Los Angeles: The Cultural Capital of the 21st Century

[Westsidelife]

image hosted on flickr


Downtown Plays Host to the Japan Film Festival 2008

By Rich Alossi
April 8, 2008

The ImaginAsian Center may finally be living up to its hype this week, with the shiny new theater playing host to the Japan Film Festival 2008, April 11-17.

A weeklong event, the festival promotes both traditional and groundbreaking Japanese film that extends beyond the stereotypical anime and J-horror standards. Don’t expect any Ringu or Gin gwai knockoffs here.

Before the ImaginAsian Center opened, previous years saw screenings at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 and Fairfax theaters in Hollywood. Moving the event Downtown broadens the appeal and accessibility of the seven-day festival.

If you haven’t seen the inside of the ImaginAsian Center yet, now’s your chance. The sci-fi exterior and modish lobby are attractions themselves, and large plush seats inside the auditorium make for a superior movie experience.

Films run from a collection of independent shorts to full-length features. Check out the JFFLA site for more information on screenings. General admission tickets are $10; advance tickets for three screenings run for $20.

In other film fest news, the much-lauded Downtown Film Festival has confirmed its new dates of August 13-17, 2008.

Japan Film Festival 2008
Hosted by the ImaginAsian Center
251 S Main Street
April 11-17, 2008
General Admission - $10
Three-screening advance tickets - $20
jffla.org

[Westsidelife]

Downtown is the new Hollywood.

[kidA]

That theatre looks amazing at night.

[AlexTheMartian]

Originally Posted by Westsidelife

Downtown is the new Hollywood.

So this means Hollywood is just going to get more run down and become the ghettos?

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

the opposite. Downtown is booming like hollywood.

[Westsidelife]

Originally Posted by AlexTheMartian

So this means Hollywood is just going to get more run down and become the ghettos?

No. It means that Downtown is LA's de facto entertainment center. Downtown and Hollywood will continue to coexist just fine, sort of like how Midtown Manhattan and SoHo compliment each other well.

[AlexTheMartian]

well that's good to know, becuase I have to work in Hollywood

[milquetoast]

The Arts in Los Angeles, 1997–2007 (panel discussion)


Date: Thursday, April 17, 2008
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
Admission: Free; reservations required. Call (310) 440-7300 or use the "Make Reservation" button below.

With the re-opening of the Getty Villa, the expansion of LACMA, the revitalization of the Hammer, and now ten years of the Getty Center, Los Angeles has ascended to a new role as one of the great art capitals of the world. But do the arts in L.A. glitter as brightly from outside museum walls? Steven Lavine, Christopher Hawthorne, Man One, Olga Garay, and Catherine Gudis join Patt Morrison to question received wisdom about the arts in L.A. over the past decade.

Is cultural diversity represented in our art establishment? Which players influence the way art is shown, bought, and sold? What is the effect of recent big-ticket museum expansions and acquisitions, many of which focus on costly European art? Are museums an integral part of our urban fabric, or are they, as Hawthorne suggests, "leafy retreats from the city"? Panelists consider these questions from a variety of perspectives.
About the Panelists

Steven Lavine
Steven Lavine has been president of CalArts since 1988. Under his leadership, CalArts has grown from 850 to 1350 students and has established new centers and programs, including the Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT). Lavine is co-editor of the books Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display and Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture.

Christopher Hawthorne
Christopher Hawthorne is architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times. His writing considers urban growth and identity, transit woes, and the city's turn away from Old-World models to Asia and Latin America. He is co-author of The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture.

Man One
A native of Los Angeles, Man One is a leading urban artist whose bright and colorful murals have helped to pioneer graffiti as an art form. His commercial work includes murals, designs, and concepts for MTV, Coca-Cola, Adidas, and Sony and visuals for films and music videos.

Olga Garay
Executive director of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, Olga Garay has been called "an internationally recognized dynamo." Before coming to L.A., Garay was a producer and consultant with organizations such as the Lincoln Center Festival, the National Performance Network, and El Museo del Barrio.

Catherine Gudis
Catherine Gudis is associate professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, and an editor and curator for art and history museums, and a public historian. She recently completed the large-scale multimedia project "Curating the City: Wilshire Boulevard" with the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Patt Morrison (moderator)
Journalist, broadcaster, and author Patt Morrison is a longtime columnist and reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the host of the news and talk show Patt Morrison on KPCC. She brings a compelling combination of wit and intelligence to interviews with writers, scientists, actors, thinkers, and political and cultural leaders.

How to Get Here
The Getty Center is located at 1200 Getty Center Drive in Los Angeles, California, approximately 12 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Parking is $8. See Hours, Directions, Parking for maps and driving directions.

Better hurry! LA Times

[Westsidelife]

image hosted on flickr


Beverly Hills Gallery Departs Westside for SB Lofts

By Stephen Friday
April 18, 2008

The Historic Core’s SB Lofts at 6th and Main continues its retail frenzy this month with yet another new tenant.

Rouge Galerie, an upscale art gallery with close ties to renowned French contemporary artist Sylvain Copon, is in the process of relocating its exhibit space from Little Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills near the Peninsula Hotel.

This week, pieces of art have begun to appear on the walls of the new space in anticipation of a June opening. Large oil on canvas paintings depicting French landscapes and abstracts dominated by floral imagery, small sculptures and hand-crafted ceramics are among Copon’s variety of works.

Yes, expect Beverly Hills-caliber prices.

Thanks to Jim Winstead of trainedmonkey for the tip and contributions!

Rouge Galerie
548 S Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
213-489-7309
rougegalerie.com

[dweebo2220]

ewww... I wish they'd stay in BH!

Then again, I never thought there was anything cool art-wise going on in Downtown. The whole "Downtown" scene (minus chinatown) is such a joke.

[Westsidelife]

^ It's not so much how you take to the art as it is the culture of art that pervades Downtown. The fact that an upscale art gallery is relocating from the Westside to Downtown speaks volumes about the current "scene" in Downtown, regardless of whether or not you like it.

[milquetoast]

Yeah, dweeb

[dweebo2220]

ok ok all I meant was that this definitely signals a "gentrification" if you will of the downtown art scene. I feel like downtown will soon be (art-wise) inseperable from beverly hills, etc. which I'm not too happy about.. but I should get over it soon enough.

[milquetoast]

wow...

As described often, L.A. is probably the most mediated town in America, nearly unviewable save through the fictive scrim of its mythologies. Anticipating the idea of the city as a fiction, simulation and simulacrum, an important notion about the myth of Los Angeles is based on the concept of fragmented, co-existing realities. Many of them are created by the local entertainment and media industry, constructing their very own dynamic and a concrete actuality.

If we live in a culture that worships the virtual, desire, craving, sensation, and simulation, how can we passively observe "what is"? How can we acquire a consciousness of attention to the internal such as to experience something as real?

When the imaginary becomes a genuine experience, the sensation behind it disappears. It is what it is, and from there can proceed without contradiction. In this way, Los Angeles and its art become something totally authentic.


curated by Johannes Fricke Waldthausen
kimmco.typepad.com

[milquetoast]

Hollywood sees upside in economy's downturn

Sony/Columbia

Bad times seem to be good for movie attendance, and this summer's slate is full of 'event' films that may yield future franchises.
By John Horn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 30, 2008
It costs more than $50 to fill the gas tank, home values are plummeting, good jobs are hard to come by, and the dollar's so weak that even a Canadian vacation seems beyond reach.

All together, it has the makings for a wonderful summer in Hollywood.

It's not that the film business wishes ill on anyone (besides restaurant hosts assigning bad tables, at least), but the economy's loss may very much be the studios' gain. Moviegoing historically has proved more than resistant to downturns -- theater attendance actually increased during three of the last four recessions. And this year, Hollywood hopes the downturn could kindle a near record-breaking May-to-September season.

"I think we have a really good shot of this summer's [box office] matching last summer," Mark Zoradi, president of Disney's motion picture group, said in reference to 2007's record summer haul of $4.18 billion. "I think it's really going to be that big."

As previous downturns in gross domestic product have proved, popular culture -- tracing back from the Depression-era hit song "Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries" -- can prosper when times are tough. If you're struggling to pay the bills, why not let Angelina Jolie take your worries away?

The movies-cure-all-ills formula seems to favor big-budget "event" films. Some of the most celebrated blockbusters of the last several decades -- "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Jaws" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" -- premiered in the midst or on the heels of a recession. In 2001, which had a recession from March to November, theater admissions climbed to $8.4 billion, from $7.7 billion in 2000, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

"If there's anything that's recession-proof, it's an event picture," said Jeff Blake, chairman of worldwide marketing and distribution for Sony Pictures.

Thanks to what studio executives and theater owners categorize as a wave of shoddy spring movies -- "88 Minutes," anyone? -- movie attendance this year is down about 6% from the same time a year ago, according to the tracking firm Media by Numbers.

But when "Iron Man" starts playing Thursday night, the box office doldrums are likely to vanish. Rival studios and box office prognosticators say the comic-book adaptation could gross more than $80 million in its first weekend. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," which audience surveys show has astonishingly strong interest among children, probably will sell substantially more tickets when it opens May 22.

Though there is any number of problematic movies opening before Labor Day -- "Sex and the City," "Speed Racer," "The Happening" and "Meet Dave" are frequently mentioned around Hollywood as the summer's trickiest sales -- the quantity of potential hits seems greater than in years, studio executives say.

"It doesn't seem like the summer is going to run out of gas halfway through," Sony's Blake said. "There's an event movie every weekend."

It will take a number of runaway blockbusters to top 2007's summer mark, which was largely driven by massively popular sequels to well-established franchises. Four of last season's five highest-grossing films were new installments in the "Spider-Man," "Shrek," "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Harry Potter" series (the other monster hit was "Transformers"). No fewer than 14 sequels premiered last summer. This year, Hollywood is offering seven sequels (including new installments in "The Mummy" and "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" series), as well as a host of comedies from familiar faces, including Steve Carell, Adam Sandler, Mike Myers and Ben Stiller.

Instead of more than a dozen sequels this summer, the studios will try to launch new franchises. Where Sony had a new "Spider-Man" film last summer, this year it has Will Smith in "Hancock." DreamWorks will try to approach "Shrek the Third's" returns with "King Fu Panda." In place of "The Bourne Ultimatum," Universal will release "Wanted."

"I think it's a nice thing to have fresh, new and exciting movies with franchise potential," said Peter Brown, the chairman and chief executive of AMC Entertainment, which operates nearly 4,500 North American screens. He said too many sequels can leave audiences burned out. "People feel a little disappointed -- expectations get so high, and then they feel let down."

Even if they aren't releasing as many sequels this summer, the studios have grown increasingly focused on event films, movies such as "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" that not only carry an inherent, often family-friendly sales hook but also wield the potential to sell as many tickets overseas as in the United States.

"The risk is that when you get [an event movie] wrong, it is a devastating blow to your financial plan," said Adam Fogelson, president of worldwide marketing and distribution for Universal Pictures. "But when you hit it right, it can literally fund the entire company."

The push toward such larger-than-life movies is partly motivated by the advent of high-definition DVD players and ear-rattling home theater systems.

"There is no question that the bar is higher now to get someone out of their house," said Rob Moore, the vice chairman of Paramount Pictures. "But if something looks compelling and people have a chance to go with their kids, the upside is higher. Last summer, the movies that people could go to with their kids did crazy business."

To help build interest among children for "Indiana Jones," whose last sequel opened in 1989, Paramount sent 65-year-old Harrison Ford and costar Shia LaBeouf to Nickelodeon's highly rated "Kids' Choice Awards" and has been buying a steady stream of advertisements on the cable channel.

If Hollywood's summer slate is to be truly successful, the movies will have to sell truckloads of tickets outside North America. Not that long ago, a hit movie might generate just a bit more sales overseas as domestically. Ten years ago, for example, "Saving Private Ryan" grossed $216.3 million in the United States and Canada and $265.3 million internationally. But last summer, "Ratatouille" doubled its local gross in foreign markets: $206.4 million domestically, $410.8 million overseas.

Part of the surge is attributable to the U.S. dollar's evaporating value: These days, one dollar buys about half a British pound and about 0.64 of a Euro.

"The international business is up significantly, and the weakness of the dollar has made the international admissions more valuable," Paramount's Moore said.

Currency exchange, said Sony's Blake, "is a great new weapon."

The weakness of the dollar is but one sign of the country's economic woes; a falloff in consumer confidence is another. But families who decide to save money by skipping their usual summer getaways might still splurge on an occasional outing to the multiplex.

"If you're going to cut back on your entertainment dollars, you're going to cut back on your much bigger-ticket items," Disney's Zoradi said.

Which means that though folks may cough up $10 for a ticket to Disney and Pixar's "Wall-E," the $1,000 Disneyland vacation may be a much tougher sell.

john.horn@latimes.com

[Westsidelife]

PRUNING STAFF: View of the Central Garden at the Getty Center, where cuts are under
way.

Getty Trust Cuts 114 Jobs to Boost Arts Budget

Most positions were eliminated through attrition and other means, with only 40 losing jobs. Other expenses also were trimmed.

By Anne-Marie O'Connor, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 14, 2008

James Wood, chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, met with staff Tuesday to discuss the elimination of 114 jobs and some programs to yield a 25% budget increase in the Getty's core arts programs, a spokesman said.

"The whole goal here is to focus the Getty on the core mission of the visual arts," Wood said in an interview during a lull between meetings with staffers.

"This is to ensure that we have flexible funds to devote to both building our collections in the museum, the research institute and the library and undertake targeted strategic initiatives where we feel we can really make a difference," Wood said.

"The opportunity to buy a great piece of art is something we don't know until it comes along. The opportunity to undergo a major tomb restoration project in Egypt -- ways we can use our expertise to do things other people can't. This is something we would be able to undergo now."

Most of the personnel reductions were accomplished through attrition, by freezing positions and not filling vacancies when people quit or retired, and by offering voluntary buyout packages, spokesman Ron Hartwig said.

Fewer than 40 people were laid off Monday, he said, and they received "very good severance packages." Some may be considered for positions open in other Getty departments, Hartwig said.

He said 63% of the savings came from operational activities such as maintenance, security and information technology.

"Some of it revolves around washing the windows once a year instead of three times," he said. "I'm not kidding. That represents a huge savings."

Wood held a staff meeting at the Getty Villa on Tuesday morning to discuss the changes and presided over two more staff meetings at the Getty Center in Brentwood on Tuesday afternoon, Hartwig said.

Hartwig said he did not believe the staff cuts involved curators.

He described many of the affected positions as staff assistants, maintenance, communications and management.

"We are laser-focused on our core mission," Hartwig said. "This is about planning and making sure we have the resources to address our mission as strongly as possible moving forward."

The move, Hartwig said, was the culmination of planning and reassessment with the senior management team after Wood took the helm in early 2007 of the trust, which is one of America's most significant arts foundations.

According to the Foundation Center, which compiles information on nonprofit organizations, the Getty Trust is the largest U.S. arts philanthropy, with an endowment of $6.4 billion in 2007 and $5.6 billion in 2006 -- a sizable increase from $4.3 billion in 2003, a spokeswoman said. The staff reductions were foreshadowed by a March 6 staff memo, published on blogger Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes. In the letter to Getty staff, Wood said the board of trustees and the leadership team "have been working to develop a long-term strategic approach to budgeting that will ensure a successful future for the Getty Trust."

[Westsidelife]

HUNTINGTON, UNVEILED: The Huntington Gallery in San Marino is roomier and more
visually impressive than ever after a $20-million restoration. The changes, overseen by
director John Murdoch, reassert the domestic scale and private layout of what was
originally Henry and Arabella Huntington's private residence.

A Renovated Huntington Art Gallery

The reopening of the San Marino gallery couldn't be more timely.

By Christopher Knight, Times Art Critic
May 25, 2008

THE PAVED terrace behind the Huntington Art Gallery is 80 paces wide. By my stride, that's more than 165 feet. Stand at the center and look south, with the imposing Beaux-Arts mansion and its striped green awnings at your back, and infinity rolls out before you.

Over the Italianate balustrade, between stone urns carved with rams' heads, ribbons and grape garlands, hinting at Dionysian revelry; down across the lawn that separates a stand of tropical palms from a grove of live oaks; skimming the tops of jacaranda, the continuum unfurls. It proceeds unimpeded into an atmospheric haze, a horizon line almost impossible to detect.

San Marino's Huntington Art Gallery reemerges Wednesday after a magnificent two-year, $20-million renovation. The view from the terrace, remarkably as free of buildings in today's jampacked metropolitan Los Angeles as it was 100 years ago, when the great country house was being planned, has been there all along. The Huntington extrapolates that vision of boundless space into something that approaches the California Dream.

Infinity is an ancient idea, but 17th and 18th century Europeans were mad about it, and it's their art the Huntington enshrines. The popularity was fueled by exploration. Lucrative traders circumnavigated the globe, and scientists voyaged into novel universes opened by the microscope and telescope. Artists probed and played with infinity in their art, architects in their buildings.

The first grand room of the Huntington mansion, built in a young city now famous for blurring the separation between indoors and outdoors, offers a typical interior architectural representation of the exterior garden's infinity view. The oak-paneled library was designed to accommodate magnificent 18th century Beauvais tapestries showing aristocrats engaged in rituals of idealized country courtship, designed by François Boucher. But mirrored doors at one end match the big mirror placed over the fireplace at the other, so that the crystal chandeliers hung on the axis between them reflect into glittering infinity.

The Huntington's terrace view is framed by sensational -- and brutal -- life-size bronze sculptures, cast in 1680-81 for Jacques Houzeau. The French animalier, an artist specializing in realistic animal portrayals, helped decorate the gardens at Versailles.

In a now-weathered green patina, these sculptures show slavering dogs bringing down a ferocious wild boar and a regal stag. Survival is hard in the turbulent forest, the theatrical sculptures assert, but powerful, civilized creatures can triumph over the feral and the savage.

In short, it's good to be the king. Or, at the westernmost edge of America's Manifest Destiny as the 20th century began, it was good to be Henry E. Huntington, heir to a huge railroad fortune and the most powerful industrialist in L.A.

Likewise, it was good to be Arabella D. Huntington -- the lovingly nicknamed Belle, Henry's former aunt by marriage and now his wife, reputed to be the country's richest woman. Together the couple created a magnificent house, library, garden and art collection. Today, as a whole new Gilded Age has trickled down after a quarter-century of supply-side economics, the reopening of their handsomely refurbished, smartly reinstalled gallery couldn't be more timely.

The Renovation

MUCH OF the Huntington restoration has taken place on the gallery's exterior and in hidden structural systems. But inside, considerable rearrangement of the collections has also taken place, adroitly guided by director John Murdoch.

The first floor is now an eloquent sequence of domestic period rooms, anchored by the library with its leather-bound volumes of Matthew Arnold, Lord Tennyson and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and conqueror's histories of Egypt and India. Eighteenth century English paintings -- the collection's hallmark -- get an ancien régime pedigree with deluxe French furniture and refined Persian carpets.

A large drawing room is installed with children's portraits by George Romney, Joshua Reynolds and the lesser-known Reynolds imitator, John Hoppner, a subject repeated in tapestry-covered chairs showing cherubic kids learning music and literature. The youthful theme recalls that this is the room where Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of teen heartthrob Jonathan Buttall -- the picture-postcard "Blue Boy" -- originally hung when the Huntingtons were alive.

Next is a small drawing room. An intimate space housing seven British portraits of women, it subtly but smartly evokes Belle's central role in creating the art collection.

In an imposing, rather Georgian-style dining room adjacent, the slender crystal obelisks topping an amazing chandelier make a formal nod to Gilbert Stuart's anomalous American portrait of George Washington over the fireplace. Nearby, Gainsborough's idyllic fantasy of an English country cottage depicts "the simple life" for a British aristocrat -- and for a turn-of-the-century American robber baron.

Finally, the Thornton Portrait Gallery is the best-known room in the house, even though it wasn't added until 1934, a decade after Arabella's death and seven years after Henry's. Alternating with portrait busts on pedestals are 14 full-length Grand Manner pictures on forest-green damask walls. They show Britain's hereditary finest posing like august Roman statuary, and gesturing in echoes of Renaissance masterworks.

"The Blue Boy" gazes from one wind-swept summit to another across the room, where Thomas Lawrence's virginal depiction of young Sarah Moulton, a.k.a. "Pinkie," resides. The lofty encounter occurs under the imposing eye of Reynolds' looming masterpiece, a portrait of actress Sarah Siddons enthroned like a cross between Zeus and a biblical prophet from Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling. Painted in the russet-brown tones of Rembrandt and enacting the role of Melpomene, the mythical Greek muse of tragedy, she's familiar to moviegoers as the model for the coveted Broadway award statuette in “All About Eve.”

That's versatility.

Upstairs, where bedrooms, bathrooms and assorted offices once were, the house turns into more conventional museum galleries. To get there, a two-story staircase has been enlarged to accommodate a 15-foot-tall, neo-Gothic stained glass window by Morris & Co., co-founded in 1875 by William Morris to promote hand-craftsmanship in the face of the booming Industrial Revolution.

The backlighted window, designed by Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, is a strange array of Protestant personifications of virtue, cast as secular versions of traditional Catholic saints. Truth holds a candle against the darkness. Faith reaches up to grasp the hand of God. Courage is steeled in armor while Liberty clutches a pair of crimson wings, like an earthly seraph, the highest rank of angel.

Across the Channel

ACOUPLE of surprises are on the second floor. Twenty-two thematic galleries include major works of British art, with powerful landscapes by John Constable and J.M.W. Turner as well as remarkable silver, porcelain and furniture. Despite the Huntington's identification with all things English, however, these galleries also house a notable collection of French art. An excellent, hefty new catalog records 202 French works.

They include a charming Jean-Baptiste Greuze picture of a girl asleep at her knitting, plus a lovely little Antoine Watteau of dancing courtiers. (Look closely and you can see where the rectangular panel was once cut into a circle, then later restored.) Both are from Pasadena's Green collection, acquired in 1978.

Arabella's own French purchases were limited to decorative arts. She likely engineered Henry's 1906 acquisition of the five Beauvais tapestries downstairs in the library -- his first big-ticket purchase. In today's inflation-adjusted currency, he paid $13.3 million, more than the cost of the house.

In the smart new catalog, Huntington curator Shelley M. Bennett explains why French decoration made sense amid the collectors' fervor for British art. British nobility, long attuned to the power of theater, used French décor to give themselves a gloss of old dynastic status. The avaricious Americans followed suit, setting the stage to transform vulgar new money into genteel old.

Henry underscored his late wife's Francophile enthusiasms with a memorial 1927 acquisition of Jean-Antoine Houdon's amazing, life-size bronze cast of Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt. A nude, her sex is shockingly exposed. Yet the display is also in perfect harmony with Houdon's effortless naturalism, shown in a massive striding figure balanced lightly on the ball of a single foot.

Think of it as a symbolic portrait of Belle. It introduces rooms that house a small selection of her Renaissance and Old Master works, notably Rogier van der Weyden's rare, exquisite "Madonna and Child" (circa 1460). Not 20 inches high, Rogier's golden devotional panel majestically fuses divinity and humanity.

The young mother's face registers sweet sorrow. She dandles a haloed infant whose nakedness is revealed, while his baby face merges with that of a wise elder. Mary's soft right hand gently steadies him. But her left hand clutching the Bible, which tells of his coming sacrifice, is contorted in anguish. The boy fumbles with the book's clasp, as any inquisitive child might do, while momentously unlocking the spiritual mystery inside. The greatest Renaissance picture in L.A., it's the Huntington's most important painting,

The Compleat "Blue Boy"

BUT IT'S not the best known. In fact, Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy" is surely the most famous European Old Master painting in the U.S.

In 1944 a young naval neuropsychiatric technician stationed in San Diego hitchhiked to San Marino during leave to visit the Huntington's cactus gardens. Robert Rauschenberg, then 19, wandered into the art gallery and saw "The Blue Boy," which the sailor from Texas knew from cocktail napkins and playing cards, and had a sudden epiphany.

"It dawned on me that this was something other than magazine illustration," the celebrated artist, who died this month, told The Times four decades later. "I don't know how I stayed so stupid for so long, but it never occurred to me [until then] there was such a thing as painting."

Twenty-three years earlier, Henry and Belle were on board the Aquitania sailing to Europe. Their stateroom, the Gainsborough Suite, adjoined that of their traveling companion, art dealer extraordinaire Joseph Duveen. They got to talking about the reproduction of "The Blue Boy" in the dining room, which Duveen shrewdly explained hung at London's Grosvenor House, owned by the duke of Westminster, and could not be had at any price. Henry promptly agreed to pay more than any painting was then known to have fetched.

"Los Angeles Man Buys 'Blue Boy' " announced The Times headline on Nov. 14, 1921. The Huntingtons were out about $800,000 -- more than $8 million today -- but the transfer was lateral. The duke was said to be England's richest peer, Arabella's aristocratic equivalent.

Surely Belle-the-huntress was pleased. Remember the portraits of women displayed in the small drawing room? Among them is Romney's sultry picture of Emma Hart, notorious Lady Hamilton, at the tender age of 17 or 18. A huge straw hat shades her eyes, and she's tossing one of the great come-hither looks of all time.

The presence of "that Hamilton woman!" -- later the mistress of Admiral Nelson -- can't help but reflect on Belle's own clouded past. Born in Alabama circa 1850 and married to a local (though, suspiciously, neither a birth certificate nor a marriage license exists), she hooked up with the ruthless Sacramento railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington, 30 years her senior, who had done a brisk business in bribing politicians for favorable corporate legislation. He likely fathered her son, Archer. She and Collis married in 1884, but despite their vast wealth, New York and San Francisco society wouldn't give them the time of day.

Thirteen years after Collis died, she married his nephew, Henry, who had inherited one-third of his uncle's $450-million estate (in today's dollars). That gave Henry the necessary cash to put into his interlocking businesses, essential to inventing suburban L.A. -- a trolley network connecting far-flung land holdings, run on electric power distribution.

And it gave the rest of Collis' fortune back to Belle. She had been advising Henry on plans for the San Marino estate since he first conceived of it. At Duveen's shop alone, the couple spent more than $360 million on art and antiques over the next 10 years.

Belle hated Southern California, preferring Paris instead, so much of her art did not end up in San Marino. But the project made the Huntingtons the region's original power couple. And it made them plutocratic innovators in the emerging mythos of Los Angeles as the ideal place to reinvent your life, which Hollywood soon democratized.

[milquetoast]

Saw that photo and knew it was Huntington

la.cityzine.com

[milquetoast]

GOD Bless Us! We've landed on Mars again! Is there anything L. A. can't do?

NASA/JPL/CalTech

[klamedia]

Originally Posted by milquetoast

Saw that photo and knew it was Huntington

la.cityzine.com

Car-free to the Huntington is always the best! Just take the Gold Line to Pasadena and bike to the museum. You won't regret this trip!