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| Tony Smith, Smoke, 1967-2005, as installed May 2025. LACMA |
LACMA has installed Tony Smith's
Smoke adjacent to the David Geffen Galleries, north of Wilshire. The 1967 sculpture, fabricated in 2008, was previously displayed indoors in the now-demolished Ahmanson Building.
Smoke becomes the first of a group of outdoor artworks to be located around the Peter Zumthor-designed building.
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| 2019 rending of Peter Zumthor's David Geffen Galleries, with Smoke at left |
A 2019 rendering of the Geffen Galleries showed Smoke fitting snugly underneath it. I wasn't sure how seriously to take that, given that Smoke is 24 ft. high and various public filings put the underside of the Geffen at 23 ft. to 30 ft. above ground level. The sculpture is currently visible from behind a construction fence, leaving the exact spatial relationship to the Geffen building unclear. In the photo at top of post, it looks like highest parts of the sculpture are outside the footprint of the concrete slab forming the gallery-level floor.
The new location makes literal the famous 1967 Time cover of Smith and Smoke, "Art Outgrows the Museum." The photo shows a full-size plywood mock-up of Smoke in DC's Corcoran Gallery.
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| Time magazine cover, Oct, 13, 1967 |
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| Smoke in LACMA's Ahmanson Building atrium, 2019 |
Comments
The work appeared way too cramped in the interior spaces, kind of like a 38-inch waist trying to fit into a size 36-waist pair of pants.
The color of the gallery in the rendering and the actual color bear no resemblance whatever. Pity.
> rendering and the actual color
> bear no resemblance whatever.
Huh? Whadda 'ya expect. Highway overpasses happen to be plain gray concrete, nothing more, nothing less.
Oops, pardon me. Strike that. I at first thought that was Wilshire Blvd and the 405 Freeway. My bad. Never mind.
But seriously, that photo of the old Ahmanson atrium is a reminder that Pereira's design was awkward or compromised. But mainly too small, even more so by the standards of today.
I recall a time when MOMA and the Whitney were much more modest too. Or when Paris had mainly the Louvre, not things like the Pompidou or Musee d'Orsay.
If people like Michael Govan are making LACMA way too reminiscent of a municipal or regional art gallery, they must be nostalgic for Exposition Park, pre-1965. Never mind some of them insisting the square footage of Zumthor's LACMA is as spacious as the former (pre-demolition) LACMA was.
> looks way better than the cold
> grey color they ended up
> going with.
The plain gray likely was the result of the Zumthor/Govan project being further value engineered. However, the LACMA becoming "a contemporary art museum now. But not a good one" means poor judgment may be also a factor.
As it is, ceiling heights in certain galleries were reduced and windows originally curved to match the rounded roof line were changed to meet at a right angle.
However, CEO Michael Govan says the square footage is still as much as before, scout's honor. And he has been very honest and very transparent about his LACMA since well before 2020. Did I mention he has been very transparent?
... American contractors have the expertise. See the LA Cathedral or the FW Modern.
But that's not what Zumthor wanted. Initially, he wanted an approximation of rammed-earth walls using poured concrete. Each layer of rammed earth has these distinctive horizontal striations, which are created randomly by the process of "ramming." From that, one can tell that he initially wanted walls that show some level of imperfection. He ended up getting subtler effects from grey, architectural concrete.
Whatever the case, it would be a mistake to think that Zumthor wants a material like concrete to behave perfectly.