsweek, December 25, 1967

Cover of The Saturday Evening Post, December 28, 1968-January 11, 1969,

Corita Kent died of cancer in 1986. "Like a priest, a shaman, a magician, she could pass her hands over the commonest of the everyday, the superficial, the oh-so-ordinary, and make it a vehicle of the luminous, the only, and the hope filled." Corita's friend, theologian Harvey Cox.

The Hollywood Bowl Season is Here!!

The Los Angeles Phil has moved to the Hollywood Bowl for the summer for exciting music.  Their kick off was the July 4th concerts with fireworks and Smokey Robinson.  We joined friends for a picnic and then strolled up to the Bowl to enjoy the music and action.

The Phil started off the evening with patriotic music.  After the break, they were the background music for Smokey Robinson and his band.  Smokey entertained us with some of his old hits that he wrote such as "My Girl."  Some were made famous by The Temptations and others, but we all knew the words and sang along. Smokey is 75 but is very fit and showed off his limber moves on the stage in his bright green satin suit.

Then the Phil took over for "Starts and Stripes Forever" and other music coordinated with fireworks.  This is a great L.A. tradition that we greatly enjoyed.

The LA Phil classical summer season begins tonight.  I went to the rehearsal this morning and enjoyed The Polovisian Dances from Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin, 1833-1887.  This included the music from the musical, "Kismet" which we know as "Take my Hand, I'm a Stranger in Paradise."  

We heard parts of "La mer," by Claude Debussy, 1862-1918.  The feature was the Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor by Sergei Prokofiev, 1891-1953.  Twenty-eight-year-old pianist Yuja Wang, short skirt and all, attacked the concerto and wowed the rehearsal audience.

I missed the "Bolero" by Maurice Ravel, 1875-1937 because I was late.  I heard is was a 10,

Roaming at the Getty Center on Friday Evening

We brought a picnic and friends to the Getty Center for a great dinner on the terrace overlooking West L.A. to the ocean.  Then we roamed through some galleries and enjoyed the art.  The Getty is open on Friday and Saturday evenings during the summer with musicians and modern dancers last week.  The parking is $10 after 5:00 and the crowd is small and the atmosphere relaxing.  We enjoyed the moon and stars as they appeared.

Here are a few pictures of what we enjoyed:

"Christ and Mary Magdalene, 1908, by Auguste Rodin, French, 1840-1917, Marble.  This sculpture was also called "The Genius and Pity" and "Prometheus and the Oceanid."  The description states that these themes, mixing the sacred and profane, relate to Rodin's conception of the creative life which involved suffering and martyrdom.  This sculpture was never cast in bronze.

We saw dancers and heard contemporary music at several sites on the Getty campus.

 This exhibit of prints made during the longest reigning king in French history, Louis XIV, was in the Research Institute building. The description states that Paris became the most important print producer in Europe...feuled by official policies that aimed to elevate the entire spectrum of the fine and decorative arts.  "Prints were at once a means of communication, a propaganda tool, and an art form in ever-increasing demand."   

"The coronation of Louis XIV in the Reims Cathedral," 1654, Etched by Jean Lapautre, French 1618-1682.   

"The Exchange of Arrows between Death and Cupid," 1665-1701, by unknown printmaker.

"Mademoiselle d'Armagnac in a Dressing Gown," 1695, etched by Antone Trouvane, French 1652-1708, etching and engraving with sections cut out and wool fabric pasted on the verso and showing through the recto.