Moses Supposes in a Jetta!

Just saw this Jetta Commercial and am AMAZED! Singing in the Rain is one of my favorite movies and knew this foot work was from the Moses Supposes Dance Number but still don't know how they made this happen!

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Free Day at LACMA

I love going to a museum and turning a corner and having a sweet surprise.  My favorite happening of this sort was in NY in 95 at MoMA and when I turned the corner and found Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night, staring back at me.  My visit Monday had a wonderful surprise as I was just breezing through a collection I already thought I knew and had seen.  I found a new treasure or Easter egg in the back of the Art of the Americas Building, 3rd floor. It was R.B. Kitaj's Covers for a Small Library, a temporary exhibition of interesting prints.  It's on view through July 4, 2011.
It's the artist's personal collection from his time in New York when he had self proclaimed "bibliomania".  Authors included Kafka, Joyce, Nabokov, Camus, and (my favorite) T.S. Eliot.  The body of work is enlarged photo facsimiles prints of book jackets, showing all the damage and handling and love these books had before coming into Kitaj's personal collection.  The prints are large, (I am guessing 11x17 possibly).  Most of the prints were marked 63/150-not sure of who owns the collection on display. Favorites of the artist (and mine) are titles like Ezra Pound's How to Read, Margaret Mead's The Coming of Age in Somoa, Dimestore Paperbacks like Jack London's The People of the Abyss, A Pelican Book published by Penguin Books, a beautiful cover of a book about Edward Weston, and the City of Burbank Annual Report.
The last treat and something new to see, was Steve Wolfe on Paper, 2nd floor of the Ahmanson Building. As an ex-scenic painter, the trompe l'oeil of the artist's vinyl records was amazing.  It was hard to believe and it always begged for a closer look, one of the record works had a slight thumb print that finally saidI'm not vinyl, quit doing double takes! Besides the record renderings, there was also mixed media and collage. My favorite was a sweet little piece of a spider web that was framed at a right angle and demanded being hung in a corner.  As an artist, it's time to start remembering it can be and sometimes should be fun-for both the artist and the observer. _______________________ _________________________________

LACMA's Fashioning Fashion

   

There were many things of interest at the Fashioning Fashion exhibit, running now through March 27, 2011. It lays out in amazing ways the changes in fashion and differences of dress for both men and women. I found it of great interest to know that the modern/current men's suit really hasn't changed since the turn of the LAST century as shown in a suit from England from around 1906 or so...

It gives me a grin to see the things humans find sexy since there are so many things that people find erotic. Displayed in a corner of the exhibit were some fetish items. Odd that that corner gets congested! (this was my second visit to the museum and that spot) The curation talks of how Toulouse-Lautrec was an artist of the time documenting, living, and depicting brothels and the women in them. The plaque near these items also talked of the idea of restraint and release (the words alone are quite weighted and powerful) and how tantalizing it could be to have to wait, take time and unlace all those laces on the boots!
When taking a costuming class for theatre studies, it was stated that when men's breeches were short, that a man's calves were like today's abs or arms. Women would swoon and there was even enhancement and padding that men would use to give 'em better calves. It sounds silly but I do know of times where I find myself looking at a man differently after seeing their strong calves so I guess anything is possible erotic or fetish.
Also of interest in the serpentine path of items behind the fetish boots is the other item of fetish interest. Less people go back there as it's the last part of the exhibit. It was a display of ladies stockings. The stockings were bright and elaborately embroidered-all for the slight opportunity of a flash of the ankles of a woman. Under all those skirts, seeing a woman's ankles and tease of a leg was something that would make men go wild.
In these days of showing so much, what is still seductive? What in fashion is something that brings interest and excitement? In these days of celebutantes behaving badly and exposing all sorts of "stuff", what is shocking anymore?  Can't wait to see what will be curated 50 years from now on fashion and fetish. _______________________ _________________________________