Event 3: LACMA

In 1961, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a separate, art-focused institution. With 100,000 objects dating from ancient times to the present, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is the largest art museum in the western United States. 

When I first got to the museum, the first thing that caught my eye was the urban lights sculpture built in 2008 outside, by Chris Burden. The sculpture has two-hundred and two restored cast iron antique street lamps. There are seven remarkable architectural building, which encompass the geographic world and virtually the entire history of art. The most impressing part I visited that day is Latin American art, ranging from pre-columbian masterpieces to works by leading modern and contemporary artists including Diego Rivera, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, and Gego, who launch the rise of geometric abstraction.

Geometric abstraction, which reminds me of the topic of art and math, emphasizes on clear and distilled forms, became the dominant visual language that reflected a move toward modernization and industrialization. The following painting is created by Joaquin Torres Garcia. This art work may be hard for us to understand, when I saw the painting for the first time, the only word came up to my mind is religion and my guess is close to the answer. The painting integrates symbols into his abstract compositions to create what he called a universal constructivist art.

This art work is created by Gego. Although these weblike constellations made with joined wire segments may let you feel dizzy, they allowed the artists to draw in space. 

This art work named “Space ”is created by Lee Mullican to express the opening of the a new world, opening of the mind into a kind of cosmic thought. Lee is a example of artists who have drawn their inspiration from the beauty of space.

The following art work is my favorite during the visit. I am not an art major student and have no knowledge of contemporary art. However, when I first saw the painting, I thought it was about music and my feeling is correct. If I could describe the painting in one world, it would have to be “active”. A harmonious arrangement of geometric shapes floats in space, suggesting the joy of musical tempo. Furthermore, the bright color makes it no longer a painting but a music.

Event 2: Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History

The natural history museum of Los Angeles is one of the few institutions in the country that has continuously staffed a taxidermy department, going back to the introduction of habitat halls in the 1920s. While most museums glassed and sealed their dioramas after completion, the natural history museum kept their open. 

When I entering the African Hall of Mammals, I feel all dioramas at the natural history museum depict a real place. Approaching a family of elephants on the savannah, the tour guide explained that this was not an idealized vista conceived by an artist, but a recreation of an actual waterhole near the Tana River in Kenya. This is the result of an expedition into the wild with a team of scientists, biologists, taxidermists.

Unlike zoos and aquarium, natural history museums are able to show the public unique behaviors or interactions between species that they would not see in captivity. Diorama environments often incorporate hundreds of small animals and insects in addition to the larger mammals who star in the scene. These frozen moments tells a complex story about life in the wild.

The Cougar diorama in the North American Hall of Mammals seems to depict a tranquil family scene. Another and her cubs play on the rocks while the father watches from above. Unfortunately, there is conflict between art and science. Cougars are extremely solitary and territorial creatures that meet only to mate. If a father came across a mother and her cubs, he would likely kill them all.

Combining art and science, the taxidermists at the natural history museum apply their skills and love of nature to create lasting masterworks. By providing the public with immersive experiences, natural environments, they hope to foster wander, curiosity and respect for the natural world.

Event 1: Getty Museum

Since opening in 1997, the Richard Meier designed Getty center has quickly assumed its place in the Los Angeles landscape as the city’s cultural acropolis and international mecca. The J.Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European and American photographs. 

When I got to the Getty Museum, regardless of the gallery, I personally think there’s nothing more relaxing than spending part of a pretty day just strolling through the central Garden, which itself is actually a copyrighted work of art by Robert Irwin. 

Other than the central park, the gallery of “the poetry of paper” left a deep impression on me. This exhibition of drawings explores the concept of negative space—the unoccupied ground around drawn elements. I see many famous artists such as Rembrandt, Boucher, and Seurat deliberately left areas of the paper blank to create the illusion of light and form. If I could use one sentence to express my feeling after visiting this exhibition, it has to be “using absence to evoke a sense of presence. 

When drawing human figures, artists frequently used negative space to suggest form, trusting the viewers’ imagination to interpret the empty passages. The following painting is my favorite in the gallery. Although there is no chair under the character, the unoccupied ground below a reclining figure can be understood as a chair or couch. Therefore, I saw the character is perfectly stable. 

When creating architecture, artists also utilized negative space to help the view distinguish exteriors and interiors. The following painting is created by Giovanni Battista Piranesi who used red and black chalk to magnify the effect of light streaming into a building or shining on a column.
Personally, in designs for architectural decoration, empty space saved time: there was no need to fill the entire sheet when the intent was to repeat the concept on a ceiling or a wall.