Saturday, March 26, 2005
Java then MOCA
Well, it's amazing what a coffee can do. It's 5:30 PM and I'm still up and I even have enough energy to add to this blog. After signing off from my previous post this morning I had my coffee and went back to the hotel to see if I could get a room. It was only 10:00 AM and no rooms would be ready for 2-3 hours, so I decided to see if the LA Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) was open. I had travelled downtown to it twice when I was here in Feb and both times it was closed.
Today I was in luck. I resurrected my limited knowledge of the LA transit system and headed downtown. It takes about an hour to get there by bus and then train. The bus travels through a black/hispanic area of LA and there are a lot of "characters" on the bus. I just sat there as quietly as I could (near the front of the bus) and listened to all the "blanguage" and "spanglish". If it had been night, I might have been a bit more stressed.
Anyway I reached MOCA without difficulty or incendent. The MOCA had two shows going:
A selection of abstract art from the collection focussing on artists of the 40's through the 60's. There were lots of really famous names (i.e. ones that even I recognized) such as Alfred Steiglitz (the only photographer I found), Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. After reviewing their MOCA web site while writing this blog, I see there are some artists I missed. The gallery was very poorly laid out and didn't have a map.
The other show was abstract sound and light shows of various kinds (and mostly was not interesting) - one was a reflector ball like those found in a night club with various computer controlled lights - coool! not.
The other disappointment was that there was almost no interpretive or contextual information. For art ninnies like me, that made any comprehension of the works shown virtually impossible. Too bad because there were definitely some important pieces of art to be seen.
Anyway, I won't go back to MOCA. Tomorrow I have booked a tour to the Getty. I go at 9:00 AM (I'll probably have been up for several hours at that point) and get back at 3:00. It will cost $42 for the transportation but it will save me hours on the bus and trains, not to mention the likelihood of getting lost or mugged.
Time to close. LA is the pits, but it is definitely nice to be closer to home.
TTFN
Today I was in luck. I resurrected my limited knowledge of the LA transit system and headed downtown. It takes about an hour to get there by bus and then train. The bus travels through a black/hispanic area of LA and there are a lot of "characters" on the bus. I just sat there as quietly as I could (near the front of the bus) and listened to all the "blanguage" and "spanglish". If it had been night, I might have been a bit more stressed.
Anyway I reached MOCA without difficulty or incendent. The MOCA had two shows going:
A selection of abstract art from the collection focussing on artists of the 40's through the 60's. There were lots of really famous names (i.e. ones that even I recognized) such as Alfred Steiglitz (the only photographer I found), Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. After reviewing their MOCA web site while writing this blog, I see there are some artists I missed. The gallery was very poorly laid out and didn't have a map.
The other show was abstract sound and light shows of various kinds (and mostly was not interesting) - one was a reflector ball like those found in a night club with various computer controlled lights - coool! not.
The other disappointment was that there was almost no interpretive or contextual information. For art ninnies like me, that made any comprehension of the works shown virtually impossible. Too bad because there were definitely some important pieces of art to be seen.
Anyway, I won't go back to MOCA. Tomorrow I have booked a tour to the Getty. I go at 9:00 AM (I'll probably have been up for several hours at that point) and get back at 3:00. It will cost $42 for the transportation but it will save me hours on the bus and trains, not to mention the likelihood of getting lost or mugged.
Time to close. LA is the pits, but it is definitely nice to be closer to home.
TTFN
