The first phase of the dramatic expansion at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) has just opened, featuring a new building for contemporary art, BCAM (Broad Contemporary Art Museum), and large-scale sculptural installations by a number of artists including Charles Ray, Richard Serra, and others. Here are some photos I shot this evening of Urban Light, a sculpture by Chris Burden that incorporates more than two hundred restored cast-iron lampposts from Los Angeles County.
The first image (above) is a view of the sculpture as seen from the street, on Wilshire Blvd. The courtyard is open to the street, and can be visited anytime night or day. The lamps go on at dusk and stay lit until dawn, like all of the other streetlights in the city.
David,
What a sight – antique Western technology, African Palm trees, a severe geometric organization.
Please keep us updated on how people will use this ‘city park’ after their first tentative exploration.
You must feel relieved now after the writer’s strike settlement.
Hi Birgit, yes it’s quite a sight. Judith and I live a couple of blocks away, and have been going over there this past week on our evening walks. We haven’t been in to see the rest of the new museum expansion yet, as it’s been dominated most nights by fancy private receptions and parties. But maybe sometime over this long weekend we’ll go check it out.
The palm trees are part of an installation by Robert Irwin, who designed the Getty garden, and has been much discussed here on A&P. BCAM LACMA is certainly going to help establish Los Angeles as an important international art center, as well is a world leader in acronyms.
Yes, it’s great that the writers’ strike is over. They really stuck together and fought for a fair deal, which I think surprised the big corporations. Their resolve not only got them a better contract, but also helped set the stage for the directors’ improved deal and for the upcoming actors’ negotiations as well.
David,
What great photos — the rhythms of the art perfectly captured in the photography — a marriage of two arts.
Did you see the N Y Times articles on the Broad? They wasn’t exactly honorific about the architecture, but I’m wondering if the reporter got to see this magic transformation. I’m impressed.
Am I comprehending correctly — that the lampposts and Irwin’s palm trees are accessible to the public — part of the courtyard? Or are they merely _visible_ from the courtyard? Somehow, I would like to think that the courtyard and the art were together, for people who walk rather than drive to stroll through.
I just returned from a museum visit myself. I have to say the pictures of palm fronds over a sea of light have something in common with David’s Jericho, now hanging in the High Gallery at the Holter Museum in Helena, MT. Most of the show is out of the vault (they’re installing new storage racks), but Jericho had been in the Executive Director’s office. It’s big! And that bright sea is beautiful in a way you can’t appreciate, of course, from the web image. If Medusa is squinting because she’s looking at a reflection of it, she’s in trouble.
Speaking of Irwin and web images, I’m miffed that the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego won’t send me decent sized jpegs of their current Irwin show. They would if I were writing about it on the blog, but not for my personal perusal. I pressed for a reason, but didn’t get one.
Hi June, thanks for the compliments about the photos. They are just snapshots, really. Point and shoot. I simply tried to capture the sense of what was there, and pretty quickly in fact. Though I should mention that I did risk my life and possible arrest by standing on the median in the middle of Wilshire Blvd. to take the first photo. If the police questioned me, I was going to say I was on assignment for A&P :)
Didn’t yet see the NYT article, but will take a look. And yes, you are correct that the courtyard containing the Burden lampposts, Irwin’s palm trees, Charles Ray’s lifesize toy firetruck (the size of a real firetruck), and Jeff Koons’ giant “inflatable” (actually stainless steel) tulips are in the courtyard that you can just walk into off the street. The people in the foreground of the top photo are, I believe, on the sidewalk of Wilshire Blvd., or a few steps away from it.
I was just over there a few minutes ago, all kinds of festivities going on, and noticed that many of the palm trees are in huge wooden planters, which makes them much more interesting than if they were just planted in the ground. It’s the first time I’ve been there during the day since the new section opened earlier this week. I asked one of the museum staff about the 24-hour courtyard access, and she told me that yes, it’s true, and that there will be museum guards on duty 24/7 to watch over the artwork.
As far as the architecture itself, I don’t know, from the outside it didn’t make much of an impression on me. It’s pretty cool though that you enter the new section, BCAM, by taking an outdoor escalator to the 3rd floor, and then I guess work your way down to the huge Serras on the ground level. I haven’t been inside yet, so I can’t really say much about the interior. What I do love is the outdoor artwork, and the way it completely transforms the neighborhood. There’s a 24-hour gym across the street, and they have a direct view of the streetlamps (just like the top photo) from their treadmills. Maybe I should join. I could use more exercise :)
Steve, how great that you got to see Jericho in person, and thanks for letting me know that it’s currently on exhibit. I just figured it was in storage somewhere.
Judith and I are possibly going down to San Diego in early April. It looks like the Irwin exhibition is in two parts, one of which closes later this month. The other part will still be up when we’re there, but I’m not sure which works are in each location. If I’m able to take some photos of it I will, but in the meantime maybe you could use your blog credentials to get their jpegs, and write a review.
David,
Photos would be great, and I bet you could take some better ones than what they offer to the “press.” They would have sent them to me once I told them I was a blogger, but I didn’t actually want them for posting purposes and I was trying to push them for a more open, less short-sighted policy. But if you can post about actually seeing the exhibit, that would be much better.
By the way, both people I talked to at the Holter remembered you being there. I guess it was a couple years before I arrived in Montana.
David, I’m disappointed. There I was, 25 miles away from the Holter and I didn’t realize your Jericho was there. I could at least have been more reverent about the site.
Actually, I think that I couldn’t have seen the painting anyway as it was tucked away. At least that’s how I’m consoling myself. The Holter is a good space, but they were closed for part of the time I was in Montana. We did come to use it as our sight line when we got lost in the town — which we did, often.
David and Steve:
Is it mere coincidence that the museum in Montana is High while the one in L.A. is Broad?
The arrangement of the lights in their rows and of the palms makes me think of Karnak. And L.A. is so marked by the kind of facades that the palms present and features picked out individually as seen with the lights.
Steve, I can’t promise my photos of Irwin’s show in SD will be anything great, but we’ll see what happens. Hopefully it’s a museum where I’m even allowed to photograph – who knows? What I’ve seen of his work in the past would be very hard to capture in a photo, and for years he refused to have the work photographed for that very reason.
Regarding the Holter, Judith and I went up there for my show in January 2001, and we thought we were going to the North Pole. It ended up not being any colder than where I grew up in upstate New York. My exhibit got featured in the arts section of the newspaper. I brought my guitar and gave 3 slide talks at the museum about painting and songwriting. We met a lot of wonderful people there and had a great time.
June, I meant to comment when you did your post on the Archie Bray Foundation, but I think I was in the middle of a crunch at the movie factory. Peter Held, who was the director of the Holter at the time (now running a ceramics museum in Tucson) took us out there for a private tour. It was very impressive, and there was some interesting work going on there.
Is it mere coincidence that the museum in Montana is High while the one in L.A. is Broad?
Jay, that’s really funny…
I didn’t know what Karnak was, and had to look it up. Sounds amazing. Have you been there?
David:
The closest I have ever been to the Mediterranean area was Florence, Italy. But thanks for asking. The Great Karnak remains forever in my mind as the nom de turban that Johnny Carson adopted for one of his comedy routines. In terms of Egyptian antiquities I was thinking of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak with its rows of massive columns.
One is greeted with all manner of strange lighting effects on the ground as one flies into L.A. at night, and this is yet another. Your photographs depict a lot of radiant energy. Is this from the massive grouping of lamps, or is each lamp extra bright? Boy – the maintenance costs on this puppy!
Jay, yes Johnny Carson was what came to mind, but I figured you were referring to something else so I looked it up on Google. Thanks for expanding my horizons. Regarding the brightness of the lamps, they are not individually overly bright. Probably about what you would expect from an antique streetlamp. But there are a lot of them.
As far as the maintenance, it’s hard to resist making jokes about how many artists (curators, critics, museum directors, city employees…) it takes to change a light bulb :)
David:
If I’m correct this is “that” Chris Burden. As such, the maintenance of his installation may involve guns, a curator nailed to a lamp post, etc. I would not be surprised if somebody is required, along the way, to stick his or her tongue in a light socket. Ah, such a Burden to bear.
Jay, yup, same Chris, but he seems not to be Burdened by the past. He gave up the guns and VW’s long ago, and does big sculptures now. Gotta grow.
David:
If you gotta grow, you gotta grow. Saw his car, years ago, in the lobby of the CMA. Looked like the Soap Box Derby had gone upscale. Good thing that Chris didn’t fully sacrifice himself for the sake of his art, as then many lamp posts would be rusting forlornly in a yard somewhere.
I was sent to this page by a fellow collaborator. I thought it would be of interest to post a link to an ongoing project involving 100 decommissioned lamp poles. They aren’t vintage, nor are they in front of a museum, but nonetheless interesting.
cheers
http://lamppoles.blogspot.com
Bland,
Thank you so much for posting that, it made my day. Have you considered attempting any tensegrity (Bucky Fuller) structures with the lampposts?
Bland:
Sometimes things can have an unintended resonance as the assembled poles resemble the steel wall between Gaza and Egypt that HAMAS breached the other week. A man with a goat would help complete the image. Any thought given to putting light sources at the business ends of these poles?
I have been taken to this page while I was doing a bit of research on “Urban Light”….. as I was amazed by the way people appreciate this artwork. Below are some photos I made around Urban Light. Please enjoy!
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6989151
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6970222
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6968534
Kids and sculpture: a great combination!
I have some more….
This time they are: Youth and Sculpture.
Thanks for your time.
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6999933
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=6980442
http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=7001832
Steve Durbin,
Funny you ask about tensegrity sculpture using the lamp poles. This is on the list of possible iterations in the future! However the poles are decommissioned and are quite rusty in places, so the structural integrity might be compromised. However I intend on working with this style of sculpture using old stainless steel skis. Check out the blog below for more info in the coming months:
http://blandzai.blogspot.com
Having never been to Los Angeles, I caught a glimpse of this display on, of all things, The Young and The Restless – in a story line they are using this week. Needless to say I was quite impressed and googled the artist and item until I found your site. To say it was impressive in the daylight cannot hold a candle(power) to the display at night – WOW and a few other adjectives come to mind. BRAVO – TERRIFIC to name a couple. Thanks David for taking your life in your hands – the shot was perfection! After reading the paragraphs above I got the impression that perhaps I should not even comment, feeling unworthy of any useful observation, except maybe a punny one. Thanks for bringing a new light into my life. Wendy
Wendy,
Thanks for the comment, that’s interesting that the work has already made its way into popular culture. Did it appear just for the sake of demonstrating up-to-the-minuteness, or was it also remarked on in some way in the show?
The Young and The Restless episode I referred to aired in Canada on Thursday April 3rd (but I think it airs on Friday in the U.S. (at least where I live (about 1 hour SW of our nation’s Capital – Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) The show opens with an outside view of Urban Lights, then a shot of the sign reading ‘Broad Contemporary Art Museum’ – we are then swept inside to find Victor Neuman (one of the main characters) being shown some contemporary art pieces by a friend of his daughter’s who is in the ‘biz’ and is planning on getting him to perhaps start collecting contemporary art and shows him many pieces – including a few of Jeff Koons. The show ended with the art outside (Chris Burden) display. They did spend quite a bit of time on these pieces and if you would like to see this 1 hour episode I would be happy to make a DVD for you (and David) – just retrieved it from my TiVo ‘deleted’ file and will make a copy and send it to you – my e-mail is registered on this site so Steve if you can send me a personal e-mail (or find me on Facebook) I can get your address and will send a copy onto you – and David too if he wishes. It is well done and the female character described in detail a lot of what went on building the Urban Light display as well as some of the other art pieces inside. It would be my pleasure to make both of you copies – no problem. Hope this is helpful. We do not usually get this well educated in ‘real time’ while watching soap operas – and they say it is all fluff! lol Take Care Wendy
Hi Wendy Haycock. I used to go to TLA and you used to teach me Geography. I remember you being very beautiful, and all the boys loved you lol. I see you married Mr. Haycock, as your name was originally Lee.
Mr. Haycock was a great P.E. teacher.
Anyway, all the best, and healthy living.
An ex-student.
Definitely Interior Lighting can enhance the mood.
The appropriate lighting chage the mood.
Good stuff on lightng .Thank you for your post
beautiful pictures. i love urban light too. and i’ve taken lots of pictures, but not as nice as yours.
Just wanted to add a layperson’s comment on the array of lights displayed in front of the museum. Inspiring is the word that comes to mind. In this age of “going green”, I see the artistry displayed in the array of lights as being ahead of its time. It seems to foresee the future of our society’s new push towards finding use in old, often discarded pieces of “junk”. This should inspire more of us to recycle for the good of our planet or even better for the creation of something which may inspire us even more…..
It won’t matter if you know exactly what kind of lamp you are looking for or if you are just gathering inspiration, you will always find it