Matthew Levinson

Art in manic cities

Published on 27/05/08
by matt

Sydney’s been overrun by Hummers lately, but Americans know how to rock this stuff properly. Today I saw a Winnebago (a huge Grey Nomad caravan/bus that could comfortably carry Aerosmith around the country) towing a Hummer! It’s like the driver asked him/herself, “How can I burn through the most fuel per mile?” – the answer was all too obvious.

I’m in Williams, Arizona, at the moment – somewhere between Vegas and the Grand Canyon – but I might take a step back. A few days back, I visited the Hammer Museum in LA.


The Hammer Museum, LA

Kara Walker’s show, ‘My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love’, was all race and sex. The intense silhouettes were beautiful, witty, comical, tawdry, depressing and awkward. All that.


Kara Walker’s ‘Work On Progress’

Just (5000 or so numbers) up Wilshire Boulevard from the Hammer is the metastasizing contemporary gallery LACMA. Without a few days to explore we had to choose our targets wisely, which we may or may not have done in checking their contemporary collection and a Chicano show.

I’ve always found Basquiat’s work a bit kitsch. Too much backstory and not enough of the rest. Outsider, I guess. But up close – close enough to see how he’s sewn up the sheets of canvas, the shoeprints scattered over white material, the weird pull to the sheets – I’m amazed how much works like ‘Horn Players’ and ‘Eyes and Eggs’ (both 1983) affect me.

‘Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement’ on the other hand, confirms just how little idea I had before arriving in California of the state’s Spanish history. I’ve read plenty since. Eduardo Sarabia’s ‘Painted Memories’, ‘Tainted Memories’ and ‘Tetris King and Queen of the Monarch Butterflies’ (all 2008, gallery I-20 NYC) were highlights. Sarabia daubs his paintings – landscapes, portraits – with great smudges of colour that obscure or completely deface the subjects. Surprisingly, they don’t nullify the paintings. Instead, they buzz with a fantastic vitality.

Danny Jauregai’s series ‘Stage Set For a Riot (or Whatever Happened to Mt. Vesuvius?)’ (2007) too. Grounded in the frustrated furore following Rodney King’s beating in LA, 1992, by four police officers, Jauregai’s architectural images set rigid urban shapes against a swirling maelstrom. Spellbinding.


Stage Set For a Riot (or, What Ever Happened to Mt. Vesuvius) 2006 – Danny Jauregai.

I think we must have visited one of the world’s least trafficked tourist destinations when we went to the Las Vegas Art Museum. Completely worthwhile though, with a show that pulled together works from local (private) collections, including Jason Martin, and Gerhard Richter’s ‘Grun-Blau-Rot’ – I love Richter.


Gerhard Richter’s ‘Grün – Blau – Rot’

Otherwise, Vegas was a bit crazy. LA too.

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