Trip to Pasadena & MOCA!
Saturday, January 12th, 2008 04:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoI spent the last two days in Pasadena with the ultra-cool friend of my Mom's, C., who has known me since I was knee-high to a palm tree. Highlights of the trip included:
Thursday afternoon, C. had several appointments, so I was spent some time looking around Old Town in Pasadena, which is mainly clustered around Colorado Blvd.. There's an interesting mix of old-fashioned shops with new ones, particularly chains. My favorite older ones were behind the main thoroughfare and advertised themselves with fabulous signs, such as:
This sign reminded me of one of the Lemony Snicket books, I think #4, where Klaus is hypnotized by the evil Dr. Orwell, who is in the employ of Count Olaf.
I also did fairly well at mainstream shops, especially Lush, where the Buy-1, Get-2-Free Sale was in full swing. I ended up reading the Vanity Fair with the new Indiana Jones photos in a coffeeshop as the sun set.
C. is the owner of two fabulous German Shepards, Shadow and Dexter:
Dexter is on the left and Shadow is on the right. Shadow is undoubtedly the alpha of the group, but Dexter doesn't like it when Shadow steps in on his fun. There were times when I was petting Dexter and he'd start this low growl as Shadow came over to see what was going on. Neither one wanted me to stop petting him and both of them shed all over my black corduroys. Not pictured is the silver cat, A.G., who wanted me to pet him all the time, too, and I would have to tell all the assorted animals that I only had two hands, not three.
One of the best parts of the trip was a journey down to Little Tokyo to see the @Murakami exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Little Tokyo is also fun all by itself, although my excitement at the opportunity to buy anime merchandise was somewhat tempered by overzealous spending the day before. I did stop in at Kinokuniya and purchase several interesting manga, including Kobato (1), Yotsuba to! (Special Volume), and Ouran Host Club (10), which I read on the train ride back and am proud to say, even without a kanji dictionary in hand, I understand about 85~90% of. Little Tokyo itself remains fairly steady with the same souvenir shops selling polyester yukata and wooden swords; the only thing that had changed since last time was the anime merchandise that predominated was Bleach and Naruto, and to a lesser extent, Death Note. I did see a beautiful Year of the Rat banner:
However, the most exciting part was the Murakami exhibit. I'm still trying to figure out whether I like this artist or not. The whole exhibit felt like (pardon my language in advance) one big mind-fuck. Murakami is all about cute, cute, CUTE. He is also about logos, anime and otaku subculture. And I cannot figure out whether he's serious or not. When you have a set of pieces like the one on the left and in the middle, and they're flanked by two huge flat panels paintings entitled "Milk and Cream", you can't help feeling a little, well, dirty. The other fairly pornographic piece was a naked cyborg in three stages of transformation from woman (robot?) to jet plane; her shaved labia become the nose of the plane. Dude, wow. You've got issues. Or do you? Are you just trying to push your audience to see how far they'll run or how much they'll jerk off to your material?
Equally fascinating is the fact that Murakami is a classically trained artist whose interest extends to traditional paintings and subjects; this painting depicts the monk Daruma as he meditates his way into death and beyond the grave. What I love about the picture is that first glance, it could a largeish religious painting and no one would think much of it; but on second glance, the details of the eye become apparent and you suddenly realize this is not your grandfather's daruma.
Murakami has also produced a pattern for Louis Vuitton's line of bags; the pattern is simultaneously cute but creepy. (Those bags are watching you, with their myriad eyes.) In fact, I wouldn't have minded owning some of the merchandise, but I had the following conversation with the salesgirl at LV Boutique in the museum:
Me: Is this one of those situations where if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it?
Her: Uhm, well, I don't know. What's your budget?
Me: How about those scarves? I have a mental bet with myself. [Note: My bet was $500.]
Her: Well, the little one is $125. The bigger one is $280.
Me: Wow, I lose. Thank you, though.
The funny thing was, everything in the gallery was for sale--I could have waltzed out of there with one of those scarves, or with my very own happy flower mousepad. But when it came to photographing any of the works for my own use, a veritable army of security guards forbade me and others from doing so. The message was clear: this is about commerce, first and foremost, and in order to share this with others, you have to consume it, not share. This is also the first museum exhibit I've ever been to where merchandise was given its own room. Not only was there the Vuitton boutique, but there was also a room that was not a shop, but full of Murakami merchandise that you could look at, but not buy. (!) In summary, Low culture marries High Culture, and their love child is profit.
There were quite a few children in the museum, most of them too little to really comprehend what was going on, which was probably for the best. (I was waiting for one of them to point to the robot child video that ran on continuous loop and ask her/his parent, why does that weird-looking boy have something sticking out of his pants, as said robot boy got an erection thinking about the cute girl in his class.) As much as I'm for exposing children to fine art and so forth, I question the parents' decisions in this case.
tl;dr version: As weird as it was, I am glad I went and saw it. You've not been creeped out by cute until you've seen armies of smiling flowers in a painting about the size of a small swimming pool, so that each happy flower was about the size of your head. The old riot grrl adage about Hello Kitty's mouth being full of fangs and therefore, unshowable, is out in full force here. I wish Sanrio would let Murakami have free reign with Hello Kitty. What he would produce would be unspeakably weird, but completely wonderful.
Then I caught the train back, and now I am home again.
Thursday afternoon, C. had several appointments, so I was spent some time looking around Old Town in Pasadena, which is mainly clustered around Colorado Blvd.. There's an interesting mix of old-fashioned shops with new ones, particularly chains. My favorite older ones were behind the main thoroughfare and advertised themselves with fabulous signs, such as:
This sign reminded me of one of the Lemony Snicket books, I think #4, where Klaus is hypnotized by the evil Dr. Orwell, who is in the employ of Count Olaf.
I also did fairly well at mainstream shops, especially Lush, where the Buy-1, Get-2-Free Sale was in full swing. I ended up reading the Vanity Fair with the new Indiana Jones photos in a coffeeshop as the sun set.
C. is the owner of two fabulous German Shepards, Shadow and Dexter:
Dexter is on the left and Shadow is on the right. Shadow is undoubtedly the alpha of the group, but Dexter doesn't like it when Shadow steps in on his fun. There were times when I was petting Dexter and he'd start this low growl as Shadow came over to see what was going on. Neither one wanted me to stop petting him and both of them shed all over my black corduroys. Not pictured is the silver cat, A.G., who wanted me to pet him all the time, too, and I would have to tell all the assorted animals that I only had two hands, not three.
One of the best parts of the trip was a journey down to Little Tokyo to see the @Murakami exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Little Tokyo is also fun all by itself, although my excitement at the opportunity to buy anime merchandise was somewhat tempered by overzealous spending the day before. I did stop in at Kinokuniya and purchase several interesting manga, including Kobato (1), Yotsuba to! (Special Volume), and Ouran Host Club (10), which I read on the train ride back and am proud to say, even without a kanji dictionary in hand, I understand about 85~90% of. Little Tokyo itself remains fairly steady with the same souvenir shops selling polyester yukata and wooden swords; the only thing that had changed since last time was the anime merchandise that predominated was Bleach and Naruto, and to a lesser extent, Death Note. I did see a beautiful Year of the Rat banner:
However, the most exciting part was the Murakami exhibit. I'm still trying to figure out whether I like this artist or not. The whole exhibit felt like (pardon my language in advance) one big mind-fuck. Murakami is all about cute, cute, CUTE. He is also about logos, anime and otaku subculture. And I cannot figure out whether he's serious or not. When you have a set of pieces like the one on the left and in the middle, and they're flanked by two huge flat panels paintings entitled "Milk and Cream", you can't help feeling a little, well, dirty. The other fairly pornographic piece was a naked cyborg in three stages of transformation from woman (robot?) to jet plane; her shaved labia become the nose of the plane. Dude, wow. You've got issues. Or do you? Are you just trying to push your audience to see how far they'll run or how much they'll jerk off to your material?
Equally fascinating is the fact that Murakami is a classically trained artist whose interest extends to traditional paintings and subjects; this painting depicts the monk Daruma as he meditates his way into death and beyond the grave. What I love about the picture is that first glance, it could a largeish religious painting and no one would think much of it; but on second glance, the details of the eye become apparent and you suddenly realize this is not your grandfather's daruma.
Murakami has also produced a pattern for Louis Vuitton's line of bags; the pattern is simultaneously cute but creepy. (Those bags are watching you, with their myriad eyes.) In fact, I wouldn't have minded owning some of the merchandise, but I had the following conversation with the salesgirl at LV Boutique in the museum:
Me: Is this one of those situations where if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it?
Her: Uhm, well, I don't know. What's your budget?
Me: How about those scarves? I have a mental bet with myself. [Note: My bet was $500.]
Her: Well, the little one is $125. The bigger one is $280.
Me: Wow, I lose. Thank you, though.
The funny thing was, everything in the gallery was for sale--I could have waltzed out of there with one of those scarves, or with my very own happy flower mousepad. But when it came to photographing any of the works for my own use, a veritable army of security guards forbade me and others from doing so. The message was clear: this is about commerce, first and foremost, and in order to share this with others, you have to consume it, not share. This is also the first museum exhibit I've ever been to where merchandise was given its own room. Not only was there the Vuitton boutique, but there was also a room that was not a shop, but full of Murakami merchandise that you could look at, but not buy. (!) In summary, Low culture marries High Culture, and their love child is profit.
There were quite a few children in the museum, most of them too little to really comprehend what was going on, which was probably for the best. (I was waiting for one of them to point to the robot child video that ran on continuous loop and ask her/his parent, why does that weird-looking boy have something sticking out of his pants, as said robot boy got an erection thinking about the cute girl in his class.) As much as I'm for exposing children to fine art and so forth, I question the parents' decisions in this case.
tl;dr version: As weird as it was, I am glad I went and saw it. You've not been creeped out by cute until you've seen armies of smiling flowers in a painting about the size of a small swimming pool, so that each happy flower was about the size of your head. The old riot grrl adage about Hello Kitty's mouth being full of fangs and therefore, unshowable, is out in full force here. I wish Sanrio would let Murakami have free reign with Hello Kitty. What he would produce would be unspeakably weird, but completely wonderful.
Then I caught the train back, and now I am home again.
