If you haven’t heard, Barry McGee’s (@barrymcgeeart) China Boo opened at Ratio3 in the Mission of San Francisco last Friday. BDAB couldn’t make it to the opening, but here’s a sick video that MOCA produced 4 years ago that walks you through a dystopian graffiti utopia that Barry had a heavy hand in.
Category: museum
Pharrell Visits Takashi Murakami’s Studio Ahead of “The 500 Arhats”
Pharrell, a long time admirer and collector of Murakami (@takashipom), visited the artist’s studio in Japan to promote the upcoming show titled The 500 Arhats at Mori Art Museum in the Roppongi Hills. Murakami explains his motivation behind the masterpiece of the same title, a 3meter x 100meter painting, as to manifest the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan as the arhats of Buddha.
For me, the actual highlight of the video was seeing a snippet of the factory system of assistants that are working on his paintings. How is he supervising this production while maintaining his vision and quality of the work intact? BDAB already got their flight tickets and housing booked for the show, so stay tuned for more coverage.
The Broad Opens Its Inaugural Exhibition – Part Two
Downstairs on the 1st floor of the Broad is a recent body of work by the Superflat movement leader Takashi Murakami (@takashipom). There are other works on the first floor, but it is largely dominated by the works of Murakami. The common motif in these works is the catastrophic 2011 earthquake and tsunami off the Pacific coast of Tohoku in Japan. The emotions and devastations felt as the aftermath of the disaster overtook the livelihood of the Japanese people served as an artistic inspiration for Murakami.
A 82 ft long and 10 ft tall masterwork completed in 2014 by the artist took up two full walls of the large hall. It told a beautiful story of a mischievous sea god that caused numerous deaths and the survivors that braved through the storm on the sea finally meet prosperity and peace. However, the prosperity and peace lead to greed and gluttony that foretells another disaster soon to come. I tried to capture that story in the set of pictures after the break:
The Broad Opens Its Inaugural Exhibition- Part One
“The Broad is a new contemporary art museum built by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad. The museum is home to nearly 2,000 works of art and holds one of the most prominent collections of postwar and contemporary art worldwide” exclaim the museum’s brochures that were handed out to the attendees in bold, black, capitalized letters. Angelenos came out in droves today to finally catch a glimpse of the billion dollar collection that was promised to the city back in 2010 when Eli officially announced that the Broad (rhymes with road, not rod) museum would be opening in Downtown Los Angeles.
The “veil and vault” architecture of the museum was designed by the esteemed firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro, who are no strangers to designing high art institutes (for example Boston ICA, MoMA expansion, and Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive). The vault refers to the carefully temperature and humidity controlled archive where the Broad Foundation conducts all its lending activities of its collection to outside organizations. You can catch a glimpse of the vault here.
As you might expect from a museum inaugural exhibition, they played it very safe. There’s nothing challenging, provocative, or educating about it, but plenty of familiar names and images of contemporary art are abound: Damien Hirst, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Baldessari, Julian Schnabel, Andry Warhol, Roy Lichenstein, Jeff Koon, Takashi Murakami, Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, Christopher Wool, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, and Kara Walker.
It is designed to draw crowds and Instagram picture tags, rather than to push the boundaries of modern art exhibition for which this opening could have been used. I don’t think the Broad needed to cater to populist tastes to draw attendance given that the Broad name carries such prominence in the art world. However, this exhibition does speak volumes about the vision and persistence of the Broad collection to recognize and build the talent of these artists before they had become household names. The Broad is a collection that continuously grows at a pace of approximately one new work per week, so I’m really excited that Eli and Edythe have decided to share it with the public in this fashion. Although this museum wasn’t built on pure philanthropy, given that museum shows will only help appreciate the value of the collection, and I couldn’t care less about the business practices of Eli Broad, this is a leading contemporary art collection that Los Angeles has been very fortunate to gain.
In Part Two, we’ll go to the exhibition area on the 1st Floor of the museum that showcases works by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
Click through to see 100+ pictures from the opening.
Museum Visit: Vitality and Verve @ LBMA- Part Dos
As you walk up the stairs to the second floor of LBMA (@lbmaorg) to continue your tour of “Vitality and Verve: Transforming the Urban Landscape“, the first piece you will encounter is an untitled installation by Meggs (@houseofmeggs) of a familiar gun range target character bursting out the wall as if he had just shot a bullet through it. If you look closely at the wall in person, you can see where Meggs plastered the wall to create this effect. If you walk behind this wall, you will meet the gunman in full view, except now you will notice that he is in fact NOT holding a gun, but rather a spray can. This is a huge distinction that I did not catch the first time I visited.
Museum Visit: Vitality and Verve @ LBMA- Part Uno
“Art in the Streets” at MOCA, The Geffen Contemporary, in 2011 saw the beginning of museums opening their walls and exhibition space to the burgeoning street art community. The who’s who of the international street art scene were present at that show, past and current. We’re talking Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Kaws, Retna, Futura, Lee, Fab 5 Freddy, Os Gemeos, Barry McGee, Steve Espo Powers, Todd Reas James, Neckface, and these are just the artists off the top my head. “Vitality and Verve” seem to be looking to tap this niche as well.