LACMA

Going through the LACMA was a huge change from when we had gone to the Norton Simon. The area was enormous, with several buildings holding different kinds of art ranging from paintings to sculptures to old historic civilization war masks and egyptian talismans.

This really caught my attention, simply just because it stood out so well in the middle of this big empty area, and once it got darker it really looked just that much more amazing. I don't know if this was the intention for this piece but it does a great job of marking where to walk when you are looking for the entrance, same as when you leave since the museum is so big it seemed like there were 10 different front entrances. What I liked most about it was that it seemed like it belonged there, it didn't seem  like it shouldn't have been there and I liked that it was unique yet it blended in well with the area.

I went through quite a few buildings, however the entire hour we were there it didn't seem like we had covered nearly as much ground as we thought we had because there was this whole other side of the museum we hadn't stepped into, and we didn't even realize this until we had walked out and went "dam dude theres that whole other building we didn't even step into". But either way the experience was great, I actually almost thought I had wasted my 10 dollars in the museum because there was nobody that actually took your ticket when you walked in, then I realized that the people standing around are super anal about making sure you have your ticket with you so that was a relief.

This was created in 1919 in Germany, with no real author as its artist is titled Anonymous. The text, translated from German, says "So Spartacus leads you! Brothers, save our revolution!". As revolution propaganda, the art is so dark and sadistic its much more unique from what you would think of as something to spark a revolution. It reminded me of some kind of Halloween poster, with Death holding a sickle walking around surrounded by bats in this crazy atmosphere. Looking back on these photos of the paintings, I realized that the more gruesome paintings caught my eye. Yea there were many great paintings of boring naked women who were supposed to resemble Greek goddesses, but I've seen all that before. These crazier paintings I haven't, probably because they try to keep you away from that when you're younger, they're not exactly going to show you a painting of the Spanish Inquisition when you're in elementary school.

This one is titled Suicide at Dawn by Victor Brauner. I was disappointed when I read the description because all it gave me was a list of people who contributed funds to help buy the painting and I wanted to know what the artist was thinking when he went out of his way to paint such an interesting piece. It almost seems like the individual in the painting is literally breaking free of his skin, however it doesn't make sense that the figure coming out of the naked ghost-like figure with the white eyes has skin from the waist down and seems to be without skin from the waist up after cutting through the stomach of the white figure. Either way, this painting stood out to me and I took a couple minutes to look at it, which is pretty long in my standards.

I couldn't even get the whole of this enormous painting in the picture, but that is Torsten acting like a freak next to me for some reason haha. Anyway this piece was is titled Burn, Baby, Burn by Roberto Matta. This painting was dedicated towards the Watts riots in 1965 in Los Angeles, when a California highway patrol motorcycle officer pulled over a black man on charges of drunk driving, which erupted into a racial debate among the citizens of LA. Eventually they began protesting which erupted into the riots. "Burn, Baby, Burn is a powerful indictment of the destructiveness of mankind and a manifesto for peace." I enjoyed the painting a lot because it did a good job of giving you this sense of chaos and destruction that had occurred back then. No law, no order, just chaos. That's what went through my head when I saw this painting.

This is titled Landscape in Red (Paisaje en rojo) by David Alfaro Siqueiros. The deep, dark red really made me do a double take, and I looked at the painting for a while wondering whether it was supposed to be a fire or some kind of massacre, yet its titled Landscape in Red, so it confused me, yet I still felt really drawn to the piece. The artist was known for doing pieces on political activism, so I'm not sure what sort of political meaning this had however I know that it does leave an impact on the viewer, when they're so used to seeing pretty colors and being almost numbed by them, they get to see something like this that makes them look again and go wow whats this all about.

This was also pretty cool they had another one on the other side of the room.











As a whole, the LACMA visit was a huge success, I learned a lot about art, and I also learned a lot about my taste in art, which I thought was the most significant.