Karl Sims Opening at the Museum of Mathematics, NYC, 11/7/2024

Karl Sims had an art opening at the Museum of Mathematics in New York City on 11/7/2024.  

Also there was Pattie Maes, Ken Perlin, Trilby Schreiber, Tom Brigham and Jill Fraser.

LACMA Is Not as Bad as Expected

By all accounts the new LACMA is a train wreck.  We took a trip there and it is a mess but not quite as bad as expected.  Still, they should have done better.

There is no explanation anywhere of the work being done and when it can be expected.  Nothing that I saw.  The visitor is just exposed to a mess of construction with no guidance.  By happenstance we found a worker who would explain things to us.  

The new building is nowhere near done.  It wont be done in 2024, I doubt it will be done in 2025.   It does cross over Wilshire Blvd to make use of the space that LACMA owned across the street.  It looks interesting and contrary to what I was told it must have more exhibition space than the older buildings.  If it doesnt then that is a disaster.  Maybe it will have "better" exhibition space.   

The Bing theatre, site of so many happy memories, is gone and our guide explained there will be a new theatre in the basement of the new building.  That is nice, but no one would know this by inspecting the site.

The plaza is a wreck with no space to sit down not associated with the very pretentious but not very good restaurant.  Expensive.  What happened to the place you could sit down and get a salad or a simple hot entry?  All gone.  We ate outside because the inside smelled of grease.  The outside was subjected to jack hammers.  Not pleasant.

Two exhibition spaces were open.  One in the new building from 30 years ago, and the other in a building where the parking lot for the May Co used to be.  Of course the new old building was presentable and has some of the permanent exhibition.  We did not get to the parking lot building.

The Page Museum is still there and is entertaining for a few hours.  Lots of exhibits are out of order. The Bison is still there.  We did not go to the 3D theatre.  The internal rain forest or whatever it is seemed less interesting than I remembered but better than a stick in the eye. The shop is fun but no more Giant Sloth hand puppets.

The Japanese pavilion is closed and no one knows if it will be reopened.

The neighborhood is a wreck.  The businesses look like a tornado hit them.  The Folk and Craft Art museum is still there with a new paint job.  We did not go in.  "The Egg and Eye" is long gone.

We did not go to the Academy Museum.  After the expensive but unpleasant lunch I just wanted to get out of there.

I can see why people are upset but still it should be a suitable space when it is all done.  It did not make a great impression.

Jim Shaw at the New Museum

        This world is mine, in time. You best of all of us, Gabriel, should understand ambition.

                                                                              Lucifer/Satan from Constantine (2005)

I am happy to report that an alumnus of degraf/Wahrman (dWi), Jim Shaw, is having a retrospective of his work exhibited at the New Museum in New York (see link below).

I have not one, not two, but at least five friends from the early days of computer animation who are recognized as successful contemporary fine artists to varying degrees. But all of the others are involved in the digital arts in one way or another.  Jim is the only one I know who has achieved his success through what we might call "old media", you know, painting and drawing, with no computers involved.

Of course there were many “artists” who helped found computer animation in the 1970s and 1980s and “art” is one of those culturally laden terms that mean different things to different communities.  Hollywood is particularly fond of giving its own meaning to the term "artist" as is discussed in this post:   What is Meant When it is Said Hollywood Needs Artists    Other types of artists in this world might include production designers, fashion designers, commercial art directors, graphic designers, visual effects supervisors, and so forth.

But we are not talking about that kind of artist, as difficult and competitive as some of those fields are. What we are talking about here is the varsity squad, an artist of the sense of museums, collectors, galleries in NY and London and notices in certain elite magazines.  This is what we might call the :"real" world of fine art.

What you may not be aware of is that this is the dream of so many artists, or at least of people who went to art school, and it is far from easy to achieve. Of 100 talented people who attend art school, how many become recognized artists? Of the people who attend film school, how many become noted directors of film?

But the really disturbing thing is not just that my friend, Jim Shaw, is successful at pretty much exactly what he wanted to achieve back when I knew him in 1980, the really disturbing thing is that he is to have a retrospective one person show.  Retrospective?  I just exchanged email with Jim and he is as always creating new pieces right and left.  Perhaps I am giving too much emphasis  to one meaning of the term "retrospective".

There is much more I could say about Jim Shaw, but I will just mention a few of them here. First, he never secretly aspired to be a commercial art director, or a visual effects supervisor, or anything else but what he did. Second, as long as I have known him, from when I believe he was an assistant art director at Robert Abel & Associates, he was producing his own work every day. Publishing his own books of his artwork. Putting on a Thrift Store Art exhibition. Third, and finally, we hired him at deGraf/Wahrman as an art director for various reasons, but the most important one to me was that it would help him make a living while he was building his career as a fine artist.

I haven't talked to him for about 20 years but I recently exchanged email with him courtesy of John Nelson (I had had trouble tracking Jim down).   Not only is he doing well, but he has a life, apparently, and has been married for over 20 years.  Amazing.

Information about his show in New York is at

http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/view/jim-shaw-the-end-is-here

His public statement from the Thrift Store Art exhibit is here:

http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2013/01/statement-from-thrift-store-art.html