Last Chance to See Fading Scroll… For Now

This Sunday is the final day to check out a work at LACMA I’ve been pretty crazy about, El Anatsui’s Fading Scroll–a sumptuous tapestry made from liquor bottle tops and other discarded material whose troubling history is only revealed upon closer inspection.

El Anatsui, Fading Scroll, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Fowler Museum, UCLA, purchased jointly with funds provided by The Broad Art Foundation, Phil Berg, Robert and Mary Looker, and Margaret Pexton Murray

In a recent conversation with Art Journal, El Anatsui talked about the number of hands that touch his work: “When I saw the bottle tops, what struck me was that they are from bottles that have been used, and therefore human hands have touched them…. People have really drunk from these bottles and therefore human hands have left a charge on them…. I’m constantly looking for anything that has a connection to human hands in a meaningful way.” All this talk of hands makes me feel a bit better about my urge to run my own across the work-and, I thought, a perfect reason to share these behind-the-scenes photos of El Anatsui’s assistants assembling Fading Scroll.

Photos provided by Elizabeth Cameron

If you’re unable to drop by LACMA this weekend, the good news is that we’ve just acquired the work jointly with the Fowler, where it will go on view in February.

Brooke Fruchtman

Something Creepy for the Weekend

Just in time for All Hallows’ Eve, feast your eyes upon these five ultra-spooky works in our collection, as chosen by LACMA’s staff.

Félicien Victor Joseph Rops, Le Vice suprême, gift of Michael G. Wilson. Selected by: Erin Sorenson, Education

Edgar Degas, The Bellelli Sisters (Giovanna and Giuliana Bellelli), Mr. and Mrs. George Gard De Sylva Collection. Selected by: Rachel Mullennix, Communications & Marketing

Victor Brauner, Suicide at Dawn, purchased with funds provided by Robert and Mary Looker, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Max and Eleanor Baril Family Trust, Helena and Boyd Krout, Alice and Nahum Lainer, Sheila and Wally Weisman, Herta and Paul Amir, Abby and Alan D. Levy, Sandra and Jacob Y. Terner, and Bill and Maria Bell through the 1996 Collectors Committee, and gift of Richard L. Feigen, New York. Selected by: Ellen Castruccio, Membership

Dominique Blain, Untitled, Modern and Contemporary Art Council, 1991 Art Here and Now Purchase. Selected by: Amy McFarland, Graphics

Marlene Dumas, Dead Girl, purchased with funds provided by the Buddy Taub Foundation, Jill and Dennis Roach, Directors. Selected by: Peter Brenner, Photographic Services

Land of the Lost: My Top 5 AFI FEST Picks

I guess I should get the disclosure out of the way first. I am a “programming associate” at AFI FEST 2008. That said, I pretty much had nothing to do with selecting any of the films I’m about to mention, and to even give myself anything resembling credit would greatly undermine the hard work and stress undergone by the fest’s full-time programmers. So here we go, in alphabetical order, what I’m most eager to catch:

24 City
The unappointed poet laureate of “new” China, Jia Zhang-ke sets actors and locals against a sprawling factory being dismantled to make way for a high-rise in this HD panorama of modernity 2.0.

24 City

Birdsong
The Three Wise Men traverse a barren expanse under curling tresses of clouds to reach Jesus Christ in Catalan minimalist Albert Serra’s second feature. Cinema Scope editor and Vancouver Film Festival programmer Mark Peranson stars as Joseph, and he’s also made an intimate “sort of making-of” entitled Waiting for Sancho that will thankfully be screening as well.

Birdsong

The Headless Woman
Argentine director Lucretia Martel’s long-awaited third film elusively appoints, through liminal sounds and CinemaScope friezes, the moral landscape of a woman who may or may not have hit someone with her car.

Liverpool
Another trilogy finale, this one from Argentina’s master of sparseness Lisandro Alonso as he follows a lonesome seaman on an encounter at the end of the world (snowy Tierra del Fuego to be exact).

Liverpool

Tulpan
The big surprise at Cannes (it won Un Certain Regard), this Kazakh film from onetime documentarian Sergei Dvortsevsky is an immersive portrait of nomad sheepherders which includes a breathtaking single-take scene of literal life-affirmation.

Bernardo Rondeau

The GOP is Coming to LACMA

I have a confession: I am a reformed rock and roll sexist. Upon being introduced to the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, and Roger Daltrey, I just did not think it possible for there to be female vocalists who could measure up. I was grossly mistaken. After seeing the light thanks to Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and Mama Cass, among others, I’ve had my ear to the ground for the next generation of rock queens. Amidst that search, I was fortunate enough to come across Kristin Gundred and her band, Grand Ole Party. In fact, I liked them so much that I booked GOP to perform at this Saturday night’s sold-out Muse Costume Ball.

Hearing GOP for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised by the band’s driving, throwback sound. Heralding a time when soul and funk shared the stage with rock and roll, the opening guitar riff of “Look Out, Young Son” immediately intrigues, only to bowl you over when Kristin belts out her first words over the drums. Take a look at the song’s video, which was filmed with nineteenth-century cameras—a fitting complement to our exhibitions A Story of Photography and Vanity Fair Portraits!

Jason Gaulton
Muse Coordinator

Chronicling Art in L.A.

Yesterday, I attended the press conference for Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, an initiative led by the Getty Foundation that funds the investigation of art created in post-World War II Los Angeles via exhibitions at institutions ranging from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Fifteen shows, including LACMA’s California Design, 1930-1965: “Living in a Modern Way”, will roll out starting in 2011. The program, which has been in the works for several years, began with the idea that we must archive our artistic legacy here in L.A. Aside from Southern California museums, perhaps no entity has better maintained the city’s artistic history, chronicling its shift from a cultural backwater to a thriving arts capital, than the L.A. Times. Suzanne Muchnic’s Sunday story deftly records this latest achievement, both summing up and illuminating P.S.T. It’s particularly gratifying to read such a thoughtful, in-depth piece in a paper that has as of late suffered well-publicized cutback after cutback.

Many have noted that arts coverage in L.A. has declined in recent years. Anecdotally, many of the journalists that I’ve enjoyed working with at the L.A. Times over the years have been laid off, including a few in this most recent round. We museums can maintain our own histories, but isn’t thoughtful third-party reporting integral to our history as well? I worry that now, as Los Angeles is finally achieving credence as an art center, its paper is simultaneously shrinking. We’ve finally made it and it seems to me we need our paper more than ever.

Allison Agsten