A collection of Stanley Kubrick movie posters at LACMA
The highlight of my week was the Hume family field trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (a.k.a. LACMA) organized by my sister-in-law Jody who blogs at Mood Maybe. We wanted to see the Stanley Kubrick and the James Turrell exhibits, but when we arrived the Turrell exhibit was sold out for the day. Missing the Turrell exhibit was a bummer but it did gave us more time to see the other exhibits.
The Kubrick show was impressive and large! You could spend two whole days trying to absorb all the objects/diagrams/photos/models/prototypes. The show focuses on his process of making movies, not on the final product. It was a great window into understand how epic, complex films were made before computers and spreadsheets. If you go, I recommend watching a few of his movies before hand so they are fresh in your mind – you will get a lot more out of the show. Some of my favorites: Lolita, Dr. Strange Love, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The colored shapes are painted paper that were cut out by hand and glued to canvas.
Next up, we visited the Matisse exhibit of large scale paper cuts. I have seen prints/posters of the series before but never the real thing. I didn’t realize that the originals were mural size! He did this series in the last years of his life, he found making them paper cuts less physically demanding that some of his earlier work. Read more about the paper cut series HERE.
Seeing this work in person got me very excited! And hungry to cut paper again.
Matisse hand painted the paper he used for the paper cuts.
In the early 1950’s, Los Angeles art patrons Sidney and Frances Brody commissioned Matisse to translate one of his large scale paper pieces into a tile mural. They rejected his first design. The second design that they accepted was fabricated in France. The hand drawn diagram above shows how the panels of tile were to be taken apart for shipment to the US.
This is the finished tile mural – La Gerbe (The Sheaf) c. 1953. It was acquired by LACMA in 2010.
Detail of the luscious tile.
Next we visited Levitating Mass by Michael Heizner. I took some selfies. Ever since I read How to Take the Best Selfies by Sarah Sloboda I have trying to make my selfies more interesting. I don’t know that this one really succeeds but it is interesting to me. I like my big head next to Tim’s little head. And the rock looks menacing. It kind of looks like a collage.
Walking under the 340 ton boulder. I took an Instagram video too.