Outside Outsider Art

Backyard murals come in an all shapes, sizes, and sophistications (including driveway trompe l'oeil).

Cultural landscapes revealed: highly romanticized renderings of the old country, chronicles of the immigrant experience, appear frequently (see Caribbean beach scene bottom).

In 2001, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art relocated three walls from a garden structure in Pacific Palisades, bearing Portrait of Mexico Today, the only intact U.S. mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros, painted in 1932.  

Old Lyme meet tool shed, might there be other significant backyard works?

Modernism Part 2

Between Earth and Heaven, an exhibition devoted to architect John Lautner, is on display at the Hammer Museum.

Lautner emerged from the spindle of Frank Lloyd Wright (as did seemingly half the important architects of the 20th century), to create an abundance of stunningly original architecture (largely in Los Angelesland). The Hammer show attempts to trace Lautner's central ideas and fluency with space, through a loose examination of 50 works and an in depth examination of six, wherein design drawings, models, still images, curatorial writings, and video, combine.

I'd once been a big fan of Lautner, but as modern architecture soared in popularity I went in search of new gods, ever uncomfortable with mass appeal. (Of course, Lautner isn't exactly a card-carrying modernist, overtly inspired by organic forms.)

Would a presentation dedicated to an early Los Angeles master, a Joseph Cather Newsom or a Hudson & Munsell (second image), have any drawing power? Probably not. I might shadow such a show, transfixed by albumen prints, a scrap of Herter Brothers paper, and Gilded Age analysis, whilst my set, my "peeps"--nearly everyone with whom I have anything in common--every cosmopolitan, Obama supporting, greenified, Whole Foods Shopping khaver between 28 and 61 years of age--toured the Mar Vista tract, shopped for Scandinavian furniture, bubble lamps, and all things bent ply.

Afterwards I'd attempt to pass unnoticed, as the mod throng toasted and made Luau fun around the Tiki firepit, "admit it", they'd hasten, "you like amoeba shapes, post-and-beam construction, and the Rat Pack."
"I like Rudyard Kipling, Ragtime, and Tonalism," I'd retort causing a moment's stir en route to an exit stage right.


Between Earth and Heaven
The Architecture of John Lautner
Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310-443-7000
www.Hammer.ucla.edu
July 13 - October 12, 2008

Night at the Museum

Sometimes paint colors, the crowning touch in many restorations or remodels, endures a drawn-out coronation. Half-painted walls languish for months, swatches taped in the corners of rooms, sample after sample brushed over stark white primer.

I generally recommend to the color choice challenged (or CCC), manufacturers with historic palettes (Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore, amongst others); or, a little reconnaissance--at the museum! What a testing ground: lots of walls, rooms with mostly hardwood floors, different appointments, and frequently mixed (color temperature) lighting.

According to Louis Marchesano, a curator at the Getty Research Institute, the choice of color is made by either the designer or the curator, and is usually a stock color widely available. "I've even thought we should include a color attribution in our exhibition materials," says Marchesano, "though the designers keep a complete record of all the materials used."

Some of the juxtapositions are so unexpected, they're inspiring. It isn't a canvas I want to paint after visiting the Fragonard show--it's my bedroom.

Winter in L.A.

With the threat of drought perhaps abated, or at least momentarily muffled, I enjoyed the winter radience today as I seldom realize, strolling about central West Adams, calling on clients, neighbors.

I thought of those English painters obsessed with atmospherics, mist, haze, and crystal clarity, repulsed by prettified landscapes, Constable and Turner.

Here's one example of William Turner at his shimmering, tranquil best, light and color as more than mere pictorial elements. Mood matters.

Brueghel or Bruegel

Pieter Brueghel the Elder was a Netherlandish renaissance painter, often cited for his Hiermonyous Bosch-influenced "demonological" paintings. Brueghel was likely, however, the first Western painter to paint landscapes as an end in themselves, rather than as a backdrop to religious allegory. Brueghel was also a town-lover, among the earliest urban documentarians.

His Flemish village scenes are richly rendered, rife with non-idealized architecture, crofts and thatched houses rather than palaces or country estates, populated by argricultural workers, peasants, and tradespeople. The nameless and the everyday milieu.
A detail from Hunters in Snow, featured memorably in Andrei Tarkovsky's severly haunting film Solaris (inexplicably re-made as a George Clooney vehicle). Probably Brueghel's first winter landscape. Blacksmiths toil as the huntsmen and hound return amidst fading light. The hillside is lined with houses of masonry construction, many with a jerkinhead, or clipped gable roof.


The Numbering at Bethlehem was signed and dated 1566. Elsewhere in the picture, the Imperial tax gatherers have established themselves at an inn, to collect duties as pigs are slaughtered, children play, and the drama of the Nativity unfolds. (Brueghel was about 40 when the Duke of Alba led Spanish forces into Brussels to forcibly convert the Protestants). In the center, a two story structure with a stepgevel and a second-story sand colored addition commands attention. Seen through bare branches, the red, winter sun nears the horizon.










Another particolare, this time from The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, and a town square setting. A typically busy scene, filled with a baker's wares, a window washer, and a meager cortege. Amongst the architectural detail: more stepgevels, and a half timbered house in the rear with an elaborately ornamented bargeboard. Tiny windows appear near the gable ridges, and shallow pent roofs, or shed roofs are evident above first floor windows.

Studio, Quai St. Michel 1916

This painting by Henri Matisse is in the Phillips Collection. I was especially drawn to its elemental geometry and depth, the view from the lofty studio, of the Seine and the Pont Saint-Michel, and the blue roof of the Louvre.

Another Matisse in The Phillips Collection is more heralded, Interior with an Egyptian Curtain. It's a fine work I guess, but it hasn't herringbone floors.

The Lone Tenement, 1909

I didn't just go to the Building Museum when I was in D.C.. Nor did I spend all my time hunting for architectural salvage, or thumbing through the AIA guide, on the lookout for bullseye windows or some neo-classical detailing. Mine is not a singular focus. Obsessive, perhaps; but, given to a diversity of interests. I also went to a few art museums, where I took some digital stills....of my favorite cityscapes.

This painting, by George Wesley Bellows, hangs in the National Gallery of Art. My favorite details are the smoke-belching tug (on the East River) and the golden light striking the upper most story of the tenement, otherwise enshadowed by the Queensboro bridge.

Schoolhouse Rock

Sufferin' Till Suffrage

Synopsis: In this empowering song, a mousy girl transforms into a bell-bottom clad superwoman, and against a backdrop of vintage photos, chronicles the history of women's suffrage.




Now you have heard of Women's Rights,
And how we've tried to reach new heights.
If we're "all created equal"....
That's us too!

(Yeah!)

But you will proba...bly not recall
That it's not been too..too long at all.
Since we even had the right to
Cast a vote.

(Well!)

Well, sure, some men bowed down
and called us "Mrs." (Yeah!)
Let us hang the wash out and wash the dishes (Huh!)
But when the time rolled around to elect a president...

Pause! Enough history, enough song. Check out the floor, is that tile?!





Wow, what a floor! And to think I thought Conjunction Junction was the coolest.

Christmas Reading

I knew I liked author/illustrator Chris Van Allsburg, even if his wonderfully dreamy evocations (Jumanji, Zathura) frequently become story-stretched big-screen patience testers.

In the Polar Express, Van Allsburg depicts the North Pole not with rocaille-rich, german rococo architecture (and the typical Bavarian-esqe derivations); but more delectably, as a greying, industrial, factory town.



The North Pole as Detroit. Right on!

Have You Heard the One About......

All real estate agents have a story like it. The client who looks again, and again, and never commits, coddled by "below market" rents with an avuncular landlord.

With a wondrously low, fixed monthly, and a dreamy location, the client understandably lacks the hard push and incentives of other wanna-be buyers.





So it goes, until the fateful letter arrives, the betrayal.


The owner is assuming occupancy of the unit, a big rent hike is planned, a cousin's moving in, the building's been sold, demolition is planned.

If it it can happen to the Fantastic Four, it can happen to anybody.



Artwork by Jack Kirby from issue #101 of the Fantastic Four (1970).

The FF

I believe in arts education. I take my son to see music, theatre, and the Marx Brothers. We've buzzed free nights at MOCA and the Hammer, and last month we visited the Getty's Courbet show.

I think an appreciation of the old masters is important: Rembrandt, Caravaggio, El Greco, Jack Kirby.

Recently we were rummaging through the attic heirlooms, mostly silver-age Marvel, and we rediscovered this fabulous multi-part Fantastic Four comic adventure: A House There Was. In it the Fantastic Four go househunting!

Reed (the egg-headed Mr. Fantastic) and Sue (the wannabe domestic Invisible Girl) are concerned about security and schools. Meanwhile, Johnny The Human Torch (who hot-rods around in alternative fuel vehicles with his Inhuman girl-friend and Native American roommate) opines about suburban facelessness and the criminal sterility of large, earth-moving redevelopment projects.

Wow, even comic book characters in 1969 were hip to the value of organic civic environments, not those designed by traffic engineers, power mad g-school planners, or monument seeking aldermen. (Or at least writer Stan Lee was hip to Jane Jacobs. Please see archives.)

I've got to keep reading. Maybe there's an issue where the Human Torch moves to a Utopian community, heats his own bath water, persuades Crystal to douse his organic plantings, and strips texcote with his flame.