Last Sunday, Ed & I finally made it up to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) to see two exhibits we were both really excited about. I wanted to catch the Vanity Fair Portrait exhibition, and Ed was really excited about the Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures exhibit.
The Two Germanys exhibit was really great. Basically, it compared and contrasted East & West German art & culture from after WWII up until the wall came down. You know how obsessed Ed is with all things German and history related, so you know this was right up his alley! I thought the exhibition was incredible. To look back and have this visual documentation of how different these two parts of the same country were, both emotionally & culturally, was just mind-blowing. Big kudos to the curator on this one.
The other really neat thing about this exhibit was that it is inside the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM). That’s right folks, LACMA’s got a “contemporary” building now – watch out! This is great news, because we love us some Contemporary art. We are very happy about the new direction LACMA is going in and can’t wait to see what they have next! The above photo is a picture of the giant elevator inside the building. The elevator was done by Barbara Kruger, who is one of the most intriguing artists to me as of late. Of course, she does have a graphic design background and her work is done in red, black and white … so I suppose it all makes sense! At any rate, the new BCAM building houses a ton of 3-D works, including a bunch by Jeff Koons, some Warhol, Ruscha, Lichtenstein and other modern art heavy-hitters.
Outside BCAM is a really cool installation of a ton of different lampposts! It looks awesome in person, and it is tough to really capture it, but we tried:
(Be sure to check out our album to see all of the photos!)
On to the Vanity Fair exhibit … so exciting! I could look at photos all day – and when you add photos that appeared in magazines to the mix, I am all over it! For those of you familiar with Vanity Fair, you know about all of the artistic, editorial and culturally significant work that has graced their pages. We saw everything – a photo of Frieda Kahlo & Diego Rivera way back in the ’30s, to Demi Moore’s controversial naked-preggo shot in the ’90s! There were many more photos of course, the exhibit spanned from 1913-present. Did you know that Vanity Fair existed from 1913-1936 and then merged with Vogue? It came back in 1983 separate from Vogue again. I didn’t know that! Anyway, the exhibit was fascinating!
Finally, an added bonus was that LACMA is temporarily housing 4 BMW Art Cars. Basically, over the years, BMW has given cars to various artists to do with what they wish. The 4 cars on display were done by Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol. Of course, we had to see them! They were only in town for two weeks, and they have been traveling the world showing in Korea, India and Russia. Even though the two of us are huge Warhol fans, we actually were the least impressed by his car:
We actually thought Rauschenberg’s car was the most interesting, and it was cool to see how his collage-style translated in paint all over a vehicle!
All in all, it was a fantastic day. Do yourself a favor and get out to LACMA soon! We can’t wait to see what they have in store for us over the next year! Click on the thumbnail below to check out the album. More fun pics of art cars & lampposts! :)
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| LACMA – Vanity Fair/Two Germanys |
