Quote of the Day: Christopher Hawthorne
"There is admittedly something paradoxical, or at least contradictory, about my reaction. Some of the art looks terrible in the building, but seeing the building with art in it has given me a fresh appreciation for its architecture. So be it."
—Christopher Hawthorne on Peter Zumthor's David Geffen Galleries, in Punch List
Comments
--- J. Garcin
> looks terrible in
> the building
Since he says both that and a "fresh appreciation," I'm assuming he doesn't necessarily think plain gray concrete for artworks is a poor background. I generally think it is.
However, at least the inner rooms were tinted. If they hadn't, I'd know that Govan's aesthetic sense was really shaky, prone to make him have poor judgments and decisions.
Nonetheless, and unlike a few years ago, I'm more in his and Zumthor's camp. Part of that is because I finally realized just how mediocre the 1965-1986 campus really was. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
If the current Geffen also reflected the complete installation, I'd be shaking my head and thinking the ghost of William Pereira had chosen to revisit LA in 2026.
But I'm still not certain how I'd deal with out-of-towners visiting today's LA.
Before 2020, I'd grimace about their dropping by LACMA. The BCAM and Resnick by themselves (unless the Resnick were hosting something like the Met's current show on Raphael) weren't must-see. But I can still imagine people even from Houston, Detroit, Kansas, Minneapolis, San Francisco, etc, treating Geffen/BCAM/Resnick as more "let's instead go to the Santa Monica Pier" versus "LACMA is so good a museum or better than my local museum is, let's make it a day!"