Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA)

I attended the Museum of Latin American Art while recently on a trip to Los Angeles. I wasn't initially going to blog about this visit because I found the art a little underwhelming, but something important to me as a person and an artist happened while I was there.

I have recently been struggling with issues of cultural identity, questioning what heritage I identify with and whether my grandmother's place of birth gives me any right to truely call myself Latina. I discovered when I walked into this museum that I have begun to identify myself as Latina without even realizing it. I can't explain it, fully, other than to say I felt comfortable there. I belonged. But enough about me, the art!

Mayra Barraza,
Sin título/Untitled, 2008
Watercolor on paper

This decapitated head on a largely blank plane struck me as being very powerful when I walked by it in the museum. A little research showed the artist, Mayra Barraza, is from El Salvador and her paintings are about the urban violence experienced there.

Darío Ortíz, En fila/In Line, 2001, Gouache on paper

This beautiful gouache painting by Darío Ortíz remains a bit of a mystery to me. It appears to be female military personnel who have died or are asleep and are wrapped up in sheets. The artist is Colombian, so I'll have to dig a little deeper in my research to find out more.

A wide shot of the main exhibition wing.

Visit to the deYoung, San Francisco

I recently took a trip to the deYoung museum in San Francisco.

I went, initially, to see the Sargent on display. She was gorgeous:

John Singer Sergent, Lady Agnew of Lochnaw, 1892, oil on canvas

The highlights from the permanent collection were some Wayne Thiebaud:

Wayne Thiebaud, Three Machines, 1963, Oil on canvas

He was one of the first artists to get me really excited about landscape painting. They have a whimsical exaggeration to them that I find really appealing. I'm also really attracted to his super saturated blue shadows. I could stare at them all day. 

Wayne Thiebaud, Diagonal Freeway, 1993, Acrylic on canvas

Elmer Bischoff, Girl with Towel, 1960, Oil on canvas

Elmer Bischoff, Yellow Lampshade, 1969, Oil on canvas

I had only been to the deYoung once before this trip, before I was an art major so I didn't have the same eye looking at the pieces I now have. I remembered this piece, however, from my last visit because it was so impactful. It was nice to return with a more seasoned gaze and to find it was just as impressive, if not more so, than the first time. These are the remains of a Southern Black Baptist Church that was destroyed by arsonists. It is at once quiet and loud, sad and angry. The scale of this piece makes you feel as if you are right in the midst of it, surrounded and swallowed by it.

Cornelia Parker, Anti-Mass, 2005, wood charcoal, nails, and wire

And, finally, these beautiful pieces were tucked away by the elevator to the tower. They are donated works by Ruth Asawa. More than the pieces themselves, the shadows they cast are what inspire me the most about these works. They are seemingly simple in their construction yet very intricate. I am glad I didn't miss these on this visit to the deYoung.