Viewing Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Today’s Image

If you’ve been following the blogs on Orbisplanis for the last month, and I hope you have, I visited art galleries and art museums in Southern California, specifically the Santa Ynez Valley and Santa Barbara. Today's blog was back in LA.

We were able to get to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (better known as LACMA) on Sunday afternoon. LACMA is billed as having the largest collection of art west of Chicago, and I believe it. The whole thing is spread out in at least six buildings (and a parking garage) on Wilshire Blvd. @ Fairfax near the Miracle Mile District if you’re familiar with west LA.

It is big. The permanent collection is made up of Asian art, African art, Egyptian art, Chinese art, Islamic art, Greek art, German Expressionist, Japanese art, Korean art, Latin American art, and so on, and so on, just to let you know some of what's there. In addition to the permanent collection, there are also seven exhibits currently ongoing (that’s seven!). For example, there's The Age of Imagination: Japanese Art, 1615–1868, from the Price Collection and Los Angelenos/Chicano Painters of L.A.: Selections from the Cheech Marin Collection, to name just two. Today’s Image is a view of the marquee for the Cheech Marin exhibit.

I spent most of my time looking for and finally at the European art in the Ahmanson Building. I enjoyed seeing the Impressionists—there were several Claude Monet’s, including In the Woods at Giverny: Blanche Hoschede at Her Easel with Suzanne Hoschede Reading and Nympheas. There was also a Camille Pissarro and a couple of August Renoir’s. There is so much, it is almost overwhelming, and after a couple of viewing hours, we took a welcome break in front of the Hammer Building Welcome Center for some interesting people watching.

I mentioned in an earlier blog, that we visited the Getty Museum on a previous LA visit, and still need to return there to see the rest of it. We should have known better than to try to squeeze the visit all into one afternoon visit. So we will have to schedule a return visit to LACMA, too. Maybe next time.

In the Studio

I worked some more on my view of Santa Barbara, and it is near completion. Only a few finishing touches. I have worked on it for almost two weeks, which is longer than most any of my paintings, although I don’t mean to say that the outcome will equal the effort. I think I used too many colors and need to limit my palette somewhat. I was finally happy with the afternoon hazy light, but still know that I will need to do more Southern California afternoon landscapes to feel like I am able to capture it realistically.

But I’m already moving forward and have decided my next painting will be an acrylic of a Spanish colonial structure like many we saw along California’s Central coast. The palette for this one so far is titanium white, cadmium medium yellow, cadmium medium red, and burnt sienna. I will also need ultramarine blue.

Cheers!