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In which the best-laid plans of guy and sister completely go aglee. I mean, we had great intentions. I got tickets to the Getty Villa for Friday. And the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was over at UCLA. But what seems a good idea in theory… My sister arrived Thursday night. We ordered pizza, put on Eddie Izzard, and then she crashed around 10 or so, which was really 1-ish for her. Friday, we trekked up the PCH to the Getty Villa, which is a museum devoted to Greco-Roman art. It’s mostly statues, with some jewelry/metalwork. I’d thought it sounded like the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Cloisters in Manhattan, which not only houses the largest collection of medieval art in the world but is also a recreation incorporating elements from five different French monasteries. The Cloisters is awesome. Simply jaw-dropping. I’ve gone four or five times, and each time, I love it even more than the time previous. Not so much because I notice something new, but just because it’s better than I remember it. I think “It can’t possibly be as good as I thought,” and each time it’s better. I’d thought the Getty Villa was similar; it sounded like a collection of Greco-Roman art housed in a building that was itself a recreation of a Greco-Roman structure. And it might have been close, but it wasn’t, not exactly. The best way I can describe it is, you go to the Cloisters and you can believe you’re back in the Middle Ages, but going to the Getty Villa does not approximate the feeling of Greco-Roman times. Never once could I have imagined turning a corner to bump into Homer. We were home by three. At which point, we ordered food and watched some more movies. On Saturday, we went to the beach. It was the single requirement my sister had. We figured we’d spend the afternoon, but we laid out for about an hour before we got annoyed by the sand and packed it in. We intended to check out the aforemention Festival of Books on Sunday, and we woke up early specifically to do so, and then we looked at each other and pretty much defaulted to “*** it. Let’s stick around and watch House.” Which is pretty much precisely all we did. After reading Tod Goldberg’s summing up his experience, I can’t say it sounds like we missed all that much. I think the weekend was just what I needed, though; the past two years were a bit of a whirlwind of a ride, and I bookended my Los Angeles experience with my sister–I drove out here with her to arrive, and then spent the weekend before I left with her, too. Which gives it a nice symmetry. Now, tomorrow, I get my students’ final papers, which means I’ll spend the weekend grading, and then Monday is the killer normalizing grading session where I go to a classroom and spend the entire day reading paper after paper after paper. But hey, then I’m done. It’s been a wild, grand ride, but I can’t say I’m sad to see it end. Now I get to figure how I’ll spend my summer vacation.
Takashi Murakami’s work is not the first to cross industries–industrial production, advertising, fashion, and, oh, yes, art. The thing is, in this day and age, Murakami’s work is the epitome of what an artist’s career can become–an all-encompassing practice created by a team rather than the sweat of a single individual. While some may take issue with this method of art making, when you look at Murakami’s work you realize that it must truly take an army to achieve the sheer volume and material perfection his work exhibits at every turn. The collaborative effort to realize a single vision is very much a historical concept; how else would Henry Ford have built the first car, any cathedral have been created, or Baron Haussmann created airy avenues through the medieval rat-maze of Paris. Murakami’s work is just another significant chapter in this lineage. Murakami’s work pioneered the union of traditional Japanese painting (in which he holds a Ph.D.), the anime and manga of contemporary Japan, and the sheer materialist mania of our world today, while implementing a cartoonish “superflat” style. Murakami’s serialized forms–rolling eyeballs, grinning flowers, and the Mickey Mouse-like Mr. DOB (who sometimes bears wickedly sharp fangs and multiple eyes), are all rendered with pristine surfaces in delectable candy colors. Murakami the artist has become Murakami the industry–warehouses of employees in Japan and the US, a collaboration with Louis Vuitton (which has a boutique in his Brooklyn Museum exhibition), and his recent cover art for Kanye West’s “Graduation”. The artist has become an entity, and, in our world of consumption, his art shows us the epitome of how far consumption can be taken, remaining bewitchingly attractive all the while. Take the time to trek to the Brooklyn Museum–they’ve put a lot into physically improving their building of late, and have presented quite a show that says a lot about art today. If you need to decompress a bit after the barrage of gleeful imagery, head over to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. The cherry blossoms are in bloom and it should bring an interesting contrast to the man-made madness of Murakami’s world.
I have personally viewed two presentations concerning the Adkins Collection and as a result there is no end to the questions it generates. This is a truly significant acquisition for Oklahoma, but more importantly, for Tulsa. This collection houses nearly every prominent Native artist from the 1950's to the 90's, and it is right here in our own city. Not only is the collection itself staggering (which the public has only been exposed to less than 1% of the collection) but the implications it has for Tulsa are equally staggering (this is a concept I hope to explore over the coming months). Christina Burke, curator of Native American and Non-Western art at the Philbrook Museum of Art will be joining us in the gallery this Thursday from 6:00 to 7:30 to provide a unique presentation to and personalized discussion with our collectorship and the public. Although the presentation will consist of a slideshow, albeit informative and entertaining, there will be no pieces from the Adkins Collection on hand…instead we take a lateral step by displaying work by the renowned Santo Domingo potter Robert Tenorio, whose work is collected in the Adkins Collection and is currently on display at
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04/30/2008 
