February 14-20, 2008
By Alfred Lee
Street Art
Finally, the thing is opening: The Broad Contemporary Art Museum’s construction – the $150-million-plus Phase I of LACMA’s years-in-the-making expansion – has become an epic saga in the hands of the local media and its breathless blow-by-blow of the building process’s internal dramas. After a press preview last week packed with TV cameras, and a gala opening attended by Tom Cruise and Nicole Richie, BCAM unfastens its doors on Saturday, February 16, to those people it was purportedly being made for all along – the general public.
That’s a public mostly unconcerned with details of behind-the-scenes compromising by museum and county officials and Eli Broad – or, to a certain extent, even with the art contained inside. BCAM’s opening collection features very fine and forward-thinking works by Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Richard Serra positioned alongside requisite Warhols and Basquiats, but feels at times like a placeholder due to its jumbled organization and quality. The expansion’s impact is instead most pronounced on the street level, where, overall, it’s reinvented LACMA’s neighborhood presence for the better. The campus, formerly too decentralized and distant from Wilshire, now spills out onto the street with the addition of a Grand Entrance. The entrance doubles as the new campus center, connecting BCAM and LACMA West with the rest of the museum’s galleries.
This space has also been utilized for several works of public art. Most notable is Chris Burden’s Urban Light, an installation of 202 restored street lights from the 1920s and ’30s that creeps up to the sidewalk. Even in the daytime, the rows of lamps impress with their playfulness and majesty; at night, they light up as an undeniable focal attraction. Some area residents have grumbled that the lamps’ brightness presents an unwelcome eyesore, and that a public plaza should be in their place. This – along with a Times report that LACMA’s push for a drop-off lane led to the closing of crosswalks at Ogden Drive, thus sealing it off from both pedestrians and Wilshire’s south side – suggests questions about local interaction still linger.
But BCAM’s exterior, at least, has been maximized to interface with the public. Large banners by Baldessari serve as the building’s de facto façade, and a 90-foot, open-air escalator as its main entry point. Climbing up to the third floor in this escalator, part of a network of bright red stairs and fire escapes architect Renzo Piano dubs “the spider,” the museumgoer is given a moment – just about a minute, to be precise – to admire both a panorama of the Hollywood Hills, and the museum’s restructuring sprawl below.
–Alfred Lee
BCAM opening weekend. Sat.-Mon., 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Free. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Miracle Mile, (323) 857-6000. Lacma.org.
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THIS WEEK IN THE CITY
THURSDAY 14
MY VIDEOTAPE
If you’re going the love-at-the-movies route tonight, there are plenty of options at your local movie houses – Audrey Hepburn at the New Bev, say, and John Wayne(!) at the Egyptian. The Silent Movie Theatre hosts one of the city’s two Casablanca screenings, but it’s the other half of tonight’s bill, Wendy Clarke’s The Love Tapes, that’s sure to pump new blood into our collective V-Day hearts. Over decades, Clarke has collected some 800 short videotapes in which people have shared their personal experiences and thoughts about love. The selection being screened includes new tapes that have been recorded at the Silent Movie Theatre itself over the past few weeks. 8 p.m. $10. Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A., (323) 655-2510. Silentmovietheatre.com.
FRIDAY 15
NOW, NOW
Those predisposed to ignore St. Vincent for fitting so neatly into the quirky-listenable singer-songwriter image would do well to at least recognize that there’s a respectable amount of daylight in sheer talent between her and your average iPod-ready clone (8 p.m.; $13; Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd., Echo Park, 213-413-8200; Attheecho.com). If you really want something different, head upstairs from the Echoplex to the Echo, which hosts Baby Dee on Sunday, with opening act Barr and doors at 6 p.m. The transgender harpist, accordion player, pianist, and singer will someday write an unbelievable autobiography that already includes traveling with the circus and street busking on a tricycle.
SATURDAY 16
LIVING WITH COLOR
It was probably only a matter of time before comedian Russell Peters moved to L.A. One could rightly complain that Peters’s brand of stand-up rarely ventures outside of scattered observations on race and ethnicity, but the Indian-Canadian transplant’s pre-occupation with such topics (and arsenal of foreign accent impressions) is tailor-made for this city’s multicultural cloth. His every-immigrant anecdotes and catchphrases (“Be a man!”) are sure to kill when he performs at the Nokia tonight. 8:15 p.m. $49.50. Nokia Theatre L.A. Live, 777 Chick Hearn Ct., downtown L.A., (213) 763-6000. Nokiatheatrelalive.com.
SUNDAY 17
POOLSIDE OPERA
Olympian myth meets Olympic pool for Long Beach Opera’s production of Orpheus & Euridice, but such epic trappings do not necessarily an epic make. The draw of the original story – for those rusty on their classical mythology, it’s the one about the lyre-player who can’t quite rescue his wife from the Underworld – has always been personal. This version, written by Ricky Ian Gordon as his partner was dying of AIDS, should be no different. Sun.-Tue. at 8 p.m. $45-$95; $15 students. Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool, 4000 Olympic Plaza, Long Beach. Info: (562) 432-2580 or Longbeachopera.org.
MONDAY 18
REALITY TV
Public-access TV as art? It was one of the many lofty aims of Paper Tiger Television in the 1980s, when the activist media collective challenged corporate control over broadcasting with a mix of video art and anti-industry grandstanding. Viewers tuning in got to see contributors ranging from Noam Chomsky to professional wrestler Bill Tabb taking on topics from The New York Times to romance novels. Paper Tiger continues to celebrate its 25th anniversary at REDCAT with a screening tonight of documentary Paper Tiger Reads Paper Tiger Television, and a talk with original members. 8 p.m. $9; $7 students. REDCAT, 631 W. Second St., downtown L.A., (213) 237-2800. Redcat.org.
TUESDAY 19
MOVIES AND MINIMALISM
As far as I’ve been able to dig up, Russell Banks’s new book, The Reserve, hasn’t been picked up for film rights yet. In recent years, the writer of The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, both adapted for the screen, has successfully walked the line between literary cred and Hollywood appeal. He presents tonight at Vroman’s (7 p.m.; Free; Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, 626-449-5320; Vromansbookstore.com). Across town, Amy Hempel, whose minimalist short stories are crafted with textbook precision, participates in the Hammer’s readings series (7 p.m.; Free; Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood, 310-443-7000; Hammer.ucla.edu).
WEDNESDAY 20
PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES
Last year’s Criterion releases of La Jetée and Sans Soleil allowed for a re-appreciation of Chris Marker, the reclusive French filmmaker whose influential works had not previously been widely available on DVD. Tonight, Venice’s 7 Dudley Cinema series lets fans and first-timers alike catch screenings of the two films, which mix sci-fi and experimental impulses – La Jetée is almost entirely told through still photography – to challenge both the viewer and convention. The screenings are preceded by a short video pre-show featuring an interview with Nouvelle Vague figure Jean-Pierre Gorin. 8 p.m. Free. Sponto Gallery, 7 Dudley Ave., Venice, (310) 306-7330. 81x.com/7dudley/cinema.
2008-02-14
Published: 02/13/2008
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