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i suppose it’s pointless to complain about how hard it is to get a decent photo of a piece of art inside a museum, especially a museum with such drab, yellow lighting (not to mention using a cheap point and shoot canon, but oh well). art, like sex, is best experienced on a one to one level, photos are an extremely poor substitute (plus the fact that it’s not a museums responsibility to provide perfect photo-shoot conditions. i realize that). still, sometimes a photo is all you have, sometimes all you can ever have. believe me, that can really suck. like when there’s a great bauhaus show happening at the moma, and you didn’t get to see it, because it was on the other side of the country. sometimes i want to see what i’m missing, if only just in 2d. chances are, i’ll never get to see that work in person – at least not all in one place. just today i was drooling over installation photos of the new “primary atmospheres” show at david zwirnir. i was glad to at least get a glimpse. heh, man, i’m kickin some serious dirt over missing these 2 shows.

regardless of trying to take decent photos, simply viewing the work in person shouldn’t have to be a challenge. now, i know that uv light is a harmful beast when it comes to art, and sometimes you can’t just point high powered lights right at a piece, especially an old piece. certain types of work need different levels of lux to stay safe from deterioration – but c’mon moca, there’s gotta be a better way than to just not light it at all. as someone with a few years of preparator experience, i’m rather surprised at the quality of the lights/lighting at moca (not that i’m a master preparator, i just happen to notice these things more often, having done the job). mondrian and reinhardt were in near darkness (ok, that’s an exaggeration, but still). i noticed the very yellow quality of mocas lights back in january of 09 when i saw that great louise bourgeois show, but this show was a little worse. i hate to be hard on you moca. don’t get me wrong, i love that you gave me the opportunity to see such an expansive exhibit – but you’re a major institution, shouldn’t higher standards apply? look, if all new lights aren’t in the budget, might i suggest some simple color correction gels. maybe it’s because my eye can’t take looking at yellow light for too long, but i think a lot of the pieces in the show were somewhat hindered by the light they were given.

there seriously needs to be a new breakthrough in art-lighting technology…i’m just sayin. get on it, scientist-lighting-inventor-guy.

ok, having said all that, it’s a good thing that the work in this show is so great that it can shine even with dingy lighting. i was thoroughly impressed right from the beginning (and the beginning, that is, the entrance to the show, was also the beginning of the chronology of work being presented. earliest works first) – curatorially i thought it was a very well rounded show, from start to finish. i even found a new appreciation for a couple artists i’m not usually interested in. oh, and i’m speaking strictly for the grand ave part of the show, the 1940-1980 works. it was a different story entirely when we took the free shuttle over to the geffen location. i can’t say it was a waste of time to see the 1980 – present works, but it wasn’t necessarily a jaw dropping experience either. i will say though that the one highlight of the geffen for me was the diana thater piece “rgb windows” (pictured to the right above). a very simple site specific piece using colored mylar on the museums three exit doors. the effect she got from such a basic application was huge. the coolest thing about it is, as light shines through the tri-colored windows, any object in it’s path will cast a really cool “spectrum shadow”. as pictured below, this is what my “spectrum shadow” looked like on the wall:

i suspect i liked it so much because of a fairly recent interest of mine that deals with the unexpected effects that light shining through windows can produce. like this for example (below) – light shining in through a far off window in another room slightly catches the wall of a hallway and spawns this beautiful patch of glow.

these “shines”, as i’ve come to call them, occur everyday all around us. i’ve been really paying close attention to these unassuming illuminations lately in hopes of coming up with a way to somehow fabricate them without it seeming unnatural – as if they were actually coming from the sun, but it would all be controlled. i haven’t figured that out yet, at least not to a satisfying end. anyway, “shines” are a topic for another post.

as for the topic at hand, i snapped a few shots of only the pieces that i really liked. they’re over at my flickr site – a few have short comments attached. click on louise nevelson’s “sky cathedral” below to see more (by the way, this was by far my favorite piece of the show. i love her work.)

and if you have the opportunity, you really should go see the work in person. because, unlike with photos of sex, photos of art aren’t all that exciting. you’ve got to actually experience it. here’s a link to more info.

ok then…who likes root beer?! meeeeeee!!! and if you like root beer, real root beer, not mug or barq’s, but real cane sugar root beer, then you have to go to galco’s soda pop stop.

they’ve got so many different root beers that after spending 40 bucks, i didn’t even come close to buying them all. haha. and it’s not only root beer, they’ve got sodas of all kinds from all over the world. everything from spruce beer (tastes like drinking tree sap) to cucumber soda (which is quite delightful). almost all their sodas are made with real sugar instead of the dreaded high fructose corn syrup, which any real soda connoisseur has got to love. i found out about this place from the video below. once you watch it, you’ll want to go. it’s worth it.

i’ve got to say though, that the best root beer i’ve ever tasted has got to be “old town root beer”, which is sold right here in my home town of san diego. their website seems to be gone or else i’d link you to it. lukes root beer pages wrote a good review about it though.

so there it is. art and root beer. have some.

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the louise bourgeois show has been up at the moca in l.a. for weeks now and i kept telling myself to go see it before it’s gone. last week i was reminded that the show was still up while talking about louise with a co-worker. when i realised that the show was going to close next week i knew i’d better get my procrastinatin booty up north before it was too late. unfortunately, my pal joeygold is in nyc installing the robert irwin show at pace in chelsea – he would like to have gone. [side note: i'll be in nyc myself in a couple of days for the irwin opening. but dammit, isn't it just my luck that i'll miss the louise nevelson show that opens 3 weeks later (also at pace). man, i hate that i'll miss that. louise nevelson is one of my favorites.] however, i did have 3 fellow artnight buddies to share the experience with (tom, lee, ivy). so we made the plan to drive up and see it on sunday.

man. i’m glad i didn’t put it off. this was a really great show. before this show i hadn’t seen too many of her pieces in person, but she’s remained an artist i’ve admired ever since i saw her in the first season of art21. along with only a handful of others, louise’s photo would be vying for top position next to the word “artist” in the dictionary. i wish i had the words to properly articulate what i mean by that. she’s just so prolific, her work so vast in medium and subject. yet no matter what she does – paint, draw, sculpt – it always remains distinctly louise. and it’s not that i’m blown away by every piece or that i even like every piece. but when i look at a large body of her work all at once (in person) i can’t help but be completely awestruck at how perfectly complete she is as an artist.

anyway. i’m not much on writing reviews, but as i walked around i made a note of every piece that caught my eye so i could share it with you when i got back. like many museums, there’s no photography allowed inside. so, sadly, i couldn’t document my favorites for myself. but then again, like most visual art, a photo rarely does any justice. and that is definitely true with this show – you just have to see it person to appreciate it. nonetheless, i’ve searched the web and found pics of most, but not all, of the pieces i made note of and i’ll share them with you now.

disclaimer: keep in mind as you look at these photos that NONE of them properly convey the impact you get from seeing them in person. i’m merely posting them to share with you what i saw at the show. even looking at them now it makes me think “if i’d seen just the photo of some of these, i wouldn’t be impressed”. but believe me, they are much more impressive in person – especially the red rooms which were my two favorites by far.

so (pretty much the order in which i saw them while strolling through the museum):

red night 1947:

femme maison 1946 (the order of these was reversed in the exhibition i saw):

spider 1997 (the texture of the steel legs on that spider is so cool.  i’d love to know the process in which her spiders are built):

quarantania 1947:

mortise 1950:

memling dawn 1951:

dagger child 1947:

femme volage 1951:

sleep ll 1967:

cumul l 1969:

the blind leading the blind 1947 (this is one i’d always seen photos of and was never really struck by it.  seeing it in person, however, definitely gave me a new appreciation for it):

janus 1968 (there were three of these such sculptures hanging together.  that polished bronze you see on the “tips” was much more glowing in person):

janus fleuri 1968:

red room (parents) 1994 (along with the piece below this one, there is absolutely no way you could ever photograph these to do them even a shred of justice):

red room (child) 1994:

nature study 1984:

legs 1986:

arch of hysteria 1993:

 

if you live anywhere near l.a., i suggest you go see this show before it’s gone.

 

i brought my camera along on the trip but didn’t shoot very many photos.  the ones i did take (mostly of the nancy rubins sculpture in the plaza out front) you can see on my flickr page here.

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