ART IN L.A.

A WINTER INTERLUDE with JANE TOMLINSON

We recently spent a week in Los Angeles and re-discovered that there’s more than Hollywood and Disney there, including an abundance of contemporary and other art. The new Getty Museum is a 50-cent Big Blue Bus ride from Santa Monica into the mountains above L.A. You may also drive, but parking reservations with the museum, months in advance, are a must. The impressive Richard Meier-designed complex houses Italian altarpieces, Dutch still lifes and landscapes, Van Gogh’s "Irises," as well as Alexis Smith-painted walls in the restaurant- should your gaze wander from the stunning mountain top views out the dining room’s panoramic windows. The Getty Garden is a landscape artwork by Californian Robert Irwin. Supposedly, Richard Meier detests it, but we found Irwin’s work to be a wonderful complement to the museum’s boulder and water pool/fountain areas in the large courtyard. Contemporary art lovers should note that, while the Getty is actively collecting 20th century art, not much is yet on view at the new complex, save for some photography. David Hockney’s photo-collage ("joiner") "Pear Blossom Highway" unfortunately was in storage during our tour.

A few days later, we hiked the Backbone Trail at adjacent Will Rogers and Topanga State Parks, seeing the Getty this time at a distance, again with stunning views of the ocean, downtown Los Angeles, and more mountains to the east. The trail system we were on goes some 55 miles and in December offered mild weather and shade under large holly trees, the original hollywoods, along with sun that would have been too intense, had it been higher in the sky.

Next we visited the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum, to see the edgy Sunshine and Noir: Art in L.A. , 1960-1997, curated by the Louisiana Museum in Denmark. From Richard Diebenkorn to Sam Francis, the sunshine was there, as was the noir (e.g., Chris Burden’s wall piece of LAPD uniforms and Alexis Smith’s painting, "A Hellhole Like No Other"). By this time we had acquired the good company of Margaret, a journalist, and Ted. her architect husband, a race course designer, from Melbourne. Ted’s background included once meeting Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Australian couple had a son who works for famed contemporary architect Phillip Johnson.

Moving up Wilshire, we then saw June Wayne’s retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We found her "Distant Black Action" hanging upside down and told the museum guard. Shortly, three museum staff clustered in front of the piece and then June Wayne herself appeared. The founder of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop happened to be at LACMA with a friend to view the show and we had the great pleasure of meeting Ms. Wayne and talking with her. It turned out that she sometimes varies the orientation of her works and was not too concerned about the mis-hung piece. For those who haven’t seen Ms. Wayne’s lithographs, dating from 1950, this show was an excellent opportunity to see a broad range of her printmaking, as well as large wall tapestries executed in France and wall sculptures made of painted styrofoam chips, cotton and wood. One of the latter works, depicting the 1994 Northridge earthquake, is on the cover of the exhibit catalog.

A tough act to follow, but we then proceeded next door to the huge Anderson Building containing 20th century art that currently includes considerable post-modern sculpture, a few installations, and a delightful display of recent American art glass. Magritte’s famous "Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe" is there, as is David Hockney’s formidable (86" x 243") painting, "Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio". Anderson is one element of LACMA’s multi-building complex, which also has a sculpture garden and is adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits and Page Museum. The latter houses bones of mammoths, sabertooth tigers, giant sloths, extinct Dire wolves, condors, and others creatures found in the pits, which are still under excavation. It should also be noted that LACMA has just opened another museum building next to its existing ones. This one is decorated with a gold-sheathed column on one corner and contains Native American art.

L.A. is huge. There is a lot of interesting art there, contrary to popular stereotype. Limited time caused us to miss the Museum of Contemporary Art (seen on an earlier trip—wonderful building and lots of installations) as well as the Temporary Contemporary. Nevertheless, we did see and hear the acoustic, randomized fountains at the Watercourt near the MOCA. We also saw some of the many murals that dot the city and freeways, among them the eerie, lab-coated "Holy Trinity With The Virgin" by Kent Twitchell, Glenna Boltuch-Avila’s exuberant "LA Freeway Kids", and the Olympic-themed "El Nuevo Fuego" by East Los Streetscapers. Later, we got to the major gallery complex, Bergamot Station, located in a warehouse area bounded by 26th Street, Olympic Boulevard, and Michigan Avenue in Santa Monica. Even with many galleries closed for the December holidays, there were enough places open to keep us busy for a full afternoon. The Gallery of Functional Art, Flowers West Contemporary Art, BGH Gallery, Fig (First Independent Gallery), Suzanne Felsen Gallery, and the Dagmar and China Cultural Arts Center were some that we visited. The Santa Monica Museum of Art has also recently relocated to Bergamot Station.

Also missed for want of time were the artist-designed subway stations along the somewhat short transit line that L.A. operates (see Page 41 of the 12/20/98 New York Times ‘ Art & Leisure Section , "Set-Dressing the Subway"), Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers (currently under restoration) and other art attractions too numerous to mention. So, if you plan to be in Los Angeles, or if you just pass through there on the way to somewhere else, a few key addresses and numbers below may be helpful.

Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Avenue
Santa Monica
310-829-5854

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles
323-857-6000

Museum of Contemporary Art
250 S. Grand Ave.
Los Angeles
213-626-6222

UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles
310-443-7000

The Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Dr.
Los Angeles
310-440-7300