LACMA
At the Broad
My wife grabs my ear and twists as she says, “This isn’t The Broad.” “It sure is,” I counter. “Been The Broad as long as it’s been here at LACMA.” “Now it’s just a bunch of initials beginning with B. The real Broad’s downtown on Grand Avenue a couple of blocks from the Museum of…
Read MoreFeud at LACMA
“Ladies, stop it,” I shout. “Shut up,” says the one to the left in a sleek black and gray striped dress baring arms, shoulders, and back. “You’re young and beautiful,” I say. “Why are you doing this?” “You’re a fool to ask,” says the lady on the right attired in a black and gray polka-dotted…
Read MoreDisposable Bodies
Where are my sisters and comrades? Where is the beautiful lady without head or legs below her thighs who instead offers a torso nude and smooth red curving into a svelte waist clinched by a lovely but lethal belt of black? Where is her aesthetic soulmate naked and sensually blue save for elegant feathers and…
Read MoreByline: Ex-Slave Gordon
You’ve seen me. You’ve seen me many times and would like to forget. But you can’t. I won’t let you. More importantly, the people who did this wanted everyone to remember I belonged to them and when I escaped they and their bloodhounds chased me several days through mosquito-filled swamps and forests and dragged me…
Read MoreIranian Art, David Hockney, and LACMA
Boyd, an art lover visiting California the first time in years, reads with increasing concern a two-sided handout titled: The Future at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and waves the news at a museum employee. “What’s this? Almost half the galleries are closed and soon the others’ll be shuttered, too.” She smiles and says,…
Read MorePicasso and Rivera Talk
Really, this is quite unusual, self-portraits talking to each other from a wall on either side of a gallery door. The man on the left, a short muscular brute standing bare-chested, says, “Get out of that frame.” “Okay, as long as you do, too.” Pablo Picasso, cocky at age twenty-five in 1906, steps naked, it…
Read MoreColossal Head and the Mesoamerican Ballgame
I know it’s not right by your standards but I don’t care about them or you, so my relentless almond eyes and flat ears, open and acute below the helmet on my Colossal Head 5, carved six-feet high into three tons of basalt, are aimed at viewers in museums who surround me on three sides.…
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