Tim Hawkinson's Floopsia and Uberorgan and More at The Getty Museum

Went to the Getty Museum today to see work by Tim Hawkinson. We started with his Uberorgan in the main hall. We didn’t have long to wait for it’s hourly musical performance…it was very cool. It's a massive installation of things made from household materials -- huge bladders of plastic stitched into exquisitely goofy shapes, blowing air through cardboard tubes into horns, all driven by a large scroll of paper which runs through some electronic gizmos like giant rolls on a player piano, producing a wonderful cacophony of sounds for 5 minutes every hour. The museum staff loved it (well...maybe). We definitely loved it!

Then we went to see his other pieces -- collectively called Zoopsia -- which included a bat made of used black plastic Radio Shack bags, an octopus with suckers made from photographs of the artist's fingers, hands, and lips, and a very large calligraphic ink drawing of a Chinese style dragon painted on large brown paper and hung much like an eastern scroll painting. My favorite piece of his was called Leviathon, a large 'skeleton' of a fossil-like 'dinosaur,' only all the vertebrae were little men and the ribs were the oars in their hands as they rowed down his spine. The head was created from a folded over human figure. It was so clever and really beautiful.

Then we checked out the exhibition of Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère -- I've always loved this painting, but hadn't really, really looked at it before. Only when you really start studying it closely, does it become apparent that the reflection you see in the mirror behind the barmaid is impossible...which then leads to all kinds of questions. Like why does the mirror appear to be flat behind her, yet shows a reflection as if it were on an angle? Who is that man in the reflection -- he seems closer to her in the reflection than would even be possible if he were the viewer. These are just a few of the technicalities; psychologically, it's even more perplexing. Check out the Getty link above for a little more discussion of this by far better scholars than I.

We also looked at the European Drawings on view, a nice large show of Weston photos, and some very large, and disturbing photos of current world affairs by Luc Delahaye.