Biggers "Oracle" Finds a Home in the Wine Country
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| Sanford Biggers, Oracle, 2021, at Donum Estate. Photo: Adam Potts Photography |
Sanford Biggers' 25-ft-tall bronze Oracle—shown at the Hammer Museum in 2023-24 after a debut in New York—now has a home in Sonoma County. It's been purchased for the Donum Estate, a sculpture garden set among working Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyards. Oracle joins a Louise Bourgeois spider, a set of Ai Weiwei Zodiac Heads, and monumental works by Lynda Benglis, El Anatsui, Tracy Emin, Keith Haring, William Kentridge, Yayoi Kusama, and others.
The Donum Estate is about a two-hour drive north of San Francisco. Advance reservations are required. Oracle goes on view June 11.
Comments
However, since Oracle was made by a black artist, is his sculpture meant to be a variation of the way the "N" word is used way too freely and way too casually in certain rap music?
Maybe the work is just a goofy sculpture for the sake of being a goofy sculpture.
As for the Hammer Museum, where Oracle was previously displayed, its exhibitions are way too similar to the ones hosted by LACMA. Or MOCA. Or the Broad. Or the Marciano Foundation on Wilshire.
Contemporary art in LA is nice and all, but after awhile, why can't commercial galleries like Hauser & Wirth be the main ones that display art seemingly as much for the purpose of commerce (ie, helping the sales of living artists) as for the purpose of history and connoisseurship?
... The statue's pose is appropriated from the statue of Zeus at Olympia. It is NOT a "stereotypical" representation of black people.
> is goofy for the sake of being
> a racist.
LOL. Are you also the "Save the LACMA mob, MAGA mob" person?
Regardless, a set of photos of the Geffen Galleries was recently posted that again make me apprehensive. The building's rooftop is a huge concrete heat zone, and the windows look clunky since they meet at right corners instead of the originally designed rounded ones.
Also, Zumthor's design doesn't make more of an effort to mesh with the existing 4 structures. That includes Renzo Piano's entry area (which is reminiscent of the canopy of a 1950's LA school cafeteria), the Resnick and Broad wings and the Japanese Pavilion.
In effect, the Geffen plays up the suburban, decentralized layout of LA, while the concrete bridge over Wilshire Blvd is evocative of the gloomy space under an LA freeway overpass.
However, I'll be truly thrilled if the Govan/Zumthor building is a big success. Actually, failure is not an option.
Moreover, okay, yep, something major had to be done to the former 1965-1986 campus. But a lack of transparency for the past several years suggests the inmates have been running the asylum.
There really is a Santa!
LA Times, May 2023: "LACMA might be a de facto museum of contemporary art, but frankly it's not a very good one."
Speaking of Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Wing at the Met opened this week after being closed for 5 years. I go on Monday.
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NYC will self-deport before we ever stop talking about ourselves.
Our Trump avatar will have to lump it.
... That's the thing that really bothers me about dullards like you. You know nothing about art and architecture, yet you give your opinion very decidedly for someone so stupid.
> ever stop talking about ourselves.
Small mercies: Not one sound of "meanwhile, here in NYC..."
There really is a Santa!
Uh, one will have to walk outside the Geffen in order to get to the Resnick. Then walk outside the Resnick to get to the Broad. Then walk outside the Broad to get to the Japanese/Joe Price building.
One would have to be quite a dullard to not realize that layout is very decentralized, more suburban than urban.
BTW, William Pereira's buildings were described by one wag as reminiscent of the format of a tract-house development.
LACMA's legacy continues well beyond 1965.
Have to walk outside to get to places in those cities too.
The horror! The horror!