PST, A to Z: ‘Eames’ at A+D Museum, ‘Sympathetic’ at MAK Center

Pacific Standard Time will explore the origins of the Los Angeles art world through museum exhibitions throughout Southern California over the next six months. Times art reviewer Sharon Mizota has set the goal of seeing all of them. This is her latest report.

Text is a central component of two Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, both focused on design: “Eames Designs: The Guest Host Relationship” at the A+D Museum, and “Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design” at the MAK Center. The former whimsically uses everyday objects to illustrate quotes from midcentury designers Charles and Ray Eames; the latter is an engaging exploration of the life and work of McCoy, a writer and historian who, during her 40-plus-years career, championed and pretty much defined modern architecture in California. The linchpin of each show is the way in which text interacts with the objects or spaces on view, providing fresh perspectives on icons of Southern California design and architecture.  

Throughout the A+D Museum, curators Deborah Sussman and Andrew Byrom have splashed the walls with quotes from husband and wife designers Charles and Ray Eames. Best known for their iconic chairs, the couple were inspired not by theory or style, but by the simple usefulness of everyday things. Their appreciation for vernacular design and commitment to education come across clearly in the show, although its presentation is at times a bit gimmicky.

Most of the quotes are “illustrated” with actual objects, either freestanding, tacked to the walls, or displayed on custom-designed, E-shaped (for “Eames” of course) shelving units. Most are not Eames creations, but range anachronistically from foodstuffs to Legos to Indian water vessels to diving flippers to an iPad. A quote that mentions a braided loaf of egg bread is accompanied by, what else? A braided loaf of egg bread.

This technique is often too cute, but sometimes works well. One quote compares an Eames chair to one by early Dutch modern designer Gerrit Rietveld, claiming that although “mine is much more naive,” the Rietveld is too intellectual. Nearby, the two chairs sit side by side: The Rietveld looks like a folded Mondrian painting, all angles and hard edges. The Eames, a sinuous bent plywood chair, is organic and inviting. It’s not hard to guess which is better at fulfilling the mission of comfortable seating.

Getty plans major SoCal architecture show, and funds seven others

 
When the region-wide, Getty-funded celebration of Southern California art history known as Pacific Standard Time kicks off in October, local museums will showcase a range of early paintings, photographs, videos, sculptures, ceramics and design objects. With a few exceptions (such as the upcoming Cliff May show at UC Santa Barbara), architecture is not the focus. But the Getty is now taking steps to give the pioneers of L.A.’s built environment their due: organizing a series of architecture exhibitions that will sweep the region in 2013.

Wim de Wit, Christopher James Alexander and Rani Singh of the Getty Research Institute are planning a 1940 to 1990 architecture survey to appear at the Getty Museum in mid-2013 as a sort of anchor show, while the Getty Foundation is finalizing grants to partner institutions to develop shows on topics of their choice to run at roughly the same time.

“The grants are going out right now,” said Deborah Marrow, on her first day back on the job as director of the Getty Foundation. (She had served as the J. Paul Getty Trust interim president and CEO until James Cuno’s arrival on the job this week.)  She confirmed that the Hammer Museum, MOCA, the Architecture and Design Museum, Cal Poly Pomona, the MAK Center, SCI-Arc and  UC Santa Barbara are receiving amounts ranging from $135,000 to $175,000, for a total around $1 million. Topics range from broad historical themes to single artists such as A. Quincy Jones at the Hammer. 

Just don’t call it a sequel to Pacific Standard Time. “This is not a second Pacific Standard Time, which was 10 years in the planning,” Marrow says. “It’s smaller in scale and it’s too early for another one—we need to experience this one first. But it is an example of how Pacific Standard Time, even before it opens, is already stimulating new collaborations.”

-- Jori Finkel

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-- Jori Finkel

www.twitter.com/jorifinkel

Photo: A. Quincy Jones designed the Holmby Hills home of the late art collectors Frances and Sidney Brody, which was sold last year for $14.8 million. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

 

Artists offer billboard alternatives

The MAK Center for Art and Architecture has begun to roll out its artist-designed billboard project across Los Angeles. (Taggers have already taken note.) A creative response to the city's notorious inability to reign in commercial yakking above the urban expanse, "How Many Billboards? Art In Stead" will number 21 by the time March comes around. Five are up now.

Among the best is Kori Newkirk's wonderfully ambiguous image across from the south edge of Lafayette Park, on Wilshire Boulevard between Hoover Street and Commonwealth Avenue. Against a white field, the close-up face of a black man is cropped just above his closed eyes and at the shoulders. A cottony white ball emerges from his open mouth -- partly a muzzling gag that prevents free and unencumbered speech, especially given its inescapable allusion to slavery's American history.

Newkirk has printed the photograph slightly out of focus, though, so that the lumpy sphere also suggests a snowball. Looking at it reminded me of David Hammons' iconic 1983 "public performance sculpture" in which he sold snowballs, priced according to size, on a Harlem sidewalk. A mordant mix of innocent playfulness and defiant aggression is declared. The quiet difference from most commercial billboards, with their loud, fast salesmanship, is palpable.

Unsurprisingly, L.A. has a long history of knowing artistic interaction with the billboard form, going back at least to 1965. That's when Ed Ruscha, trained as a graphic designer and using the pseudonym "Eddie Russia," began a four-year stint doing all the layout work for Artforum magazine. Artforum's unusual square format, distinctive on the newsstand, became even more so when opened: The wide horizontal rectangle became a "hand-held billboard" for the graphic display of pictures and text.

The MAK Center has set up a website for its billboard project, headed by director Kimberli Meyer, complete with a map that can be downloaded to a hand-held device, a schedule of Saturday open-topped bus tours for those uninterested in battling traffic and a calendar of related events. There's also a useful Twitter link, where each newly installed billboard is announced.

-- Christopher Knight

Photos: Kori Newkirk, "Untitled" (2010), billboard. Credit: Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times

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Follow Times art critic Christopher Knight at KnightLAT on Twitter.