America, When the Wheels Come Off
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| Kara Walker, The Mountaintop, 2025. The Broad |
The Mountaintop becomes the 11th work by Walker in the Broad collection. It's now on view.
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| Kara Walker, The Mountaintop, 2025. The Broad |
The Mountaintop becomes the 11th work by Walker in the Broad collection. It's now on view.
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Very GB Tiepolo.
There were artists in attendance too, of course, but not as many. Jeff Koons, Refik Anadol, Judy Baca and Takashi Murakami strolled through the crowd, as did museum directors including the Broad's Joanne Heyler and Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Michael Govan...[End quote]
I wonder what Heyler thought of the Lucas?
Yasong's building and layout, and the Lucas's general scale make the Broad seem kind of modest. But, as with the Broad, the interior of the entry area of Lucas is all curves too. And, as with the Geffen, the Lucas sits on two raised platforms.
But the lobby-front-room look of both the Broad and Geffen is gray (either plaster or concrete), while the Lucas is a brighter white (fiberglass).
In terms of media postings and influencer-online impressions, the Lucas seems to be generating more attention than the Geffen did. But I don't recall exactly what went on as recently as 2015 when the Broad opened.
I read that a large percentage of visitors to the Broad are locals, while the yearly attendance of the Met or MOMA in NYC is made up of a high number of tourists.
The Broad posted they're going to be rotating their artworks more aggressively, partly in preparation (technically or symbolically, or both?) for their expansion. But just as Govan mentioned several years ago that The Grove receives better yearly visitor head counts than LACMA does, I wonder how much popularity - vis-a-vie monthly or annual attendance figures - affects the management of a museum?
Lucas/Yasong's opening also seemed better prepped than Govan's/Zumthor's opening was. But the contents (or installation) of both the Lucas and LACMA have caused raised eyebrows. But I've seen more mixed reactions towards the Geffen than the Lucas.
Meanwhile, the special-exhibitions schedule of both the Broad and LACMA appear to have been affected by costs/budgeting. As for MOCA, I hate to think what their profit-loss accounting ledger is like.
George Lucas mentioned awhile ago that most museum stores lose money.
When it comes to his museum, he can tap into a base of customers who aren't traditional art-museum aficionados. Which he'll need too. I'm sure the Lucas will require a large annual outlay of cash to run smoothly and professionally. The yearly maintenance cost alone must be huge.
Mellody Hobson-Lucas, in the investment business, said that when George asks her he needs to do something, her first reaction is to wonder how much it will cost. He also said he couldn't have done his museum without her by his side.
> website
I haven't seen their online pages since they were re-designed. The landing page right now features a work by Alex Israel, which is very technically skilled and fully representational. It wouldn't look out of place in the Lucas.
But when zipping through pages of MOCA's collection, a lot of "who's that?" and "what's that?" come up. Artists whose names I've never heard of and works that often are very abstract or fully non-representational.
Artworks in the Lucas Museum are a lot of "who's that?" too, but at least their technical skill can be gauged.
With contemporary art in MOCA, many works are done by equally unknown names (to the layman) and aren't easily graded based on technical and aesthetic skill.
If the Lucas is too treacle, the Broad or MOCA are too "even my kid can do that."
Another Kara Walker no longer moves the needle.
--- J. Garcin
... That work was bought with funds from a Board member. The Board members are "undermining the museum."
--- J. Garcin
I'm a hick, you're a rube. Or maybe it's the other way around.
However, given the way you were sort of slobbering all over Michael Govan and Peter Zumthor's Geffen Galleries awhile ago (or bending over backwards to give them the benefit of the doubt), maybe you're more of a hillbilly than a rube.
One featured on the MoCA website because some Board member is pushing his work.
The other featured recently in the NYT and Vanity Fair in connection with the upcoming Lichtenstein retrospective (Whitney Museum). Alex D. curated the show.
MoCA acquired the wrong Alex. The Broad does not have a work by Da Corte. Another Kara Walker, another missed opportunity.
On this blog, years ago, I suggested the Broad take some risks and buy something by Da Corte. Since then, Glenstone has acquired three important pieces. One would expect nothing less of Emily Riles (Director at Glenstone). She knows her stuff and so do I.
--- J. Garcin
> and so do I.
Oh, really?
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/848735
His riffing on a mix of Calder and Jeff Koons doesn't seem all that impressive. Didn't Andy Warhol long ago play with the idea of blurring the line between real and fake? Or been there, done that.
Next thing up: You'll be razzing Lucas/Yasong while saying nothing about Govan/Zumthor.
We is rubes.
Plenty of hicks to go around, on both the East and West Coasts.
Sooie, sooie.
Jeff Koons's "Split-Rocker" doesn't make me wince the way that Alex Da Corte's "As Long as the Sun Lasts" does. LACMA bought the Koons while the Met commissioned Da Corte.
Sooie, sooie. lol.
The Da Corte sculpture began as a riff on Calder's sculpture "Gallows & Lollipops." Alex D went to art school at Yale. That's where the Calder resides.
The word "gallows" in the title is pivotal here. It refers to a wooden frame used to execute criminals. And, it is part of an old expression for a person that deserves to be hanged. That expression is "gallows-bird."
In the Calder, that's what explains the black shapes. They look like black birds. It is also what incites the substitution in "As Long as the Sun Lasts" of the "gallows" with Bird Bird.
What kind of "criminal" is Big Bird? He is holding a ladder. It's a symbol of transcendence. See Jacob's ladder, a persistent preoccupation of Da Corte's. In Christian theology, the ladder is seen as an early figuration of Christ's cross. What this suggests is that Da Corte sees Big Bird as some kind of a sacrificial figure, a scapegoat. (Think Rene Girard and the scapegoat mechanism.)
Sacrifice is another persistent preoccupation in Da Corte's work. Early in his career, he created a soft sculpture of a ketchup bottle. The sculpture became a prop in one of his video-works. In the video, he's shown carrying the sculpture down a street. It's a pop reenactment of the stations of the cross.
I would argue that Da Corte comes to his "stations of the cross" by way of Ellsworth Kelly's stations of the cross. That is why it appears to me that in "As Long as the Sun Lasts" Da Corte's color palette invokes Kelly, not just Calder. Da Corte wants us to see Kelly in this work as well.
To flesh out the sacrificial being in Da Corte's sculpture one has to make sense of at least two things: the date (69) on the sculpture and the holes in the base that do not appear in the Calder sculpture. The date references the year Da Corte's father emigrated to the US from Venezuela, the year of the first moon landing, and the year in which Sesame Street first appeared on TV.
The holes are a much more recondite reference. I would argue that they are a reference to Matta-Clark's "Day's End." For that site-specific installation, Matta-Clark created a "cathedral of light" by cutting out oval shapes from the sides of a derelict shed on Pier 52 (New York City). Doing so was controversial in part because prior to Matta-Clark's intervention the derelict shed had become a clandestine/safe meeting place for gay men. They were displaced by Matta-Clark's intervention. He tried to keep them out himself. In "As Long as the Sun Lasts," a title very similar in import to Matta-Clark's "Day's End," I would argue that Da Corte is trying to destigmatize the "cuts" (in the shed).
Which brings me to Da Corte's latest intervention in the vicinity of Pier 52. As part of his curatorial work for the Lichtenstein exhibition, Da Corte has created a billboard on the Whitney Museum facade of a Lichtenstein painting of a hot dog. To the reproduction of the painting, Da Corte has added a painterly line of ketchup. For rubes like you, it should be noted that the Whitney Museum is located directly across from Pier 52, the former site of Matta-Clark's Day's End. He who laughs LAST...
--- J. Garcin
> here is you.
I already said I was one, while I described you as a rube. Which is fine. Don't take that as an insult, J Gacin.
If I admired Da Corte, I too would be a rube. Since I don't, I'm instead a hick.
Clear enough?
Sooie, sooie.
In some of his works, there can be a dissonance between the conceptual and physical weight of the shapes. In Gallows and Lollipops, for example, the gallows-birds are lighter than their conceptual weight would demand. Remember they represent death. Conversely, the lollipops (the candy shapes) are heavier than their conceptual weight would demand.
Now, let's look at Da Corte's "As Long as the Sun Lasts." What determines the balance of his piece? What dictates that the "pop" shapes are lighter than the moon and bird? Clearly, the bird is the heavier, physical object, but conceptually he should be the lighter object (the object that is higher in the air). What's the right balance here?
With the Calder work as its backdrop, the Da Corte work forces us to refind our balance, to establish a new balance. As if we were landing on a moon for the first time.
I don't think that Da Corte is making a case for realism over Pop, which would be consistent with making the heavier object, the lower object. Rather, I think
Da Corte instantiates the dilemma today's artists face in balancing form and content, when form itself has become a kind of content all of its own. This is of course the legacy of both Pop and Abstract art. And as much as it can be said that Da Corte reinvents Pop Art, I think what he is saying here is that he's not predisposed to accept its lightness of being.
--- J. Garcin
In the various stations, the balance between black and white is determined by the angle/position of the cross. When the cross/Jesus falls in two of the three stations, the angle in the painting is low to the ground, more black than white.
Curiously, for Kelly, then, the Passion of Christ is also a balance problem. By referring to Kelly in "As Long as the Sun Lasts," Da Corte shows that there is a specific affinity between Calder and Kelly. He helps us to see that affinity by infusing the direct precedence for his sculpture (Calder's Gallows) with a specific religious subtext (that of Kelly's stations).
Part of Da Corte's brilliance is how he sees these affinities and manifests them in his work. In other works, he channels Duchamp through other artists and thus makes every artist he touches seem "like new."
--- J. Garcin
> brilliance
If 'ya say so, okay.
Personally, his work on the roof of the Met sure does come off like a parody. It's a cheesy looking object supposedly made less hokey when explained with a lot of verbiage. If so, it's the opposite of the format used for works in the Lucas.
That's where they stand or fall on their own without lengthy explanations of meaning, purpose, history, technique. Or blah-blah-blah, as a connoisseur of contemporary art holds a teacup with his pinkie (and nose) in the air..