Cobb: This Los Angeles

August 08, 2003

This Los Angeles

"Humankind still lives in prehistory everywhere, indeed everything awaits the creation of the world as a genuine one... if human beings have grasped themselves, and what is theirs, without depersonalization and alienation, founded in real democracy, then something comes into being in the world that shines into everyone's childhood and where no one has yet been -- home."

--Ernest Bloch

This afternoon's trek to the Getty was something indeed. It made me think a bit about this cosmopolis.

The Getty crowd is youngish yet variant, and not all chinoed and whitebread. A stern reddish blond women quickly stifles her grandchild. A young latino kid stares off into the distant Pacific with a twotone gold handheld device to his ear. A large swarthy man in a loud orange shirt waddles quickly over to his large framed wife and daughters perspiring and talking excitedly about 'urns and statues and stuff'. A short docent with an Italian accent and a slight grey stubble on his head compliments me about my haircut with a smile. A tall girl with large brown locks gestures descriptively to her boyfriend about the particular angle of an Eggleston picture. A mother wearing Stevie Wonder style braids stands in line for iced tea and hands a program guide to her daughter. A middle aged sandy haired dad and his son in identical polo shirts wearing aviator sunglasses and expensive sandals talk about software. A belly out girl smiles briefly at me as I make one of the few eye contacts of the day. A young boy who looks like the kid from The Princess Bride stares at Van Gogh's Irises as he listens to the prerecorded tour on blue headphones. Security guards on break laugh and joke.

So on to the art. The big attraction right now is supposed to be this Illuminating the Renaissance thing. How shall I say it? If you've seen one hugely ornate calligraphic sacred text, you've seen 'em all. I found them a lot less inspiring than I expected although they were certainly impressive. There was only one, in the four rooms dedicated to the exhibit that I found mildy inspiring and that was the rather thick one with the tiny script. I couldn't get the idea of monks scribbling away in Old French locked away in their monasteries on these books for months and years on end out of my head. For me personally, that is a very tired metaphor of computer programming. I've used it for almost 20 years now. So I was essentially looking at the equivalent of 15th century Flemish websites. Now that I'm restyling the blog a little bit, maybe I'll put some flourishes and blots on the archive template, but that's all. Perhaps I should have read all the captioning to catch the flavor of the dynamic of the period, but I was only interested in looking. But this was just the first exhibit. I was just getting the snarky city grime washed off me.

Looking was rewarded later as I ventured to the South building in which was housed a black and white photography exhibit from the American 60s. Although Arbus clearly stole the show, both Winogrand and Eggleston had fine points. Winogrand's portraiture has a spontaneous yet documentary style. He catches people in the middle of doing nothing in particular in settings that reveal as much about the period as they do about the subjects. Eggleston's Memphis work in contrast are more striking for their symmetries and complex compositions, yet they are stark, vacant and distant conveying dramatically a sense of alienation he surely saw characterizing Southern life.

Arbus gets her freaks on with striking intimacy. I've read much about her work and it doesn't disappoint. The cruel irony of her portraits are unavoidable and drew a great deal of murmuring from the assembled crowds.

I buzzed out of that joint and headed towards the marble sculptures. I continue to be endlessly fascinated by the ability of sculptors working with stone. Folds in dresses, the curly hair of Roman Emperors, the delicate fingers of nymphs, the kneecaps and navels showing through flowing robes, the separation of toes. Marvelous.

Finally, I headed up to see the Impressionists. Two paintings were the highlight of my day. The first was a portrait by a cat named Millet. The subject was a young girl with arms folded and left forward fingers split over her right forearm. Half of her face is in shadow and there is a perfect shaped symmetry in the shadow under her chin and above her slight breast. It was truly an amazing piece of work.

The other was by Monet. It was of a French Cathredral in Rouen in the foggy morning sun. I found it truly haunting. It held my attention for quite some time. As is my habit with Impressionists, I came up close to it after a period and viewed it from the side and let my jaw drop at its scabby patchwork surface.

The crowning moment of my visit came near the end, as I tired of the galleries and swooping through the light crowds. I took in the breathtaking panorama of this city, this Los Angeles from the Getty's hilltop. I could see all the peaks from Baldy to Wilson. I could count all the towers downtown, at the airport, in Santa Monica and Century City. I could not quite make out the Vincent Thomas Bridge and Catalina wasn't clear, but it was a magnificent vista ('magnificent vista'?). It was very cool.

Still I got the feeling that the city is strange and different. It is not my Los Angeles, so much as it is this vast world class city which has lost its intimacy for me. It took me an hour to reach the Getty from Redondo Beach, which is more like New York driving time. I found myself wishing for a subway train to the South Bay that I could take instead of the 405 and I realize that there is one. I've just never bothered to use it. Some time ago the buses turned red and started using CNG. The RTD is no more. Now the Gold Line goes to Pasadena and beyond. I used to live in the San Gabriel Valley only 20 months ago. It seems like a lifetime.

Here in the hills above the Westside, the richness of the foliage and greenery stand in stark contrast to the rusty brown hills under the dusky haze of Baldwin Hills and Westchester. The fine tiled roofs next door in Bel Air are more than two worlds away from the simple stuccos 5 miles southeast off Venice Boulevard. Far to the east are other worlds, behind me the Valley, like a recalcitrant Confederacy, unable to secede.

Who knows who runs this place? People with names like Ueberroth and Bustamante want to, but I wonder if they'll manage. Over to my right in the distance is the world's largest marina. Over to my left are tall triangular buildings full of entertainment lawyers, nearby is a cemetary full of soldier's headstones. Across the way a million people are all trying to get home or get away from home moving at 10 miles per hour. How does it ever happen? How do they hold this place together? Is Los Angeles even together at all?

The only thing that's clear is that up here, among the 16,000 tons roughly hewn travertine stones, Los Angeles can be viewed, if not comprehended, all at once. To a sensitive and thoughtful soul, it is overwhelming.

It is hard, on days like these when it is so inspiring to know the efforts put forth evident in this fine museum, to imagine that we are at war. And yet a moment's consideration at the broad variety of humanity and the complexity and idiosyncracies of their works, creations and desires makes one pause at the miracle we don't fly apart all at once. It is, in the end, the desire to reach out, to inspire others and to retain our ability to be inspired that draws us together in our endless fascination for each other. Our willingness to be surprised and find something good in the person and works of others binds us each to our common humanity. It may be a quirk of the human mind that makes patterns out of chaos, but for that quirk all we would know, and then only partially so, would be ourselves.

If we would not be at war without ourselves, this city, and maybe this world, might become our shared home and happy familiarity available to us all.

Posted by mbowen at August 8, 2003 07:12 PM

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