MOCA logo goes back to the future [Update]

An e-press release from the Museum of Contemporary Art dropped into my inbox this morning, featuring something I don't recall seeing for a while -- the museum logo created nearly 30 years ago, when MOCA was being launched.

A sort of post-Bauhaus/neo-Minimalist affair, the logo features a blue square for M, a green circle for O, a small letter "c" and a red triangle for A. Red/green/blue are the primary colors of the light spectrum, rather than the pigment primaries of red/yellow/blue. In the 1980s, MOCA's particular choice of primaries may have signaled a contemporary association with the age of light and space and video art rather than the older, Mondrian-and-Modernism-era colors. [Update @ 12:28 pm: A MOCA spokesman says the revived logo, originally designed by Ivan Chermayeff, is a work-in-progress that may undergo additional alterations. Keep an eye out.]

Whatever the case, the press release was announcing details of the first exhibition presented under the auspices of MOCA's incoming director, Jeffrey Deitch. "Dennis Hopper Double Standard" will feature about 200 photographs, paintings, collages and other works made by the actor over the past 60 years, selected by guest curator Julian Schnabel. It opens July 11 at the Geffen Contemporary.

-- Christopher Knight (follow me on Twitter @KnightLAT)

Credit: Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Comments

[Donald Frazell]

Looks more cyan than blue on my screen, and while RGB is what monitors are tuned to, in printing CMYK is used, and the lasers on Lambda and Lightjet photo printers are RGB to produce the negative affect of reversal papers as CMY emulsion layers.

There are no true primary colors in light, but in electronic monitors, not reality, RGB are the additive primaries used to create a visual. Light itself is a gradating band of wavelengths from within ultra violet to infra red.

See you at Norm's across from Canter's CK.
The Rodia Towers are represented. The greatest work of art in LA, and ignored by those who use any color wavelength. but loved by those who live under the Sun's. The real world.

[mimi watstein]

nice font...can we see the rest of the alphabet?

[Susan Emerling]

At least they're not still promoting the totally misguided "MOCA New." MOCA didn't need to be "new." The old MOCA was pretty darn good. That's why it was worth saving. It just needed new management and leadership.

[Donald Frazell]

These are actually Cyan, Green, and dull Orange, all characterless colors(how appropriate)compared to yellow, red, violet and even true blue. They picked colors of all the same density, so nothing stands out, again, how appropriate for the site. No chances taken, no depth, no intensity or emotional response, this sounds better all the time!

Look at the palettes of artists that have lasted like Cezanne through Gauguin to Matisse to Tamayo. And then these as a color chord, dull, duller, dead. These are of designers for calming qualities, yet the "appearance' of vitality. Damn, this is genius! Diabolical!

art collegia delenda est!

[David B.]

I can't wait to visit the new Square Circle c Triangle! Have the idiots taken over the asylum at MOCA?

[PT1]

Fancy, but illegible. How brilliantly stupid.

[william wray]

I kind of like how arrogant it is and am convinced that is what gives it it’s appeal to the powers on high. In the face of almost closing, lets get a logo that distances us from the public even more. Just a few little cuts in the squares would make it work and still maintain a minimalist quality, but then that would be legible and give context, not a good thing for art.

[will]

Also, the triangle, square, and circle are the shapes that make the equation of art and design.

[grandma cranky pants]

I think it says exactly what it needs to say about the institution to the public.

[Ruskin Jr.]

They forgot to mention the name change along with the logo change: MOCA = The Museum of Celebrity Art