Megan took Seda, Bektaş, and me on a fantastic tour in downtown LA, mostly to places I had never been before. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos ’cause I still hadn’t repaired my phone and Ferda didn’t join us (I often poach her photos).
From Pershing Square we went to the Biltmore Hotel with its ornate entrance and fountain. Check out the griffons with fake boobs on the banisters. Almost next door is the Perla hotel which has an atrium with Moroccan arches. Downstairs the toilets are in the old bank vault. Both hotels have notable ceilings. The Apple Store in the theater district is in a restored old theater — beautiful ceilings, old iron work, some Ottoman/Islamic-like drinking fountains. Fantastic. My favorite was the Bradbury building with ironwork reminding me of Eiffel (in Orizaba and Paris) and National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The Bradbury building predates all of those, built in the last decade of the 19th century.
Other stops on the tour felt more like the typical tourist itinerary, maybe ’cause Megan had taken me before — Grand Central Market, Angel’s Flight, LA Public Library (check out the rotunda and the murals in the children’s section), Walt Disney Concert Hall.
Oh wait, I do have a photo taken at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in the Blue Ribbon Garden (from a visit with my Dad to an actual concert!). This piece by Frank Gehry, called A Rose for Lilly, is made with broken pieces of Delftware. It’s a tribute to Walt Disney’s wife, Lillian Disney, who loved both roses and Royal Delft Porcelain — though 200 vases were shattered to make the rose and fountain!
An LA view from the Blue Ribbon Garden:
I have some more LA artwork. At the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery:
Nearby Ferda and I found a yummy Thai place for lunch
and then visited Saint Garabed Armenian Apostolic Church in an area known as Little Armenia.
Wait, wait, back to artwork. A Japanese woodblock in Pomona:
and then at Scripps College in nearby Claremont works by Ramos Martínez. Ramos Martínez’s unfinished mural Las Vendedoras de Flores can be seen on the Scripps campus in the Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden.
We timed our visit to attend a lecture by Pomona professor Rosalía Romero who questioned why Ramos Martínez did not get into anarchism like contemporaries Rivera and Siqueiros … or did he? An adjacent exhibit displayed some recently discovered (in a family home) works by Ramos Martínez. For a supposedly apolitical artist this looks, well, political.
Finally, Los Angeles’ only UNESCO World Heritage Site: Hollyhock House.
After my fourth and final visit to the Chinese consulate to pick up my passport (with a visa this time!), Ferda and I drove to Barnsdall Art Park at Olive Hill. That’s where we find Aline Barnsdall’s Hollyhock House. She’s commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design and build the house but was frustrated because he took so long. I think he was in Japan working on the Imperial Hotel (which has now been torn down).
The courtyard is supposed to resemble a pyramid at Palenque.
The stylized hollyhock (a flower Aline loved) that we see all over the place is supposed to resemble a Mayan motif.
A couple of those rooms (above) have what look to me like Japanese screens? And here in the library, though lacking a scroll, is a tokonoma? Remember your Paul Varley?
A highly recommended visit. As I’ve said before, UNESCO rarely disappoints.
Let’s leave LA with clear blue smog-free skies.
