I only wish I could dance about architecture but as I cannot I will write about architecture instead. I went to the Los Angeles Broad Museum on Sunday. I had been looking forward to it for months. I am a huge fan of contemporary art and I was giddy at the idea of L.A. having a museum built by Renzo Piano that would be a home to an important permanent collection. Sure, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has had some important contemporary art shows—but there was something about the buildings that would not allow for enormous works by Richard Serra or large installations by Mike Kelly.
I had seen a few pictures of the Renzo Piano addition to LACMA while I was in Austin but I tried to avoid reading too much about it. I didn’t want someone with more architectural insight and with paid opinions to tell me how I should feel about the Broad.
I had gone to the Menil in Houston where two of the buildings had been designed by Piano and the architecture and art work were a spiritual experience I will never forget. The light and numinousity of the Cy Twombly gallery are not unlike the spacious canvases created by Cy himself. The space that Piano created in Houston is one that sets a mood of reverence and introspection. It is a museum thats space stayed with me long after we left.
When we drove down Miracle Mile I was expecting an architectural miracle what I saw instead was a large building that displayed huge banners. A pair of fabric scrims four stories high seemed to my eye a bit of a distracting dress put on a very large pig. I tried to reserve judgment and still had hopes of being dazzled. I have since learned that the banners were projects by an artist I love, John Baldessari. I, however, did not like the Christo like foo-foo that covered the facade.
Before I go on, let me say, I am no expert on architecture. I have no education or training. What I have is a strong felt sense about buildings. To me, architecture is a little like falling in love. You know it when you feel it. And, you also know when you don’t. I love beautiful buildings and how I feel when I see them and enter them. So, as I am not an expert—and even if I was, I advise you to feel free to absolutely ignore me and listen to experts and what they think of these buildings—or you could listen to yourself.
All that said, my feelings about LACMA are strong.. I have long loathed the architecture of LACMA. As much as I love the Getty and Disney Concert Hall is how much I do not feel it for the multi-building campus of LACMA. My antipathy is enormous for the Ahmanson Building. Yes, it is a building that is aware of the light of L.A. and it certainly does not outshine the art. But, the structure is somehow institutionally dreary and drab. And, there are the columns that try to communicate some kind of mythic gravitas while looking beachy and contemporary. They look, to my eye, like bars painted the colour of hospitals and institutions; the tall and imposing columns seem to keep the art in and the people out. The squares of light stone and stripes of blue-green seem an unsuccessful homage to a Diebenkorn painting or to the David Hockney palette of turquoise blue pools and beige blocks of concrete—only seriously subdued. All that is missing in the homage to Hockney is a beautiful Californian boy about to dive off a diving board into a unmoving pool with a background of sprinklers sparkling on green grass— only I would much rather look at a Hockney painting than the bland architectural equivalent.
Then there is the Art of the Americas building which is an art deco meets Lego-like structure. The surfaces of this building shine as bright as a celebrity’s capped smile. Large shiny blocks of white are the antithesis of the organic blocks of white stone at Meier’s amazing Getty on the hill or the subtle stone of the Menil or even the Broad. Then there are the postmodern columns of green and the whimsical art deco like patio that makes me wish I was playing SimCity( when I play SimCity, I love knocking down parts of town that dare to go brown. This is a museum that I would knock down—but I would first carefully remove all the artwork).
The worst element of this building, in my mind, is an angled wall off the Art of Americas Building that is like an ornamental and incongruent glass wall that jets off the back of the building like a last minute addition. This wall looks like it was intended for backdrops for fashion shoots. Truly, glass blocks give me hives. Every Realtor I have ever worked with will tell you that I feel about glass blocks the way Joan Crawford felt about wire hangers. And, I do not even know what to say about the Pavilion for Japanese Art except that it looks like an Epcot-ian like satellite of the LACMA campus.
We passed through the courtyard that sits between the Ahmanson and the Broad and I started to feel an unexpected anxiety. First, I saw a large structure that looked like an enormous service station that could house several semi-trucks. I have since learned that this is called the “entrance pavilion”. It was a nice place to escape from the L.A. light as ducked under the facade and purchased our tickets to enter the museum.
I looked up to the Broad, as there is no way that this building can be looked at without tilting your head, and what I saw in front of me was an escalator that took patrons up four flights in an Ikea like escalator. I do not want my architecture to remind me of Ikea.
Now, let me say before I go any further, I love the color red. Red is my favorite color. I love it so much that my hair is red, my lips are red and I have dozens and dozens of red shoes. Even my nom de blog has the word “rouge” in it. However the red accents of steel and stairwells, that Piano used to outline the white-whale sized sound-stage of the Broad, seemed disturbingly
commercial. And, when I say commercial I mean “McDonald’s” or “In and Out Burger’s” and not a Museum of Contemporary Art. The exterior steps, the escalator and the red lines feels like a nod to the more ebullient and energetic Centre de Pompidou which is also a Piano structure.
I have another issue with the Broad, there is no entrance to it from Wilshire Boulevard which seems like an outright rejection of its environment. What comes to my mind as I see the doorways absence is the image of a child covering its eyes and expecting that no one can see them just because they cannot see. Piano did create some windows that overlook Wilshire. And one of my favorite sitting places was at a Wilshire window on the first floor that sits in a walkway between two Serra’s. Sitting on a bench in the light of the Wilshire window made me feel like I was in an Ed Ruscha painting.”Women sitting in window, No.1.”
Once off of the Ikea like escalator we arrived on the top floor and were met with a myriad of amazing views and a patio that was cantilevered and hence without foundation. He-weasel bravely walked out onto the protruding patio. I was more cautious and asked to take his arm to go to the edge. As He-weasel bravely bent over the edge of the patio so he could take pictures for my blog, I came to realize that the Broad’s exterior spaces are about small vistas and vignettes and is free of a grand entrance and/or a grand space to commune( other than the gas station like open space without a place to sit). There is no major city center in L.A., it is huge and spread out and there is not just one L.A. but multiple L.A.’s and in that in that way the Broad is representational of its context and in that way it might have succeeded. In the outer spaces of the Broad, like in L.A., I feel a sense of isolation and separation, but that could just be my issue.
The door into the Broad opened with some kind of high tech cantilever thingymajoo that was strangely impressive and still quietly elegant—I would expect nothing else from Piano. The first thing I noticed upon entry was a glass elevator that was walled by a Barbara Kruger elevator that was not working. Now, I am not going to address the incredible art inside the Broad—I will save that post for another day.
After walking away from the Kruger elevator I turned to the ceiling. I was shocked by the somewhat dim and diffuse light that came through Piano’s signature skylight. I saw that the skylights were muddied and dirty from a recent bit of L.A. rain. I was also struck by how few people were there. The place was empty. Really I saw no more than a dozen people in the entire museum. Why is that? It was a Sunday. Isn’t the day that people go to museums? Where are the people? Are they at the mall or the movies? I remember going to museums in Sundays in NYC and there would be crowds. L.A., there is a museum here!
That was the very last thought I had about the museum while I was there. The art took over. I think I did have thoughts about how fabulous it is to have a museum that can hold not one but two Richard Serra masterpieces. I think it is obvious that I prefer Piano’s Menil museum to his Broad approach. Oh, and the Menil is free and it was a $12 for adult admission to LACMA. However, admission is whatever you want to to pay if you visit after 5 p.m. And, on the second Tuesday of each month, general admission to the permanent galleries and non-ticketed exhibitions is free. Please, dear reader, do not let my feelings about the architecture stop you from visiting. This is an amazing museum with a fantastic and breathtaking collection of contemporary art which I will write about later this week.
Pictures:
1. Photo of the facade of the Broad taken by Me-weasel.
2. Photo of the Menil Cy Twombly Gallery in Houston, Texas taken by He-weasel.
3. Photo of the front of the Broad Museum comes from Bloomberg.com
4. Photo of a Hockney painting comes from here.
5. Photo of the dreadful glass brick wall was taken by Me-weasel.
6. Photo of the Entry Pavilion comes from here.
7. Long shot of the Broad taken by Me-weasel.
8. Photo of the bench and window on the first floor taken by Me-weasel.
9. Photo of the escalator of the Broad taken by Me-weasel.
10. Photo of the entryway to the Broad comes from here.
And, the title of today’s post is a quote by Steve Martin. I love a man who is funny, writes well and who ha
s a passion for modern art.
