Art + Auction Power 100, 2011

The only list that matters.

Art + Auction announced their annual Power 100 list earlier today, and celebrated it with a big party in Miami last night.  No, I am not in Miami for Basel, I am but a humble graduate student doing hours and hours of thesis research.  (Next year I’ll be forced to go by my fabulous future job.)  I did take the time to comb through the entire slide show on Artinfo.com. For thesis research… Here are some facts:

KOONS’S TRAIN

LACMA

What is 70 feet long, suspended on end by a 160-foot-tall crane, and will cost an estimated $25 million dollars?—Jeff Koons’s Train, of course.  The massive sculpture is now several years along in planning; its realization being prolonged by several factors, the most retarding factor being the economy.  When and if realized (a big “if”), Train will consist of a replica 1943 Baldwin 2900 steam locomotive hung on its end by a Liebherr LR 1750 lattice-boom crane.  Twice a day the engine will hum to life, pistons will churn, wheels will spin, and finally the train stack will explode jets of steam, while its whistle screams.  Considering its authorship and this suggestive action, it is easy to read Train as a giant orgasmic metaphor.

Letting off some steam: model by Koons.

This sexy piece is commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).  It will hang over the museum courtyard, behind the BP Pavilion, next to the Broad Contemporary Art (BCAM) and Resnick Pavilion buildings.  Al of the building are new additions to museum’s campus—part of LACMA’s capital campaign called “Transformation.”  This western portion of LACMA’s campus is the product of the creative leadership and powerful fundraising skills of Michael Govan, Wallis Annenberg Director and CEO of LACMA.

Paris: Life and Luxury

Getty Center

Oh how the rich suffer!

NOTICE: This is the last week to see Paris: Life and Luxury, at the Getty Center. I’ve seen it twice, and am going back a third time this weekend.  There is a lot to see; there is also a lot to read, lots of walltext, and a lot of it is hilarious.  Beginning with the intro walltext, which explains why most people are unfamiliar with French decorative art from this period:

Largely unfamiliar and underappreciated today, over shadowed as they are by the tumultuous social and political events of the French revolution of 1789.

Oh my god, this stuff is so underappreciated! Who doesn’t love Rococo?  If an 18^th century French peasant saw all the wealth/golden filth in this exhibition, the Revolution would have happened a WHOLE lot sooner. 

Christian Marclay’s The Clock

LACMA

Last week, I attended (a portion) of LACMA’s 24-hour screening of the museum’s newly-acquired The Clock by Christian Marclay.  I watched the video work from 8:00 until a little after midnight, and it LACMA’s Bing Theater was packed the entire time.  People shuffled out at the bottom of each hour, allowing more people in; when I left at 12:15, there was still a line of eager museum visitors all the way down the side of the Art of the Americas building.  The Clock has been on view pretty much from the time it was acquired back in May, and just closed this past weekend.  If you didn’t get the opportunity to see it, fear not, I’m sure it will be back—it’s a huge crowd pleaser.

The (de)evolution of the leading lady?

The showing attracted a mixed bag of attendees; The Clock is more fun to watch in a diverse group of people.  Older viewers recognized clips I didn’t; there were big laughs for a dinner scene from The Odd Couple, and more laughs for a Vincent Price clip.  I held my own when I recognized a young Catherine Deneuve, a pivotal scene from Hitchcock’s Rope, and Dustin Hoffman in drag in Tootsie.  The oldtimers were stumped by a clip from Sex and the City.  Some clips I wanted to go on longer, but I quickly forget about them because there were five or more news clips in the next minute.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House

Starchitecture

Textile Bricks.

Recognize this image?  You might, it’s been featured in numerous movies.  On the right is a concrete textile block from the Ennis House in Loz Feliz, on the left is what the brick originally looked like.  Suffice to say this brick, and the Ennis House at large needs lots of conservation, and I’m not just a little nip tuck.  How much is this browlift going to cost?—Well a bunch of stabilization work was done by the Ennis House Foundation to keep the house from slipping down the hill, but there is still an additional $5-7 million needed.  The additional conservation cost is probably the reason why the house sold for WAY below its initial asking price.  The Ennis House Foundation made the decision to sell the house to a private owner way back in June 2009 and put it on the market for $15 million.  There weren’t any biters, so in February 2010, the price was chopped to $10.5 million.  Still no takers, and another chop in May 2010 to $7.5 million.  The Ennis House has sat on the market at the price since.  Until last week when it was announced that supermarket magnate Ron Burke had purchased the Ennis House for just under $4.5 million.  Thanks Ron, one more price cut, and it could have been in my price range.  (Yes, all of these links have been to curbed, and here’s another one, full of pretty pictures.)

And in case you still don’t recognize the Ennis House, here are some of the Ennis House’s onscreen appearances:

21st Century apartment.

Summer Exhibitions

LACMA

LACMA’s near acre of new exhibition space, the Resnick Pavilion, means LACMA has a lot of exhibitions to program.  And they seem up to the task.  After the three inaugural shows (Olmec, Fashion, and Eye for the Sensual), LACMA has managed to keep the Resnick Pavilion at full capacity.  There are three shows currently in the space: David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy, Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts, and LACMA’s ticketed blockbuster: Tim Burton.  The shows keep with Michael Govan’s strategy for offering unrelated coinciding shows in the Resnick Pavilion.

Across from the Resnick Pavilion, is Renzo Piano’s other LACMA building, BCAM; it too has been kept full. The top floor is still stocked with Broadworks, the second floor is being deinstalled from the recent permanent collection show Human Nature, and the ground floor just had one of the massive Serra sculptures deinstalled, to make room for a new Burden work, which is going to be AWESOME.

Balenciaga and Spain

De Young Museum

Hamish Bowles, Editor at Large, curator, and cape-wearer.

On my most recent visit home to San Francisco, I had a museum day with my mom.   My mom was insistent we see the Hamish-Bowles-curated Balenciaga and Spain at the De Young Museum.  My mom had already seen it (bought the catalogue), and had been raving to me about its unconventional display.  The clothes are integrated into a background of paintings (one by Miro, a reproduction of Velazquez’s Las Meninas), photographs of the Spanish landscape and matadors; sometimes lively flamenco music accompanies the designs.  I wanted to glean something from the exhibition to point out to my mom that she might not have noticed.  This came from the object labels.  Each label included the requisite materials, date, lending organization, and donor.  However, in some cases an additional “worn by” line was added.

Who were some of the women wearing Cristobal Balenciaga’s bolero jackets and flamenco-inspired gowns?

King Abdulaziz Center for Knowledge and Culture

AAM Conference Expo

Everyone knows the United Arab Emirates are going through some serious development.  Dubai first captured my imagination when “The World” was featured (years ago) on Vh1’s Fabulous Life Of series.  Currently Abu Dhabi and Qatar (not an emirate) are going head-to-head to see who can build the most and more lavish museums.  In Doha, Qatar, there is the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I.M. Pei, and the National Museum designed by Jean Nouvel. In the other corner is Abu Dhabi where a whole island of museums is being constructed.  Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island (now just a glorified sandbar) will get not only a Performing Arts Centre designed by Zaha Hadid, and a Foster+Partners-designed Zayed National Museum, but also a branch of the Guggenheim (designed of course by Frank Gehry), and a branch of the Louvre (also designed by Nouvel).  I wrote a piece about an artists’ boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi over immigrant labors rights, or lack thereof.  You can read the whole story here.

Starchitecture face-off!

Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

A tranchromie, you say?—I’ll take five!

While in Houston, I scampered around town looking at as much art as I could with my favorite museum pal Margarete.  This included going to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.  I always enjoy seeing how encyclopedic museums display their collections, Pre-Columbian collections in particular.  Coming from LA, I’m now accustomed to LACMA’s Jorge-Pardo-designed galleries.  The Pre-Columbian galleries at the MFAH are fairly standard, but contain hoards of gold.  This is because the Spanish conquistador, Alfredo Glassello bequeathed his Aztec and Incan booty to the MFAH. Not really, but an oil man and MFAH trustee, Alfred C. Glassell, Jr., did.  “As a life-long collector of Asian, Pre-Columbian, and African art, he donated his excellent and extensive collections to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. These works, primarily of precious gold, are without parallel.”  This would explain the gold rooms, one of Pre-Columbian artifacts, and on the other side of the building, a hall of golden African objects.

Rothko Chapel

I was in Houston last week for the American Association of Museum’s annual conference.  It was my first time attending, and I learned a lot and networked a lot. (Thanks for the fellowship Getty Foundation!)  As a Californian, my perception of Houston is a bit skewed from reality.  It didn’t help that my freshman year roommate was a frat boy from H-Town, who was fond of boxed wine and drunk driving.   All of my conceptions of Houston were changed during my trip.  Total strangers smiled at me and made eye contact (a strange thing for me).  More importantly, Houston is FULL of art institutions.  I managed to squeeze a major art mecca into my trip and was blown away with the amount of things I saw.  (This was easy to accomplish because of Houston’s concentrated museum district.)  I got to see the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s traveling summer exhibition Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting.  It was kind of dinky, and I’m glad I didn’t have to pay the extra $7 dollars to see it.  What really blew my mind at the MFAH was the Carlos Cruz Diaz show (post to follow soon); I loved it so much, I saw it twice in four days.

Titian’s “Diana and Actaeon” – The Painting that almost got away.