MOCA Gift: Hilary Pecis
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| Hilary Pecis, Silverlake Hillside, 2025. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, purchased with funds provided by Shari Glazer |
Hilary Pecis is known for Fauve-inspired streetscapes. MOCA has recently acquired Silverlake Hillside (2025), a purchase funded by tech entrepreneur and Manchester United team owner Shari Glazer.
Measuring 77 by 92 in., the acrylic-on-linen painting features Western Exterminator Company's "Little Man" logo, a top-hatted gent about to pulverize a rodent ("Menace Mouse"). The rather disturbing image was designed in 1931 by commercial artist Vaughn Kaufman. Pecis' composition omits Menace Mouse but does include the line of 21 neon mice scampering beneath the Western Exterminator sign. Installed in 1952, the neon mice were animated until the 1960s, when the city decided they were too distracting to drivers on the 101 freeway.
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| "Little Man" sign, Silverlake |
Comments
... This must be a gift with an ulterior motive --- to bolster or increase the valuation of her work.
--- J. Garcin
> on view
I wonder if MOCA's director and curators like giving visitors a sense not only is their museum's square footage quite modest, but so is their collection too?
Across town, that's what LACMA's director and curators are into doing. Or certainly the latter more than the former. They like giving an impression they're struggling to fill all their wall and floor space. Not to mention all the stretches of vacant outdoor pavement around and under the Geffen.
https://youtu.be/UxzwuRlfAyw?si=TN4pkjHie4RaWVKJ
Meanwhile, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and their classical-style building definitely doesn't look like an unfinished parking garage. But some of their installations do seem vaguely off in the way they are in the Geffen. Art objects, particularly paintings, in sections of the MFAB's enfilade-format rooms don't seem arranged as aesthetically skilled as they should be.
And if the gray concrete of the Geffen's walls and floors are overbearing, the old-timey wallpaper used in a lot of the MFAB is off-putting in another way.
From one extreme to the other.
Still, unlike LACMA, the MFAB doesn't give the vague sense of one having to say "coun-ty" with a southern twang. While wandering through a concrete parking garage and thinking, sooie, sooie. lol