Magical Museums of LALA Land I

Magical Museums of LALA Land I

The holidays are a perfect time to experience the richness of LA’s art museum scene…and explore edifices and institutions that are storied in and of themselves.  Here is a small sampling of seemingly infinite adventures to be had…to be continued!

Courtyard installalation at The Hammer Museum in Westwood near UCLA brightens a winter day.

Extraordinary works by Pablo Picasso….

Extraordinary works by Diego Rivera

“By placing 150 paintings, etchings, and watercolors in dialogue with each other and with singular ancient objects, Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time aims to advance the understanding of Picasso and Rivera’s practice, particularly in how their contributions were deeply influenced by the forms, myths, and structures of the arts of antiquity.” —LACMA

The “THE ART OF ALCHEMY” show at Getty Center.

Wishing You a magical 2017, and may the wonder never cease.

Booking Cubism: Making a Picasso-Inspired Flag Book

Booking Cubism: Making a Picasso-Inspired Flag Book

Inspired by the innovative artist  Pablo Picasso  and the  Cubist   style he pioneered with Georges Braque,  CREST Enrichment students from kindergarten through 5th grade made Flag Books, and added special features (literally, features!) to reflect the fractured faces and images which dominated Picasso’s oeuvre during his Cubist period.

I took photographs of the students faces, sized them, and printed each out on a page of blank white mailing labels. Students were then able to peel off different parts of their image, and put them onto the flags in their books. This young artist adds color to the black and white photographic images she has arranged in her book.

Above, the photographic portrait printed on the labels may be providing guidance to this young artist as she works on her Frida Kahlo-inspired self portrait.   Here the young artist can see her own rendition of her portrait, as well as the photograph of her face printed on labels. Her flag book is seen to her left.

This proud young artist shares his finished flag book, front,

back,

and center.

Parents and other family member joined us for our “Last Class” event of the session, and helped adhere the “portrait” labels to the flag book kinetic pages, which move from side to side when the book is pulled opened and pushed shut.  The flags make a satisfying flapping sound, too!

This devoted young artist displays a stunning sense of color, as well as design!

Here, father and son work on the first grade student’s flag book, together.  What could be better?!

Faces of Earth: Children Work With Clay

Faces of Earth: Children Work With Clay

In an after-school enrichment class, children aged 6-11 were making projects inspired by the work of great artists. Through these projects, students learned about the artist and their style/s, art movements, how to work with various materials, and hopefully, how to use the work of a known artist as a jump-off point for their own.

In a Spanish language immersion school, we learned about Spanish-speaking artists, including Pablo Picasso  who was influenced by African art, and helped to create and launch the experimental movement of Cubism.

Students were taught to “pound out” or flatten their clay “chunks” into slabs, after forming them into loose balls.

They then developed their slabs into faces by shaping and texturing them, cutting pieces out, and adding to them using a “scoring” technique, so that the pieces added wouldn’t fall off when the clay began to dry. Well, a modified scoring technique, which included adding texture to the two pieces that were to be attached, and pressing them together to increase their bond.  This proved challenging for the children, as it was hard for them to understand why this was necessary.

Another challenge was how thin many of the pieces turned out to be. They are drying now, and I am extremely careful in moving them around, and turning them over, so all surfaces can dry. The students produced  highly fanciful, expressive and emotive works, qualities only intensified by the delicacy of some of them.

This young artist made the little figure on the face as a separate piece at first, but it was so thin and fragile I knew it would not survive. Luckily, she was happy to add it to her piece and play with surrealism and scale!

Día de Muertos, the Mexican holiday of “Day of the Dead” influenced the students’ work, as in this 6 year old’s tiny skeleton gracing the back of her mask. Again, this tiny figure was to fragile to stand on its own, so now it has become a part of Mia’s signature! 

     Skeletons, whether smoking a cigar or not, inspired the students, as did….

pumpkins!  This is one ferocious pumpkin face, and at least twice the size of most of the other pieces. The young artist got caught up in his work towards the end of the hour, and insisted on finishing all of the teeth, and details of they eyes. Now…what will he add to this piece this week, to finish it off?

What will each of the students do with paint, to complete their works?  Let’s hope all of the pieces dry, so we can find out!

Picasso: The Parts Which Create the Whole

 Picasso: The Parts Which Create the Whole

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso also known as Pablo Picasso

25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973

Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright

Pablo Picasso in his Paris studio. (Herbert List/Magnum Photos)

Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Crispiniano de la Santísima Trinidad. His name contains 23 words and honors various saints and relatives. Added to these were Ruiz and Picasso, for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law. Today we know him as Pablo Picasso.

“Picasso and the Loaves”, seen above, was taken by Robert Doisneauin a French cafe in 1952.

Picasso showed amazing artistic talent as a child, painting in a realistic style until he was a young man, when he began to experiment with different styles. The most well-know of these is Cubism, the first abstract style of modern art. In Cubist artwork, objects are seen as broken up, and reassembled in an “abstracted”, not strictly realistic way. Picasso shows the same object or person from different viewpoints at the same time, showing several sides of whatever object or person he was painting or drawing in the same work of art.

Picasso lived to be 91, creating until the end. He became internationally famous, as well as wealthy for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, remaining one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art. Picasso is one of the very few visual artists who is just about a household word across the globe.

 Picasso’s “BLUE” Period – 1901-1904 The Old Guitarist, Late 1903–early 1904, 48 3/8 x 32 1/2 in., oil on panel, at the  Art Institute of Chicago

Picasso was inspired and influenced by African masks and artifacts.

LEFT: Pablo Picasso, Head of a Woman, 1907, 18 1/8 x 13”, oil on canvas, at  the The Barnes Foundation,  Lincoln University, Merion, PA, USA
RIGHT: Dan Mask from West Africa

The Weeping Woman, 1937, 23 ⅝ х 19 ¼, oil on canvas,  at the  Tate Modern, London, England

Guernica,  1937, 137.4 in × 305.5″, oil on canvas, at the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain

‘My mother said to me, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.” Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.’ – Pablo Ruiz Picasso