Van Leo Easter Egg!
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| Van Leo (Levon Boyadjian), Portrait of Youssef Nabil, 1995 |
Easy to miss in LACMA's "Now Showing: Youssef Nabil's I Saved My Belly Dancer" (through Jan. 11, 2026) is this portrait of the artist by Van Leo, the Armenian-Egyptian glamor photographer. Van Leo's photographs—particularly his staged, stagey, cross-gender, and surreal self-portraits—have gained a cult following. They were the subject of a 2023 show at the Hammer.
At the time of Nabil's portrait (1995), he was 23 and would have known the 74-year-old Van Leo as a legend/relic of Cairo's Golden Age as "Hollywood on the Nile." It's not a color photograph (which Van Leo disliked) but a hand-colored B&W print.
The LACMA installation presents Nabil's 2015 video I Saved My Belly Dancer alongside stills and vintage movie posters.
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| Van Leo, self-portrait, 1940s. He wasn't bald; he shaved his head for this photo |
Comments
Cairo gets the Grand Egyptian Museum while LA gets Hauser & Wirth at LACMA.
BTW,, a major daytime heist just occurred at Paris's Louvre. I understand one of the prized objects was broken. News reports also show long lines of visitors standing outside France's big-time museum.
Security at LACMA (to prevent theft---although graffiti vandalism is always a threat) doesn't have to be nearly as good, particularly for what's often in the Resnick. Also, far fewer daily visitors at 5905 Wilshire Blvd who will be eyewitnesses of a potential crime too. Oh, well, win some, lose some.