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Poundstone, William. "LACMA Collectors Spend $6.4 Million for Pop, Zen & Movies." Blouin ArtInfo
Blogs, 17 Apr. 2016. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM ON FIRE / WILLIAM POUNDSTONE (HTTP://BLOGS.ARTINFO.COM/LACMONFIRE)
LACMA Collectors Spend $6.4 Million for Pop, Zen &
Movies
APRIL 17, 2016
Claes Oldenburg, “Typewriter Eraser” © Claes Oldenburg and photo © 2016 Museum Associates/LACMA
The 2016 LACMA’s Collectors Committee acquired five works of art and two collections. The
$6.4 million raised bought an iconic Claes Oldenburg, Typewriter Eraser (1970); a rare pair of
Zen-ink painting screens by Soga Shohaku, Oxen and Shepherds (18th century); a set of about
880 movie posters; plus another group of over 100 works of video art, mostly 1970s onward.
To explain the Collectors Committee: It’s something like a brokered convention. The artworks
are the candidates, the curators are the campaign managers, and the committee members
are the super-delegates. Art is bought in order of popularity, as expressed by committee
members in a ranked ballot, until they run out of money. As in real politics, money can buy
elections. Here that’s considered good. Individuals or groups can buy favored objects outright
or offer challenge grants to fellow committee members.
One example is the movie poster collection of Mike Kaplan, a partial gift of the collector that
was acquired with additional funds by Riza Aziz. As promotion exec, Kaplan oversaw the design of the A Clockwork Orange poster and has assembled a wide-ranging collection with emphasis on modern design as opposed to nostalgia. Its core is the 1930s and 40s, and it is notable for European interpretations of Hollywood films.
Movie posters are rarer than they might seem, especially in a city where every staged home
for sale has framed reproductions. Posters were mass-produced and quickly discarded. Many
of the Kaplan posters are unique survivals. You can see a slide show in this Los Angeles Times
piece from 2015 (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-ca-posters-on-filmturan-20150419-column.html).
Soga Shohaku, “Oxen and Shepherds” (left screen). Photo © 2016 Museum Associates/LACMA
Japanese art curator Robert Singer offered a two-screen painting by Soga Shohaku, Oxen and
Shepherds. Shohaku was an Edo-period painter who was considered to be eccentric, drunk, or
mad. Oxen and Shepherds is a fairly recent discovery and has been widely exhibited and
published in Japan during the past 15 years. Singer’s superlative-packed pitch to the collectors
identified Oxen and Shepherds as the most important painting he’s ever presented to the
committee; the only one that is already famous; a worthy companion to the completely different gold-ground Maruyama Okyo Cranes screens (http://blogs.artinfo.com/lacmonfire
/2013/01/16/lacma-lands-a-japanese-treasure/) acquired five years ago (as a gift from Camilla
Chandler Frost). Singer closed with the thought that the Miho Museum, “the Getty of Japan,” is
prepared to pay $5 million for Oxen and Shepherds, in the event that LACMA not buy it. The
Shohaku screens are already planned for a 2019 exhibition, “The Life of Animals in Japanese
Art,” scheduled for DC and LA, and Singer was confident enough to preview PhotoShopped
museum banners featuring Oxen and Shepherds.
The 2016 committee acquired two American Pop sculptures: the Oldenberg, pitched by modern art department head Stephanie Barron, and Idelle Weber’s Jump Rope (1967-68), by American art curator Ilene Susan Fort.
Barron asked for a show of hands: How many have used a typewriter eraser is? This being
L.A., not many volunteered a flunking grade to that age test. Oldenburg’s soft-sculpture, just
over 21 inches high, is the unique original, kept by the artist for 46 years. It’s been editioned in
various sizes and media. One of the editioned sculptures recently sold for over $1 million, versus the $450,000 that LACMA had negotiated for the hand-made prototype.
Idelle Weber knew Oldenburg, and just about everyone else in 1960s NY. Not too many 21stcentury enthusiasts knew Weber until recently. A 2010 Brooklyn Museum show of women
Pop artists (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/arts/design/15women.html?_r=0) featured
Jump Rope along with Weber’s largest painting, Munchkins, I, II, & III (http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2013/09/30/chrysler-museum-acquires-original-mad-men-paintingby-neglected-pop-artist-idelle-weber/).
New York critics and bloggers noted that Weber’s black-and-white silhouettes of men in suits
were similar to the opening titles of Mad Men (“Does Matt Weiner Owe Idelle Weber Royalties?” (http://goldennotebooks.blogspot.com/2010/12/does-matt-weiner-owe-idelle-weber.html)) Weber thereby became a meme. Virginia’s Chrysler Museum bought
the Munchkins triptych, a painting of white guys in grayflannel suits, on escalators in
Manhat-tan’s Pan-Am Building.
Jump Rope is Weber’s only major silhouette sculpture. The use of plastic and neon invites
comparison to West Coast art of the 1960s. (Weber lived in Beverly Hills for much of her
youth.) As to the silhouette motif, Weber seems to have be influenced by 18th-century examples, and that in turn connects her to later artists like Lari Pittman and Kara Walker.
A hundred-plus artist’s videos from Electronic Arts Intermix, picked by LACMA’s contemporary
art department, gives historical ballast to the museum’s small collection of more recent
time-based art. It augments the Long Beach Museum of Art collection that is now at the Getty
Research Institute. The artist roster of the EAI set includes Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari,
Chris Burden, Joan Jonas, Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman, Tony Oursler, Nam June Paik, Martha
Rosler, Carolee Schneemann, William Wegman, Hannah Wilke, and many more.
The Latin American art department added a large Raising of the Cross (1718) by Antonio de
Torres, the painter of the Virgin of Guadalupe acquired in 2014 (http://
collections.lacma.org /node/1946260). It was commissioned for the Franciscan convent
church in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, then a mining boomtown with cultural aspirations.
It thereafter went to Spain and re-quired a Spanish export license to bring it back to Alta California.
As in past years, LACMA’s Islamic department has focused on contemporary art. Iranian artist
Siamak Filizadeh’s Underground is a series of 22 staged, digitally edited photographs riffing
on 19th-century Shah Nasir al-Din, assassinated in his jubilee year. Filizadeh consigns the
walking-dead monarch to a noir purgatory, conceived as a blend of Persian miniatures and
Pageant of the Masters. An earlier Filizadeh (http://collections.lacma.org/node/1190004) is
now on view in LACMA’s “Islamic Art Now.”
The one work offered to the 2016 committee but not purchased was a Eugène Delacroix floral
still life. The museum’s European painting and sculpture department had a surprise win in
2014 (Ingres’ nano-Odalisque), but no dice with this appealing painting by Ingres’
arch-frenemy.
There was no Collectors Committee meeting in 2015, as the museum was soliciting gifts for its
50th anniversary. This year’s $6.4 million compares with $4.1 million in 2014 and $3.2 million
in 2013. The diversity, seriousness, and adventurousness of the art acquired has increased
more than numbers can indicate.
Siamak Filizadeh, image from “Underground” © Siamak Filizadeh