Siah Armajani's "Back Porch with Picnic Table"

Siah Armajani, Back Porch with Picnic Table, 1985. MOCA, gift of the Lannan Foundation

MOCA's exhibition program taking some me time. Through next spring, MOCA's Grand Avenue building is given over to two long-term permanent collection installations: "Long Story Short" and "Mapping an Art World: Los Angeles in the 1970s-80s." Both juxtapose familiar works with rarely exhibited objects. In the latter category is Siah Armajani's Back Porch with Picnic Table. Like this warmest summer ever, the Back Porch's promise of easy living comes with darker portents.

Iranian-born Armajani (1939-2020) imagined a screened-in porch inspired by those in his adopted hometown of Minneapolis. With dream-like illogic, the doors don't fit their frames, and screens are cracked open for ventilation. The words of David Antin's poem "regarding a door" (1965) wind throughout the porch, creating a blend of garden folly and concrete poetry. (Antin was the husband of artist Eleanor Antin, whose 100 Boots is also on view.) 

A staircase to nowhere protests that "this will lead you to suspect that I am talking about symbols / rather than about doors and walls." 

Back Porch came to MOCA via the Lannan Foundation. In the early 1990s the foundation established by International Telephone and Telegraph director J. Patrick Lannan ran a small gallery in a Marina del Rey industrial park, showing samples of a collection of contemporary art. It commissioned Armajani to create a "Poetry Garden" for the gallery's grounds. Incorporating the text of Wallace Stevens' poem "Anecdote of the Jar," the garden was critically praised but found few visitors.

Lannan closed its L.A. gallery in 1996, moving its headquarters to Santa Fe. Most of the collection was dispersed to museums nationwide. MOCA was an important recipient, including Back Porch. The Poetry Garden was donated to Beloit College, Wisconsin, where it is shown outdoors.

Siah Armajani, The Poetry Garden, 1992, as installed at Lannan Foundation headquarters, Los Angeles. The piece has been reconstructed at Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin