What can I say, we’ve been busy.
Still, it remains one of our favorite SoCal museums, in part because it’s manageable—you can see everything in a single afternoon even at a very leisurely pace, which isn’t the case for some of the bigger, more famous art joints in town that require you to hustle the entire time if you want to glimpse everything. But we also love the collection, which has an emphasis on European art from the 14th century to the present day. Not only is Degas’ Little Dancer one of the first things you can see upon entering, it’s backed up by several of his paintings directly behind it.
And, in fact, that’s exactly why we went—Rob wanted to see some of the impressionists he studied as a kid, and in this town, Norton Simon is the place to go for those. The place is lousy with Degas in particular, but it’s got a number of the other big guns as well—Renoir, Pissarro, even a Morisot, which are hard to come by around here. Plus a few Monets, like his Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil. Ooh, summery!
But then there’s the modern stuff as well, like Picasso’s classic Woman Reading a Book...
...and Sam Francis’ enormous Basel Mural I, with its brash eruptions of color. To the side, you see one of the surviving fragments from Basel Mural III, but Basel II is in Amsterdam, so...it might be a while before we get to that one.
But in the meantime, I could go on and on about the other favorites we have here—Rob’s partial to Franz Snyders’ still life, and I’ve always loved Maurice-Quentin de La Tour’s self-portrait here. Sure, he’s wearing a powdered wig, but the smirk adds a modern character that I like. He looks...snarky. Also, it’s impressive on a technical level since it’s a pastel, not a painting, yet look at the refinement and the subtlety of the colors.
And let’s not overlook the basement level, where all the Asian art is! No way were we passing up another of Rob’s favorites, this chlorite statue of Narasimha, one of Vishnu’s, erm, more specialized avatars. No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you—he’s disemboweling the asura Hiranyakashipu there. Though to be fair, Hiranyakashipu really did have it coming.
To top it all off, the museum still hands out free souvenir prints to visitors as they leave. Color me surprised—I’d’ve thought those would be the first thing to go in a shaky economy. And what do you know, it’s a Degas!
Another stop: the Natural History Museum, last visited at the start of 2010. So, not that long ago, but long enough for them to have completed the new Dinosaur Hall since then.
Triceratops. Again we cross paths.
Most of my prior experience with fossils has been at the Tar Pits, which doesn’t do dinosaurs, so this is the first real chance I’ve had to get an extensive look at the scale of these behemoths. The gallery breaks it down and then some, showcasing everything from a variety of giant skulls and teeth to tailbones and, uh, coprolites.
Case in point: Check out this triceratops horn, which would’ve been enough to run the average human through with inches to spare. Ditto the item in front, which is a cast of a thagomizer spike.
But then to show the other end of the spectrum, you also have these models of wee Fruitadens, one of the smallest known dinos. Even someone my size could take one of these things out readily...with, like, a sneeze.
My favorite specimen, however? Corythosaurus here. It’s hard to imagine an entire herd of these things fleeing predators, though, when they’re basically built like the urRu Mystics from The Dark Crystal. Those guys? Not fast.
As a bonus, we were there when the museum’s Butterfly Pavilion was open. If you don’t exactly get caught in a flurry of colorful wings when you walk in...
...it’s still not every day that you’re surrounded by such a variety of butterflies and can just stand in one spot to see what alights within paw’s reach. Don’t think I need the chart to recognize a swallowtail and a mourning cloak when they’re this close!
Then for a change of pace, we also made an appearance at the “Six Seasons and a Movie” art show at PixelDrip Gallery. Community fans being a highly dedicated lot, it was probably inevitable that somebody finally decided to gather some of the endlessly creative fan art in one place—and being the niche-sitcom obsessives that we are, it was just as inevitable that Rob and I crashed it!
The bulk of the art was illustration, but there was pretty much some of everything, from handmade dolls and Hawthorne Wipes mockups to a computer set up for the homebrew video game adaptation of the “Digital Estate Planning” episode. (Downloadable updates posted periodically, and check out Dean Pelton's closet!)
Fittingly—considering the show in question—there was just about every kind of genre exercise on display, so it was impossible to name a favorite. Though I do applaud the matryoshka set for working in Annie’s Boobs (AKA Crystal the Monkey) as the last doll.
Oh, Britta’s in this?
And going back to Arrested Development for a moment, turns out there was an art show for that at Gallery 1988 as well. Sadly, we only got there at the last minute, by which point a lot of the prints we would’ve liked were sold out. There’s no other way to put it: I’ve made a huge mistake.
Whoever slapped blue handprints all over the gallery is a bloody genius.
And what other little things have we been up to...well, hanging out at Dylan’s Candy Bar, which finally opened an L.A. store. It’s not nearly as big as the flagship—there’s no ice cream counter, for one thing—but with this kind of sensory overload, that seems like quibbling. Yay, sugar!
And really, as long as there’s a Pucker Powder station, I don’t particularly care how big the rest of the store is. I’ll just top ’er off with a little grape there.
I also did a little wand-shopping at Whimsic Alley...
...checked out a pawful of Hobbit props, like Bilbo’s contract here...
...and made the annual rounds at the Sawdust Festival. I stayed out of the soap-bubble snow, though—that stuff gets sticky on the fur.
And there were a few other things besides, but you get the idea. Can’t make a blog out of every little mundane errand, can I?
That said, I’m already looking forward to spring. Maintaining the winter coat is a pain; I always end up tipping someone double just to keep that under control. And you thought I’m excited about the end of March just because it’s Easter?
