Celebrating Cousin Mary Kay at Nobu, Malibu



Nobu Malibu recently moved to a new location on the beach.  The food features Nobu Matsuhisa's signature dishes plus many other specialties.  The group, Mary Kay, Jim, Vince, Joy, Colleen and I ordered the Ceviche, salmon, shrimp, beef and other goodies topped off with a Rhubarb/berry Cobbler with homemade ice cream......beautiful evening.



Full moon and crashing waves from Nobu deck

Happy Birthday Mary Kay





Colleen by candlelight

Nobu Deck by Moonlight

More Beethoven at the Bowl

On Thursday night, Colleen and I met Jim and Bob for a picnic and a beautiful full moon evening at the Hollywood Bow.  The program was Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D major and the Symphony No. 7 in A major.  Lionel Bringuier conducted the orchestra and Renauld Capucon performed the violin concerto.  He was born in Chambery, France in 1976.  He has studied with the best including Isaac Stern and soloed around the world with the greatest conductors including Ozawa, Barenboim and Abbado.  Beethoven's music is always so full of energy and Capucon combined with the orchestra to deliver a sparkling performance.

Beethoven's 7th was delightful as always with the wonderful themes in each of the 4 movements.  The second movement did not disappoint: da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da....theme used in "The King's Speech" to help the King to keep from stuttering.  Colleen said the 3rd movement was a little too fast..."Whisky could have done better". 

Twas a great night and great to be with Jim and Bob, the visitor from Vancover, B.C.

Roaming in Westwood with Chris & Bernie

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.&nbsp

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

Brahams at the Bowl

On Tuesday morning, I enjoyed a rehearsal of Brahms piano concerto no. 2 in B-flat major played by Yefim Bronfman. Bronfman was delightful in his rendition of the Brahms.  He was born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union in 1958 and immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973.  He later trained a Julliard, Marlboro and Curtis.

The LA Phil's resident conductor, Lionel Bringuier, led the orchestra in a program that also included Elgar's Enigma Variations, Op. 36.  This is his sixth year with the Phil.

Third return to LACMA American Art Exhibit

I love to find new treasures to appreciate in this gallery at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art....Art of Americas building, second floor.  This time it was with Pete and Tricia...sharing my special place.  Here are some special items I found this time:

Millard Sheets, 1907-1989, painted "Angel's Flight, 1931.  Angel's Flight is the electric cable railway that takes passengers up to Bunker Hill.  The painting shows the urban scene below in LA in the '30s.

June Schwarcz made this vessel in 2010.  She was born in 1918 and lives in Sausalito, CA.  It is made of enamel on copper.

This vase was made in 1911 by Federick Hurten Rhead, 1990-1942, at University City Missouri where he taught at the "People's University". Later, he and his wife, Agnes, moved to California where he lived in Marin and then Santa Barbara.  He returned to Zanesville, Ohio where he started out as an emigrant from England.

Tile Plaque, 1909-1911, by Agnes Rhead, wife of Frederick whose vase is seen above.
Lamp, 1910, by the Charles P. Limbert Company in Grand Rapid and Holland Michigan.  Table, 1906 by the Limbert Company is made of Oak in the "honest" lines of the Gustav Stickley "New Furniture" designs.

Henry Inman, 1801-1846, "No-Tin (Wind)", a Chippewa Chief, 1832-33.  The chief traveled with his tribal leaders to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Monroe.  The pink ostrich plume, eagle feather, bead choker, and face paint were worn for diplomatic visits.

Roaming with Pete and Tricia

Last Friday Pete and Tricia, from Cleveland and last seen in my blog in Maine, roamed to the Beach House in Santa Monica and breakfast at Back on the Beach.  After their tour of the Marian Davies Guest House and a feet in the surf (Pete) we went to a favorite gallery on Abbot Kinney in Venice:  G2. All the proceeds from sales of photos is donated to causes for preservation of animals and nature.  Here are some of my favorites last week:

Wave Monster, North Shore, Oahu, Hawaii by Eric Cheng

Ron LeValley has amassed a collection of over 70,000 wildlife images over 40 years that he incorporates into his presentations and publications in his capacity as a biologist.  He is the founder and senior biologist of Mad River Biologists, a biological consulting firm specializing in the identification and distribution of birds along the Pacific Coast and founding member of the Mendocino Coast Photographer Guild and Gallery in Fort Bragg.

You can see why I like to roam in to G2 now and then...and they have a great gift shop on the first floor.

Zocalo program with the Getty's "Heaven & Hell and Dying Well"

The evening program in the Williams auditorium was moderated by Jody Hassett Sanchez, producer and documentary filmmaker.  The panel was comprised of Buddhism expert Robert Buswell from UCLA, Peter Nabokov, UCLA anthropologist and expert on the Pueblo Indian society, Jeffrey Burton Russell, UC Santa Barbara religion historian and Martin Schwarz, the curator of the Getty exhibit.

Below are pictures of items in the exhibit.



As the above caption says, hope mingled with fear about death the the afterlife provided stirring subjects for manuscripts.  Arts filled in the gaps of knowledge with innovative visions of heaven and hell.



The Feast of Dives:  The Soul of Lazarus Being Carried to Abraham, about 1510.



The Crucifixion, Rome 1484 by Giuliano Amadei.  "Christ hangs pitifully from the cross, blood spurting from his wounds with the figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John with Mary Magdalene on her knees in grief.  Christ's sacrifice was the defining moment of Christianity, making eternal life a possibility for believers."



Dante imagined a very detail picture of hell.



The sorrowful followers and the evil prosecutors react to Christ's death.

Where's heaven?  What's it like? Who gets in?  What about hell? These were some of the questions discussed by the panelists and audience.  Robert Buswell, the Buddha expert said "There are many different heavens in the Buddhist system, as many as 27.  They don't have a geography...the heavens are a level of rebirth...in fact heaven is a "kind of consolation prize".  The real goal is to experience nirvana, which can't be located, measured, desired, or experienced.

Curator Martin Schwarz said that while hell is usually depicted with a lot of detail in medieval art, heaven is shown with much less detail. 

According to Peter Nabokov, Native American tribes of the West, heaven was something very literal.  A picture of heaven he found contains a certain number of trees, a pile of dead rabbits...for a feast...as well as corn being harvested with your ancestors waiting for you.  In Pueblo Indian society, there is no sin, so everyone gets into heaven.  He went on to say that Hell for Native Americans and Indigenous Peoples everywhere on the planet was when White Europeans arrived and killed their people and destroyed their land.

"Heaven is where God is" said Burton Russell..beyond space and time and Up...Christians believed that you traveled up to heaven - via a ladder or stairs as in Dante's Davine Comedy.  Schwarz said that said that a quick death was the worst thing because you couldn't prepare for the afterlife.  However, Burton Russell said that in Christian tradition if you're a sinner and you repent - even at the moment of death - it is enough to get you into heaven.

Schwarz said that people paid a lot of money in the middle ages to commission books full of beautiful but terrifying paintings of hell...to keep people under control.  The Zocolo summarizer concluded "Overall, though, heaven and hell have a disappointing record when it comes to discouraging vice. Or, to put it another way, heaven and hell have been more successful in inspiring good art than in inspiring good behavior." 

Thanks to Zocolo staff members who arrange these wonderful programs and write about it so beautifully. I borrowed liberally from them.