'Ka ni Kim

Everywhere we go, we try to visit at least one place where we can appreciate art and culture. So it felt natural that our trip to LA included a day at the LACMA.

One of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s most easily recognizable features greets you as soon as you step onto the compound: Urban Light. This installation includes no less than 202 antique street lamps, beautifully restored, lined up, and lit for the public’s viewing pleasure. Artist Chris Burden collected the lamps one at a time, then restored them and painted them all gray. The lights are on 24/7, and they’re solar-powered!

We took some time exploring the exhibits and happened upon a handful of familiar artists. One of them was painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Her work was featured in an exhibit for the first time in 1916 with help from art dealer Alfred Stieglitz, whom she would later on marry. Win-win!

Though she painted a wide variety of subjects, there are a few particular images that come to mind in discussion of O’Keefe’s work: desert landscapes, flowers, animal skulls, and the occasional cloudy sky. Her painting, Horse’s Skull with Pink Rose from 1931, captures a few of these elements. She contrasts the dry, lifeless remains of the horse with a vibrant bloom. In her own words, “The bones cut sharply to the center of something that is keenly alive in the dessert.”

Anyone who has ever taken a humanities class in university will likely recognize René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images – though some, like me, will remember it better as the “This is not a pipe” painting. Magritte was a surrealist, which means his thought-provoking, sometimes strange works intended to make people ask questions like, “Why?”, “How?”, and “What does that even mean?”

He had his first one-man show in 1927, in his home country of Belgium. But it wouldn’t be until decades later, in his 50s, that he would enjoy international recognition for his work. Leading up to this, to supplement his earnings from his art, he took a job painting cabbage roses for a wallpaper company. He is still widely celebrated (and we are still wondering what he even meant) today.

One of Magritte’s major influences, already quite renown at the time, was Pablo Picasso. The LACMA has a sizeable collection of Picassos, including Harlequin and Woman with Blue Veil, both from 1923. The latter shows that at this point in his career, he had transitioned from the cubist style that had inspired Magritte to a more neoclassical approach.

Come 1930, he was on the surrealist train. His black and white oil painting, Figure, uses seemingly unrelated images like a crescent moon and a teardrop to create the likeness of a person. Do you see it? It certainly sees you.

Toward the back of the lot stands Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass. The mass in question is a 340-ton, 21-and-a-half-foot rock. Heizer found the rock in 2006, but the idea for the installation dates all the way back to 1968. The boulder was transported from Jurupa Valley to Los Angeles in 2012. Because of its enormous size and weight, the custom-built truck could only move at around seven miles per hour. A number of traffic lights needed to be temporarily removed for the truck to pass through. (Check out its full route here!)

The boulder balances atop a trench deep enough for museum visitors to walk under. No need to be nervous about standing below – there are supports on either side holding up the monstrous structure.

Last but not least, my favorite piece out of the 150,000 spread out across the museum is Analia Saban’s Draped Marble. It’s part of the Eternal Medium: Seeing the World in Stone exhibit which features sculptures, mosaics, and even furniture carved from stones. Draped Marble is comprised of three marble slabs carved to look like pieces of cloth hung over a wooden stand. You can easily imagine one of the flat rectangles being laid over the wooden surface and folding over, defying the laws of physics. Of course, that’s not how they got there, but it’s a fun visual.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. They are open from 11:00am to 6:00pm Monday through Thursday, 11:00am to 8:00pm on Fridays, and 10:00am to 7:00pm on weekends. Tickets cost $28.

For more information, check out their website and follow them on Instagram and YouTube.

Read about our breakfast across from LACMA and other LA food finds in my LA food blog.