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| Installation view, "Reverberations," with untitled Christopher Wool painting, 1990, and Robert Frank's The Americans, 1955-57. All MOCA collection, except as noted |
MOCA has just opened a new permanent collection installation. Like its predecessors, "Reverberations" is an armature for thematic juxtapositions of older and newer art. There are rooms for multiple works by a single artist (Rauschenberg, Rothko); room-size installations (Renee Green's
Import-Export Funk Office); spaces devoted to themes such as abstraction, figuration, Pop, and Los Angeles as a subject. Befitting the election year, some of the artworks reflect on America's endangered experiment in democracy, either directly or by context.
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| Rachel Harrison, Hot Topic Two, 2020 |
The most explicitly topical piece is Rachel Harrison's Hot Topic Two. It's an installation of detritus of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, a reminder that evil is not only banal but absurd. The Harrison is surrounded by a hanging of Robert Frank's The Americans, an outsider's photo-essay on mid 1950s American prosperity. Hanging among Franks' B&W photos is Cady Noland's Lee Harvey Oswald and a Christopher Wool painting that here underscores Hofstadter's paranoid style in American politics. The grace note is a Stanley Brouwn This way Brouwn, a conceptual piece about a person who has lost his way.
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| Robert Frank, Bar–Las Vegas, Nevada, 1956 |
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| Nairy Baghramian, Slip of the Tongue, 2015 |
Another room takes a long look at mid-20th-century theorizing about abstraction and purity. It connects vintage paintings by Lee Mullican, Sam Francis, and LaRue Johnson to more recent takes on abstraction by Nairy Baghramian and Channing Hanson. The marquee object is
a 2012 Mark Bradford collage-painting recently donated by Brad Pitt.
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| Mark Bradford, I Will Vent My Anger in Terrifying Books, 2012 |
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| Channing Hansen, 8-Manifold, 2017 |
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| Robert Morris, untitled, 1967 (remade in 2011) |
Also newly acquired is a prime Robert Morris felt piece (conceived 1967 and recreated 2011); recent figurative paintings by Michael Armitage, Derek Fordjour, Jennifer Packer, and Henry Taylor (shown next to Alice Neel and Richard Diebenkorn); sculptures by Aria Dean, Sayre Gomez, and Lauren Halsey. It's worth noting that the Dean and Gomez employed 3D printing in their creation.
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| Michael Armitage, Amongst the Living, 2022 |
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| Derek Fordjour, Seven Eighty-Eight, 2022 |
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| Aria Dean, WORK (Dear catastrophe model), 2022 |
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| Henry Taylor, emery lambus, 2016 |
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| Installation view |
The Pop room rhymes Warhol's hand-painted Telephone (1961) with Christian Marclay's video supercut Telephones (1995). Math Bass's Bloomingdale's (2016) is shown next to the early monochrome Pop of Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns' Map, and John Baldessari. Ever-resurgent Pop was/is about text, with colorful examples by Corita Kent and Ed Ruscha on view.
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| Ed Ruscha, Lisp, 1968 |
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| Jasper Johns, Map, 1962 |
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| Lauren Halsey, untitled, 2020 |
The final, least expected room considers Los Angeles and its architecture as subjects for art. "Reverberations" adduces Catherine Opie's mini-malls and new sculptures by Lauren Halsey and Sayre Gomez. A surprise guest is Marcel Cavalla. Huh?
I hadn't heard of him either. Cavalla (1890-1966) was a peripatetic Italian-born pastry chef turned folk artist who spent his last days in a Bunker Hill apartment about to be razed for the redevelopment that became California Plaza. One of the two paintings on view shows a gingerbread Victorian home on the 200 block of Grand Ave., where MOCA now stands.
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| Sayre Gomez, Halloween City, 2022 |
"Reverberations" is at MOCA Grand Ave. through Sep. 29, 2024. Bennett Simpson curated, with Emilia Nicholson-Fajardo.
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| Marcel Cavalla, Bunker Hill House, 1964. Courtesy of the Gwen Garabedian Trust |
Comments
Regardless, it's too bad that MOCA doesn't have both the budget and logistics to easily increase its space on Bunker Hill. Even the larger Broad across the street can give off the sense of, Is that all there is? So its expansion starting next year seems overdue too.
The museums of Paris, France (not even dealing with what's on display in them) astound the visitor because they're so spacious and plentiful. Moreover, some of them were built or created in just the past 40 years.
The Orsay is a former train station. Construction on the station began in the 19th century.
The Louvre is a former palace. It dates back to the 17th century.
The Pinault Collection is a former trading hall/grand house (Bourse de Commerce). It dates back to the 16th century.
Don't go.
Most cities would kill to have the patrimony of Paris.
We can't all live in halcyon Needles.
That when it comes to museums, Paris, France is Europe's (if not world's too) cultural boomtown.
That when it comes to master-planned entertainment, Orlando, Florida is the US's (if not world's too) tourist boomtown.
Various communities throughout the US and world would like a bit of that.
Why not say what you mean, if I'm grasping your view: I wish the Louvre would shed some of its incredible bling for the benefit of LA's masterpiece-poorer venues?
At the LV Foundation, the total square footage of the galleries is 41,400 square feet. What is so "spacious" about that?
That's smaller than MOCA/Grand Avenue.
The grass is not greener in Paris. The Pompidou does NOT have the funds to pay for its renovation. See the recent report by France's Court of Auditors.
I wasn't comparing as much as I realize the museum scene in Paris is way more than the Louvre alone. Since that institution goes back the longest and is so overwhelming in its collection (almost unpleasantly so---like a person who wears too much perfume), and therefore also commands the most attention, the addition of other museums in France's capital over the past 50 years gets sort of lost in the shuffle.
Goldie Locks syndrome on full display.
Try London or Rome or New York...Oh, wait.
"like a person who wears too much perfume" ...
Your usual tired shade.
Don't go.
Moreover, the crowds who roam the Louvre's hallways and galleries make the place reminiscent of a football stadium after spectators are entering or leaving.
Still, it's better a museum have too much instead of too little, and be too popular instead of too unpopular.
Beyond that, since a museum like the Louvre already has so many objects to display and already plenty of visitors entering their front door, adding more works to their collections are like, as the cliche goes, bringing coals to Newcastle.