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Paul Cézanne, Three Pears, about 1888–1890. Museum of Modern Art, promised gift of Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation
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The Geffen is getting all the attention, but there's a new attraction on LACMA's west campus. The
Pearlman collection exhibition is a presenting a new rotation of Cézanne watercolors. It justifies a repeat visit, not the least for
Three Pears. The bold forms are due to gouache (opaque watercolor), a medium Cézanne used only in the early part of his career.
Three Pears was included in Cézanne's first solo show at Ambroise Vollard's gallery (1895), where both Degas and Renoir wanted to buy it. They drew lots for it, and Degas won. Cézanne spoke of astonishing Paris with an apple, but these pears helped make his reputation.
"Village Square: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection to the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and MoMA" is on view in the Resnick Pavilion through July 5, 2026. All the Pearlman Cézannes are promised to the Museum of Modern Art.
Comments
He works right up to the edge on 3 sides. I like the full monty.
> all the attention
For me, that building has helped me better understand LACMA, which, after all, this blog's name is based on.
I'm kind of shaken up. I previously didn't fully realize the museum's history and just how, whoa, pockmarked it has really been. And which regrettably still is. And not just because of things like too much gray concrete or black-metal wall brackets.
Inscribed on one of the Geffen's walls is a donor list, with the amount of dollars donated. Damn, that's declasse. I've never seen an institution do that before.
They'll instead categorize contributions with words like "Platinum" or "Gold," "Silver," or place the names of donors who've given the most above other names. But never based on a ranking with words like "$100 million or more."
Cheesy. Rube-ish. Tacky.
Michael Govan, meet Richard Brown. Richard Brown, meet Michael Govan.
Oh, well, all is not lost:
Tony Puryear, Facebook:
Took a groovy, knocked-out, koo-koo members-only after-hours tour of the new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA... For some Angelenos, this place has already become a hate magnet for its non-hierarchical organization and surprising, flowing experiences, but I thought it was wonderful, all of it.
Like the future of art itself, it's up in the air (at the top of the third flight of stairs, I was breathing hard - I could have taken the nice elevator....and from what I saw, full of promise. From its unexpected views down Wilshire Boulevard at sunset to its wealth of East Asian and Indian art, these new galleries, unfurling in curves and angles of warm-toned concrete, were full of new discoveries.
As a painter who's trying to find something new to say in portraiture, I was rocked (I don't use that word lightly,) by a really fine Rembrandt hung next to a gorgeous Frans Hals that I'd never seen before, (the Hals won by a knockout,) and they were just around the corner from a set of great, new-ish paintings and drawings from Korea.
...Those juxtapositions, surprises and delights ARE the point in these new galleries, and it's a joy to get lost in them. I was transported.
Awhile ago, I visited the not-large Simon Museum. The European galleries on one side (popular Impressionism in one wing, older European in the other) and the Indian-Southeast-Asian galleries on the other side (actually in sort of the basement) gave me a vague sense of museum fatigue.
I've long remembered hearing a person say the Louvre Museum can be oddly unpleasant, monotonous because it's too much, too much. I still think that's better than being too little, too little, but a happy medium is what's needed.
The Brown-Pereira LACMA needed way more than tweaking to bring it up to par, whereas the Govan-Zumthor LACMA can be improved.
It's regrettable that what happened in 1965 forced millions of dollars to be spent in the 1980s, and then when the BCAM was built in the 2000s (and the Ahmanson modified), and wasted on trying to tweak Brown-Pereira.
It would be nice to have more confidence that Govan and his staff in the next few years will be able to dot all their i's, cross all their t's.