LACMA Is Moving Mountains...Well, Boulders

Courtesy of The New York Times

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is doing all it can to accommodate artist Michael Heizer's plan for "Levitated Mass", a project that has been in the planning stages with LACMA for over five years. Heizer has been contemplating the installation since the 1960s, however it has only recently been implemented with the help of LACMA. But to make this project happen, LACMA has been going to great ends.

Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

"Levitated Mass" will feature a 456-foot long slot into the earth, over which a giant granite boulder will be installed so as to appear to hover. The boulder was selected by Heizer from Stone Valley Quarry, located about 60-miles east of LACMA. It is 340-pounds of solid granite, and measures at 21-feet high. Selected for its natural beauty, the granite is black -and-white with rust speckled throughout its mass. 

Moving the boulder will require quite a bit of effort on the part of LACMA, however. Even though the quarry site is 60-miles away, the specialty rig required to move the boulder will need to take a route comprising of more than double the mileage. The rig, which is 295-feet long and 27-feet wide, will caterpillar its way at 6-miles per hour over the course of two weeks. The start date for this sojourn has been pushed back several times, currently slated to start on October 17th. 

I am eagerly anticipating the installation of the boulder, however. I am hoping that it will be in place by the Thanksgiving holiday, when I will be visiting Los Angeles. The installation enables visitors to walk under the boulder, which will hover 15-feet above their heads. 

I think that the use of LACMA's lush grounds as a space for public art is phenomenal. Possibly capitalizing on the success of Chris Burden's "Urban Light" installation, which has become a popular destination and photo op for tourists and residents alike, director Michael Govan seems to be actively pursuing a museum with a collection that exists outside of the walls, as well as inside. 

However, costing $10 million has certainly raised concerns from the public. Considering the economy, particularly in California where budget cuts have become the norm, an endeavor of this magnitude is something to be considered carefully. Govan defends the expense, and makes a good point that these funds are going back into the California economy. LACMA is putting people to work, both at the quarry, with construction at LACMA, operating the rig, etc. But even if you do understand how the funds will effect the local economy, the cost and efforts of LACMA to move a rock still seem slightly frivolous. 

All I can say is that I hope that this installation is worth it -- both in cost and effort. 

Painting Big at the Corcoran -- Big, but Good?

The Corcoran Gallery of Art's new series, "Now at the Corcoran", presents contemporary exhibitions -- hence the "Now" part. It displays the work of one or two artists at a time, with exhibitions focusing on issues central to the dynamic communities of Washington, D.C. "Now" is one of the most definitive ways in which the Corcoran encourages a dialogue with the contemporary art scene.

Although I am currently interning at the Corcoran and have visited the gallery several times over the past month, this past weekend was the first time I spent an extended amount of time in the exhibitions. Since I am usually running between classes and my internship, I typically only have a few moments to visit the exhibitions. Taking advantage of the Corcoran's free admission during the month of September, I was able to visit all of the exhibitions and really linger through the gallery.

Courtesy of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, www.corcoran.org

Through the end of the month, Chris Martin's exhibition, "Painting Big", is on display in three areas of the gallery. One of the first areas that visitors encounter is the gallery's central atrium. Here, three site-specific canvases by Martin are installed. The three canvases are huge -- 26 feet high and 17 feet across -- and create a room within a room. I did not like this installation -- it distracted me instead of enticed me. I am unsure if the artist created the pieces with the space truly in mind. One of the handouts for the exhibition states that this installation, "..forms a vibrant 'room' of color and pattern in the museum's central public space". Although the canvases do create this room, I think that it is too claustrophobic and the visitor is not able to fully view the canvases from this vantage point. I found it easier to view the canvases from the second floor balcony.

The three canvases are also intense -- hypnotic blacks and whites, dazzling glitter, and bright yellow and blue canvases are all arranged within close proximity of one another. Each canvas is individually intense. The exhibition title, "Painting Big", clearly refers to more than just the scale of the canvases. The same handout claims that the canvases in the atrium create a dialogue with the Beaux-Arts architecture it inhabits. "The patterns of curving forms echo the rhythm of the atrium's columns, and their height approaches its grandeur...they are aggressively not part of the background". I would maintain that they did not achieve that kind of echo with the building. The "aggression" they mention was certainly achieve, but I am not so sure that it was a good thing -- I found it instead distracting, if not a little jarring. It may have been intentional to introduce such intensity to the space, however I found it attempted to seriously dissuade me from visiting the rest of the exhibition.

With Martin's work, I tend to find his intent more interesting than the actual paintings. His engagement with landscapes -- both physical as well as mental -- is intriguing. The intentional cacophony of disjointed styles, colors, and shapes all create atmosphere and mood, but sometimes I find it more interesting to read about his works than to actually experience them. Often it is only when they are juxtaposed with one another that any kind of interest in generated. Individually, they can be a little one dimensional in my opinion.

If interest is achieved through exhibition, then, should these works be seen as individual pieces?

If it is through a disjointed perspective that an understanding or dialogue is created, than I suppose you could say that the entire exhibition is really about creating a harmony.

I started out thinking that the Martin exhibition was unsuccessful. But now I am wondering if it actually was successful -- I am still thinking about it. How can you judge an exhibition as successful? Is it the lasting impression on a visitor, regardless if positive or negative?

With this exhibition, I think that it is successful, in a backwards way. Kind of like the canvases themselves -- they are almost so wrong that it is right. The exhibition is the same way -- it is so disjointed that it actually makes sense.

Art All Night DC 2011

Over the weekend, I attended Art All Night, an evening in which public and private art spaces are open to the public into the wee hours of the morning. This "mash-up of cultural experiences" consisted of indoor and outdoor spaces, media works, public performances, and street art.

It was definitely more of a cultural experience -- really, more of an event than a forum for viewing art work. It reminded me of the monthly downtown art walks in Los Angeles. Hordes of people attend, there are vendors lined up along the curb selling everything from charcoal drawings to junky jewelry, and of course the ever-popular food trucks are always present. Regardless, Art All Night encouraged people to "gallery-hop" throughout the Chinatown and Shaw neighborhoods. It was definitely an opportunity for me to visit many of the galleries in DC that I had heard a lot about, but had not visited myself.

Courtesy of Jeannette Casserly

One of the first galleries I visited was Caos on F, which was showing some very interesting works by Matthew Falls. His pieces of furniture are exquisite - I couldn't take my eyes off of them throughout the entire exhibition. The heavy pieces of wood, with their beautiful colors and absolute simplicity, invoked a kind of elegance and serenity.

Later in the evening I stopped by Touchstone Gallery, and saw works by the artist Mary H. Lynch. What was interesting about her artwork was her break from the traditional rectangular canvas. She explores painting through a myriad of canvas shapes, often times installed in groups, transforming the canvases into more of sculpture. Her exploration of textures, shapes, and patterns is fascinating, as it turns not only the canvases, but the walls they occupy, into a visual landscape.

I visited about 7 galleries in all, and when I headed for the metro at around midnight, the crowds were only growing. I think that events such as Art All Night encourage a younger demographic to visit art galleries, and to encourage a dialogue amongst those galleries. The public art and the street artists were particularly popular, but since the event continued until 3am, I am sure that all of the galleries were well attended. Even though it turned into more of "place to be seen", instead of a place to see art, the intentions were there and I personally enjoyed the experience and valued the opportunity to visit some of the galleries.

Art Preview: The Two Warhol Exhibitions

Over the past week, various Washington, D.C. publications have featured fall arts previews. I found the Washington City Paper's "State of the Arts" insert a wonderful overview of the area's upcoming exhibitions -- if you haven't picked up a copy yet, make sure you do before Thursday!

What struck me was the upcoming openings of two related exhibitions: "Warhol: Headlines" at the National Gallery of Art, and "Andy Warhol: Shadows" at the Hirshhorn. Although I initially thought that these simultaneous exhibitions would create a conflict between the institutions, I now think that they will instead provide an interesting dialogue.

"Warhol: Headlines"focuses on his tabloid-inspired pieces, his fascination with celebrity, and appropriation. In typical Warhol fashion, the exhibition will ask the viewer to analyze the differences between commonplace tabloids and high art. Through the display of over 80 works, the exhibition promises to explore Warhol's fascination with sensationalism. The mediums range from paintings, drawings, prints, photography and sculpture to film, video and television. The NGA bills the exhibition as an exploration of the theme of headlines and the connection to Warhol's fascination with celebrity and current events, to name a few.

The Hirshhorn's exhibition, "Andy Warhol: Shadows", focuses on the later years of his career. Over one hundred silkscreens and hand-painted canvases will be on display. This exhibition's installation particularly piques my interest. The large-scale panels will be installed edge-to-edge in an uninterrupted flow around the curving walls of the museum. The Hirshhorn insists that the installation will provide a unique chance to see the work in its entirety, all 450 feet of it.

Unlike the NGA's exhibition, which will span Warhol's career and engage with a variety of themes and mediums, "Andy Warhol: Shadows" provides a narrowed scope of the artist's works. By focusing on the last decade of Warhol's life, I hope that an interesting juxtaposition to the NGA exhibition is created.

Both exhibitions are opening on September 25, 2011. I plan to visit both exhibitions the following weekend, at which time I can see for myself if the exhibitions create a dialogue, or if they simply overlap and provide duplicitous approaches to Warhol's works. Based on the two press releases, it looks like they are aiming for the former.

It raises the question in my mind, though, if museums have an obligation to work with other, potentially competing, museums in favor of the visitor experience. Or, in their self-interest, should museums focus on the quality of their exhibition and amp up their advertising?

Can Street Art Be Institutionalized?

The word “graffiti” conjures a lot of things in my mind: vivid colors, mysterious words and names, and most importantly, the chance of getting caught. To me, one of the crucial characteristics in defining graffiti is its implicit illegal nature. Part of what inspires awe when you see a large mural is the question of “how?”. How did that street artist create something so complex under the pressure of possible arrest? How did no one see them creating these masterpieces?

Graffiti is becoming more and more accepted within mainstream society and within the art community. Artists such as Banksy, local headliners such as Borf, and exhibitions such as MOCA’s highest attended (well, second highest) exhibition, "Art in the Streets", and the National Portrait Gallery’s 2008 show, "Recognize!",  have all garnered the interest of the public and the art community. But it leads to questions about how to integrate something so inherently outside of the mainstream into the institution. More and more graffiti artists have become not only accepted, but embraced by many galleries, museums and auction houses. But how can you buy and sell something that is meant to grace the side of subway cars and buildings?

Last week's Washington City Paper featured a story, "Tagging Rights: Nonprofits, art galleries, and party planners are feting D.C.'s graffiti scene. Have they also tamed it?". They discuss a local organization, MuralsDC, a group that strives to integrate street artists into mainstream society. They are trying to redirect these artists towards legal endeavors. Artists attend classes where they can hone their craft, and are encouraged to explore careers in the fine arts. They also participate in legal means of street art. Pre-approved areas are converted into public murals that represent the community. But what happens when illegal works are replaced with these collaborative murals? Can street art that has been approved by the community still be considered “graffiti”?

Graffiti’s inherent anti-authoritarian stance has been changing for the past 10 years, at least. It is now accepted, praised, and desired. But are these so-called “graffiti ambassadors” helping the medium, or just borrowing the aesthetic?

Marting Luther King, Jr. National Memorial: Paraphrasing vs. Pure Fiction

Washington, DC has welcomed a new memorial, but not without controversy.

The Washington DC Martin Luther King Kr. National Memorial is meant, “to commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by leading a collaborative funding, design, and construction process in the creation of a memorial to honor his national and international contributions to world peace through non-violent social change” - www.mlkmemorial.org

The memorial’s main statue features two large stones with a single wedge protruding from the center, from which King’s form emerges.

In addition to the depiction of King, the statue features two inscriptions. The first reads, “Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope”, derived from his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

The second inscription on the north side of the monument has caused quite a bit of controversy. It reads, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness”. This inscription is a paraphrase from King’s drum major sermon of 1968. The original from which the paraphrase is derived is:

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice, say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.

The decision on behalf of the memorial’s sculptor, Lei Yixin and the inscription carver, Nick Benson, to keep the inscription brief and succinct has been met with adversity from Maya Angelou (she thinks it makes King sound like “an arrogant twit”), the Washington Post’s Friday editorial, "The MLK Jr. memorial's monumental misquote , and the Post’s Rachel Manteuffel's article, "Martin Luther King a drum major? I don't think so."

Ed Jackson Jr., the executive architect fort he new memorial, says that he stands by the project’s decision to use the paraphrase and there are not plans to change it due to the recent complaints.

This brings to my mind several questions:

1. Who has the authority to paraphrase?
2. Where is the line between paraphrasing and changing the meaning altogether, and was that the case here?
3.  In light of a public outcry, who has the authority to make a significant change to a public monument? 

To me, I believe that the paraphrase strayed too far from the original speech and mutated the meaning. To ascribe this phrase and all of its innuendo to Martin Luther King, Jr. is unwarranted.

However, I do not think that you can change a monument, a public work of art, without the artist or architect’s consent. Since the design team is remaining firm in their decision, I think that at this point that matter will have to be laid to rest.