EVENT #3: Hammer Museum

First time at the Hammer!

Living in the heart of Westwood, it is easy to visit the Hammer museum.  I viewed the current exhibitions: “Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible”, “James Welling: Monograph”, “Mark Leckey: On Pleasure Bent”, and the Armand Hammer Collection.  “Seeing Things Invisible” was an interesting exhibition to say the least, especially since I did not know what to expect when walking inside the room of an artist that I was not familiar with.  The paintings at first glance were very abstract, and very plain, with random dots or figures, compared to art that you would normally see and compared to the actual title and description of the artwork.  As you continue looking through the exhibit, you notice that Bess had created his own symbols, in which the viewer can decipher by a chart posted at the exhibit, that he incorporates in his artwork that represent different aspects of uniting males and females – their inter-sexuality – in my opinion, an unorthodox topic to base all of one’s artwork on.  Bess not only painted his visions, but also experimented on himself in terms of integrating genders.

One of Bess' pieces depicting streptococci; unfortunately, I was not
allowed by the staff to use my camera to take more photos ):

"Glass House" by Welling

Welling’s exhibition portrayed photographs, such as “Glass House” portraying Philip Johnson’s house and living space with sunlight shining through and overlapping filters of the images.  Leckey’s artwork was complete with an aspect of technology representing each piece.  Flashing, bright, colored lights and shadows dominated his pieces, which represented the effects that drugs have on the mind relative to what you see during the high.  The Armand Hammer Collection was very different than the modern art exhibitions that filled the rest of the museum.  This collection was filled with famous artists’ original paintings, such as those by Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Rembrandt, Edgar Degas, and others.  I believed that this was the most rewarding exhibit to view, because of the prior knowledge and exposure that I have of these famous artists, and the chance to see the actual well-known paintings by these people, which I thought was pretty cool!

Geometric shapes incorporates math in the art

Technology and art of Leckey's art

Van Gogh!