METROPOLIS II by Chris Burden at LACMA–a Child’s Delight

On the first level of the Broad Museum of Contemporary Art at LACMA is a wonderful miniature city with buildings, roads, vehicles and more. Built by artist Chris Burden, Metropolis II it is a delight for adult and child alike. One can view the sculpture at eye level, or from a surrounding walkway above. On the day I visited I came between the scheduled action sessions, but even so, or perhaps because the vehicles were locked in place, it made the complexity and detail of the structures within the maze of tracks even more impressive.

The exhibit is ongoing and included with the general admission to the museum. It is well worth a stop if you are visiting LACMA.

Chris Burden's Metropolis II is an intense kinetic sculpture, modeled after a fast paced, frenetic modern city. Steel beams form an eclectic grid interwoven with an elaborate system of 18 roadways, including one six lane freeway, and HO scale train tracks. Miniature cars speed through the city at 240 scale miles per hour; every hour, the equivalent of approximately 100,000 cars circulate through the dense network of buildings. According to Burden, "The noise, the continuous flow of the trains, and the speeding toy cars produce in the viewer the stress of living in a dynamic, active and bustling 21st century city."

See Metropolis II in action (no reservation required):
Fridays
11:30–12:30 pm; 1:30–2:30 pm; 3:30–4:30 pm; 5:30–6:30 pm
Saturdays and Sundays
10:30 am–11:30 am; 12:30–1:30 pm; 2:30–3:30 pm; 4:30–5:30 pm

DAVID HOCKNEY: 82 PORTRAITS and 1 STILL LIFE at LACMA

David Hockney Portrait Exhibit at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA

"I think I've found something that I could go on with forever, because people are fascinating, they're mysterious really." David Hockney

Entrance to the exhibit with photo of Hockney at work in his studio

If you haven't seen the David Hockney show at LACMA, 82 Portraits and 1 Still Life, I highly recommend it. I went to see it on Sunday. At age 80, David Hockney is still going strong. The portraits are stunning and the red walls of the gallery are a perfect foil for the green and blue background of the paintings.

Julie Green

As I walked around I noticed a woman leading a tour. Then I looked at her dress and realized she was Julie Green, one of the people in the portraits!

Architect Frank Gehry

There are portraits of his studio assistants, massage therapist, housekeeper and cook. Others depict Hockney’s siblings, the children and grandchildren of his friends, and art dealers and prominent cultural figures in Los Angeles. All of the paintings are labeled with the sitter's name and dates of sitting.
Organized by the Royal Academy in conjunction with LACMA, the exhibition opened in London in 2016, then traveled to Venice, Italy; Bilboa, Spain; and Melbourne, Australia. The only U.S. stop is L.A., the city where the portraits were painted and where most of his subjects live.

The 83 paintings line the walls of two large galleries in the Broad Contemporary Art Museum

The series began in 2013 after David Hockney moved to Los Angeles from his home and studio in rural England.

Each person came to Hockney’s studio for two or three days and sat in the same chair on a small platform while Hockney painted. All of the figures are full length and the canvas size is the same for each portrait. The backgrounds are simple–flat color and just a suggestion of shadow on the floor. What comes across in each painting is the distinct personality of the sitter.

The one still life was painted on a day when one of his subjects had to postpone her session. So Hockney set up a bench with pieces of fruit in the same spot in his studio and painted it instead.   

If you haven’t seen this spectacular exhibit you need to go soon. It ends July 29, 2018.


David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life
April 15, 2018–July 29, 2018

Review in the LA Times by Barbara Isenberg