Pacific Standard Time (Getty Museum)

Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970 at the Getty Museum (through Feb. 5, 2012)

 The world's richest museum on top of a mountain is now showcasing a dazzling array of representative LA artists, such as John Baldessari, David Hockney and Edward Kienholz, Wallace Berman, Vija Celmins, Ed Moses, Bruce Nauman, among many others. The show brings together 79 works by more than 40 artists to explore important artistic movements from Southern California’s postwar production, including ceramic and assemblage sculptures, collages and large-scale pop and abstract paintings.

Of particular note is Ed Ruscha's painting "The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire" (1965-68) that is exactly what the title says. Even though it depicts the then-newly-built institution realistically and precisely in detail—a yellowish background and devoid of people—it also creates an ominous calm. And then, flames and black smoke erupt from the museum in the upper-left corner of the composition.

It's like a bad joke, like a school kid, who doesn't want to go to school, wishing that the school would actually catch on fire. Ruscha painted his dark fantasy on a canvas while expressing his distrust and frustration as a modernist artist toward the conservative, and often bureaucratic institute at that time.

Having doubled its exhibit space over the last few years, LACMA has become one of the biggest museums in the West and is respected internationally for its rich encyclopedic collection.                                                                                   From the Getty Museum, LACMA is its crosstown rival, and by showing Ruscha's LACMA on fire painting at its hilltop fortress, Getty may enjoy a sense of superiority over its biggest rival on the ground level.                                   And furthermore, this painting is owned by the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Isn't it an example of the predominance of the East Coast over California/the West Coast?                                                                                       It sounds like everybody wants to indulge in a feeling of snobbish superiority over others.


Japanese Version