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Art in the Desert 2 Selected artworks from the Desert-X Biennale

Desert-X is a biennale of site-specific art installations in the desert, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles, spread over a large area in the Coachella Valley, about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. The 2025 edition, its fifth, exhibited several artists from different parts of the world. The following is a selection we made, best visualized in the short documentary included here.

Sarah Meyohas’s installation,  Truth Arrives in Slanted Beams, immediately caught our attention,. The fluid serpentine form of the sculpture relates to the context with an architectural quality. Following some research on this young artist, I realized that she is an original thinker. The range of the media in which she works includes photography, film, holography and artificial intelligence.

For the preview presentation, she brought a dance company from Los Angeles, Jacob Jonas, that performed in synchronization with Meyohas work. These two works, the installation and the dancing group, respectively, reminded me the works of two Israeli artists: sculptor Dani Karavan and choreographer Ohad Naharin (Mr. Gaga.)

On the opposite side of Meyohas’s freshness, was the Hungarian American environmental artist and writer Agnes Denes, 94.  She had been ahead of her time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the principles of the Land Art movement were established. Here, in desert, she used the iconic form of a pyramid, titled The Living Pyramide, to express the life cycle of native vegetation.

Architect-artist Ronal Rael’s work Adobe Oasis built zigzagging walls entirely of mud, using a 3D printer and robotic programming. This approach could be meaningful for the future of architecture in many parts of the world.

Swiss artist Raphael Hefti’s Five things you can’t wear on TV brings the effects of great distance to proximity. The oscillating line blurs our sense of spatial perception, scale and distance and resonates with the surrounding landscape.

Alison Saar is an LA artist who created Soul Service Station, which was inspired by gas stations around the country.

Jose Davila’s made this installation, The act of being together, out of large marble blocks extracted from a quarry a few hundred miles across the U.S- Mexico border.

Canuupa Hanska Luger created G.H.O.S.T. Ride, an installation meant to house a family from an unknown time.

Into LA Art Show A Choice of Artworks


The La Show of 2025 was the best of its genre that we have seen in years. We noticed a rise in the general quality of the art exhibited.

Poster

The short documentary included here shows the works of a few artists of which we knew nothing about before our visit.

The work that immediately caught my attention was “The Birth of the Niamand,” by Slovak artist Viktor Frešo, presented by the Danubiana Museum in Bratislava, Slovakia. I was also unaware of this institution’s existence. I was lucky to meet Frešo at the site. Although he seemed reclusive, he agreed to make a short statement on camera.

There were other uplifting surprises. “The Journey,” by Guillermo Bert, showed 20 highly detailed, life-sized laser-cut wood sculptures honoring an army of immigrant heroes.

The Journey

The discovery of video sculptures by the Swiss artist Marck reminded me of Bill Viola’s work. Marck’s work is striking, particularly the one named “Black Hair,” which shows a woman whose hair is fuming.

Black Hair

Another surprise were the images created without using a camera through text-to-image AI software. Jerry Weber creates compelling images that hover between abstraction and reality.

Three works by four Argentinean artists were remarkable: a 120-foot long textile that commemorates LGBTQ communities by the duo Leo Chiachio and Daniel Giannone; Cristian Castro’s 27 dee-sea robotic fishes made out of discarded components to remind us of ocean pollution; and Luciana Abait, large-scale “Agua / Water”, a projected waterfall to foster a poetic awareness of water as a sacred resource for humanity, some details of which shows as a background to the credits in my film.

I found creative humor in the work of two artists: Farad Harouni’s “Lips” and Antuan Rodriguez’s interactive installation of punching bags.

Two contrasting artworks in painting were Walter Erra Hubert’s multi-layered abstractions and German artist Anton Hoager’s “Stop Smearing,” a skillfully painted work of social criticism.

Carol Bodlander brings a narrative that blends elements of classical mythology, astronomy, and indigenous wisdom traditions.

Our selection included the Korean artists Han Ho, who made a massive nine-part multi-media panel inspired by Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, and Anese Eun Cho, who created playful designs.

An additional surprise was to meet Marisa Caichiolo, a curator of several of the works exhibited. After a brief conversation, we realized that we have common friends. Caichiolo is the founder of Building Bridges International Art Foundation, conceived to be a platform for critical thinking and researching.

Marisa Caichiolo

An Ingenuous Mini-Farm Permaculture at La Source Dorée, France

An Ingenious Mini-Farm from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

An Ingenious Mini-Farm

La Source Dorée is an ingenious mini-farm. The key to understanding it is coupling these two adjectives: ingenious and mini-farm. It is ingenious because it is complex and multi-layered. It includes cultivating under permaculture principles and functions as educational, commercial, food services, and accommodation facilities. It is ingenious because it can do more with less and because it assumes responsibility for global sustainability. In other words, it is a tangible model for the future.

Aerial view of La Source Dorée

In the early 2000s, Nathalie and Philippe Gaillet-Boidin, then deeply immersed in the world of large international enterprises, embarked on a transformative journey in 2009. They purchased 7 hectares (about 17 acres) of land 30 km (about 18 miles) west of Lyon, and transformed it into a farm dedicated to biodiversity preservation. Their inspiration came from the renowned Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher, and biologist Bill Mollison (1928-2016). 

Our journey to La Source Dorée was a serendipitous one. We stumbled upon it online while still in L.A., shortly before embarking on a zigzagging 1,500 km between Bordeaux and Lyon. Our lifelong friend Bernard Légé had meticulously planned the trip “through the heart of France” together with his wife, Catherine. It included long walks through historic sites and nature, diving in a river 100 meters below the ground, works of contemporary architecture designed by noted architects, and museum visits. When we discovered La Source Dorée as a farm based on permaculture, we were immediately intrigued and decided to add it to our itinerary.

Thirty-mile distance to from Lyon to La Source Dorée

It was early Fall, and rain was to be expected. When we arrived, it was drizzling. Greeted by Nathalie Gaillet-Boidin, the farm’s co-founder, she guided us throughout the whole place, expressing herself with both knowledge and passion. Her references to physicist and philosopher Aurélien Barrau and Arthur Keller, a specialist in systemic thinking, added a dimension to our consciousness of the Earth’s present and future problems. In mentioning Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si, “Praised Be,” the most comprehensive Vatican document on environmentalism, she told us about her permaculture-related involvement with the monastery Sainte Marie de la Tourette, designed by architect Le Corbusier.

Nathalie Gaillet-Boidin with Bernard Légé and Ruth Meghiddo

Another example of Nathalie Gaillet-Boidin’s understanding of basics was her question, “What is the origin of chickens? What is its natural biotope?” Understanding that the chicken is a descendant of the Southeast Asian red jungle fowl from the Indonesial islands, she tried to recreate a natural environment by planting trees around the hen.

The farm, with eight vegetable zones, each different from the other, with small and large fruit trees, with an animal meadow, and with an area for aromatic and medical plants, is not just a self-contained ecosystem. It exemplifies the innovative and sustainable farming practices at La Source Dorée.

At the eight vegetable zones

This ingenious mini-farm can be seen as a beacon of hope for urban farming, as Ruth envisioned it in a different context. Sustainable agriculture can thrive amid living neighborhoods, commercial and industrial areas, and college campuses. The farm’s innovative approach has left this potential for community development. 

Urban Farm

An Ingenious Mini-Farm – TRAILER from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

A Permaculture Path Working with Nature, Searching for Regenerative Solutions

The message of the seventeen-minute short documentary A Permaculture Path goes beyond what it shows. It implies sustainability, community, confronting climate change, and finding regenerative solutions to complex environmental challenges.

A Permaculture Path – TRAILER from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

Many cities have already acknowledged the need for urban farming. It is not just about creating community gardens. It is about planning with a broad scope to grow food close to where people live and work.

Permaculture design is about creating edible ecosystems that include plants, forests, meadows, and animals. It looks at the whole, seeing what the connections are and how to make them work harmoniously. Importantly, it is about finding local solutions to global problems.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s approach to learning from nature led him to conceive, back in 1935, an agrarian alternative to a decentralized city. He named it Broadacre City. About twenty years later, in 1958, recognizing rapid population growth, he applied many of his principles to higher-density urbanization, stating that “city and country will be happily married.”

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacr City, 1935

Ruth Meghiddo’s path through nature evolved influenced by Wright’s principles of Organic Architecture and later turned into permaculture design, after discovering the work and philosophy of Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher, and biologist, Bill Mollison.

Some of these ideas were illustrated in several films we produced throughout the last decade. This latest one condenses segments of some and brings up newer ideas about urban farming design.

A Permaculture Path from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

Art for Everyone? Keith Haring at The Broad

The documentary “Art for Everyone? – Keith Haring at The Broad” illustrates the largest solo exhibition of his work in Los Angeles. The film’s title question mark tries to bring attention to the misconception that his art is simple; it is not. Haring’s work is very complex. His commitment to a free and happy life is only understandable against his concepts of power and threat, death and deliverance, religion, sexuality, heaven, and hell. These subjects do not appear in isolation from each other but interact and almost inevitably overlap one another.

Keith Allen Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990) was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the subculture of the 1980s, particularly in New York. Why does his work remain so popular over three decades after his death at thirty-one? His art, instantly recognizable, is everywhere in garments of easy consumption. It is simple and cheerful: radiant babies, barking dogs, hearts, and a three-eyed smiling face.

His stated goal was to create art that was accessible to all beyond the walls of museums and galleries. He wrote a manifesto-cum-self-definition that included the words: “The public has a right to art/The public is being ignored by most contemporary artists/Art is for everybody.”

This premise was not new. In the early 1600s, Caravaggio broke dependence on commissions from the church, which dictated themes and censored results. He opened the road of individualism. Mexican muralists such as Siqueiros and Diego Rivera strove to create public art. The Communists used art to convey ideological propaganda, and Roy Lichtenstein made large-scale public art on popular subjects consumed by the public.

 

There are several reasons for Keith Haring’s continuous success in the 2020s. The sexuality of his paintings relates to openness towards LGBTQ. The apparent simplicity appeals to people with a short span of attention. His figures lack discernable ages, races, or identities. Their vitality and joy speak to people of all ages, all backgrounds.

Keith Haring at Pop Shop, 1986

Art for Everybody? from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

Israel 75 Israel Multi-layered Complexity: People, Environment, Architecture.

ISRAEL 75 from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

Israel 75 Card

The State of Israel is seventy-five years old. The Jewish nationhood celebrates the rebirth of the People of the Book’s physical, spiritual, and political sovereignty, based on secular principles of freedom and equality of justice for all.

This event happens while there is turmoil within and without Israel. From within, democracy is in peril. Its check and balance laws are under attack. From the outside, Israel must confront viral anti-Semitism (frequently masquerading as anti-Zionism) and a conspiracy of delegitimization.

The short documentary accompanying this blog tries to give an idea of Israel’s multi-layered complexity. As an architect, my observations mostly look at the environment, the diversity of people, and some selected works of architecture.

The Land of Israel remains subjected to two truthful and mutually contradictory narratives. The Jewish narrative relates to its ancient history, to the Land of Israel, to Hebrew as a spoken language, to multi-cultural traditions, to dispossession, persecution, massacres, and reemergence.

The Arab narrative tells of its prolonged residence in the land that the Romans renamed “Palestine” to erase the memory of the Jews’ presence, sovereignty, and attachment to Judea. They referred to it as “Judea Capta,” captured Judea.

For real peace to be possible, both narratives must learn to tolerate and internalize the other side’s narrative. This will need education on both sides, and it will take, most likely, several

Art in the Desert Site-specific Art Biennale in the Coachella Valley Desert

Desert-X Howl from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

The relevance of the 2023 Desert X Biennale goes beyond the exhibition of site-specific artworks by emerging artists; their input is spread across an arc of over twenty miles. This action raises our territorial consciousness of art relating to the environment.

Art in the Desert

Land Art artists such as Robert Smithson, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and Arakawa & Gins, have related to the natural and the built environment with large-scale interventions. In Desert-X an entire area is a stage for individual artists, each approaching the surrounding environment differently.

Susan Davis founded Desert X six years ago and is its director. This fourth edition was co-curated by Neville Wakefield and Diana Campbell, who presented twelve artists from Europe, North America, and South Asia. No one imposed a theme on them.

Area of Desert X artwork’ location.

Rana Begum’s (No.1225 Chain-link) is a London-based artist from Bangladesh. She created a chain link maze-like series of concentric rings inspired by the surrounding mountains. This work is engaging; it is a metaphor for chain links’ positive and negative uses. The yellow color emphasizes the positive. 

Torkwase Dyson (liquid a Place) created a monumental sculpture that is a poetic meditation connecting the memory of water in the body and the memory of the water in the desert. Her abstract work contrasts built and natural scale.

Mario Garcia Torres (Searching for the Sky while Maintaining Equilibrium) gets his inspiration from bulls’ movements and rodeo riders trying to maintain balance. The setting of these mechanical sculptures brings art-related technology to the desert.  

Matt Johnson’s odalisque-inspired (Sleeping Beauty) assembling of shipping containers framed by a railway and a freeway represents a criticism of movement-globalization of goods. Its architectural scale produces a strong statement.

Gerald Clark transforms a traditional Cahuilla basket {Immersion) into a giant game board, using didactical cards of his creation. According to the game rules, somebody can only reach the center by answering correctly questions relating to the traditions and histories of the Cahuilla Indians. 

Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser (Hylozoic/Desires – Namak Nazar) is a sound sculpture in the form of a salt-encrusted telephone pole equipped with loudspeakers, resembling a flowering cactus. The speakers broadcast the voice of Himali Singh Soin’s poetic declamation.

Lauren Bon, the creator of the Metabolic Studios in Los Angeles, is an artist who works with architecture, performance, photography, sound, and farming, to create urban, public, and land art projects to galvanize social and political transformation. Here she creates an object (The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart) that represents a Blue Whale’s heart.

Paloma Contreras Lomas (Amar a Dios en Tierra de Indios, Es Oficio Maternal) addresses topics such as patriarchy, violence, class segregation, colonial guilt, and middle-class identity with humor.  An absurd array of tangled limbs of two mysterious characters wearing long hats sprawl out of the car and onto the site’s pristine, manicured grounds.

Tschabalala Self (Pioneer) sculpture focuses on the foremothers, the largely unidentified Native and African American women whose bodies and labor allowed for American expansionism and growth. It visually represents their birthright and place within the American landscape.

Héctor Zamora’s (Chimera) is a performative action in collaboration with street vendors who are omnipresent in the Coachella Valley but often invisible in the landscape. The artist’s work provides opportunities to use materials differently, in this case transforming street vendors into walking sculptures made of balloons. 

Tyre D. Nichols died in January of 2023 after police beat him following a traffic stop in Memphis. The billboards is a tribute to his aspiring photography. This makes a strong statement in direct contrast with the commercial use of billboards and the impact of a freeway on the desert.

Marina Tabassum’sTabassum’s Khudi Bari (Khudi Bari, Bengali for ”Tiny House”) is a Bangladeshi architect who created a prefabricated house that is easy to assemble and disassemble, ideal for building in areas that are likely to be flooded. 

Desert X is an excellent example of the input of many artists, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Looking at its geographic scale stimulates our imagination for future invention.

Rethinking Symbolism Takashi Murakami + This Is Not America’s Flag at the Broad

Rethinking Symbols from Rick Meghiddo on Vimeo.

The “Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow” and “This Is Not America’s Flag” combined exhibitions at the Broad bring us the power of symbolism and its interpretations through multiple artists and evolving cultures. Muramaki uses “augmented reality” to express trauma and disaster. The artists featured in “This Is Not America’s Flag” challenge the meaning of patriotism and one of its main symbols, the American flag.

The Octopus Eat6s Its Own Leg

 The curator of Murakami’s works is Ed Schad, whose extraordinarily well-curated exhibitions on Jasper Johns and Shirin Neshat I have covered. Sarah Loyer, the young curator of “This Is Not America’s Flag,” successfully orchestrates an ensemble of disparate artists, from Jasper Johns to Alfredo Jaar, to Vito Acconci, to Wendy Red Star. What is extraordinary about this double-feature show is that the two contrasting exhibitions blend seamlessly. Although each one could have a stand-alone in its own right, the synergetic togetherness demonstrates that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow

 Murakami’s work is powerful, whether he expresses himself at the scale of In the Land of the Dead, Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow, 984 x 118 inches (2500 x 300 cm), or in My arms and legs rot off, and though my blood rushes forth, the tranquility of my heart shall be prized above all. (Red blood, black blood, blood that is not blood), 32 x 27 in (83 x 70 cm,) or humorously is the Nurse Ko2 “ overly-sexualized” female nurse, a distant cousin of America’s Barbie Doll.

 

The “Not America’s Flag” exhibition holds its power as a whole. Although Jasper John’s Flag is a heavyweight, it is the multiple interpretations under one roof that forces us to rethink symbols at a time when “The Big Lie” is followed by 35 percent of Americans and over 80 percent of Russians approve of Putin’s war.

 

Watching on livestream Muramaki’s conversation with Etsuko Price (1) at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Los Angeles was instructive. Although known for his eccentric exhibitionism, listening to what he says (through translation) helps get into his mind and better understand the complexity of his multi-layered architectural thinking.

 

Note (1) During our trip to visit and photograph Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower, I visited Joe and Etsuko Price at their house and gallery in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. The house’s architect, Bruce Goff, was there (some of our photos can be seen in https://archidocu.com/sideways-1971/ scrolling down to BARTLESVILLE, OKLAHOMA.)  

Takashi Muramaki in conversation with Etsuko Price, Japan House, Los Angeles, May 20, 2022

 

L.A.’s New Icon Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences

Los Angeles has a new icon: the spherical Geffen Theater, a state-of-the-art place for film projections designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano. It is part of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, inaugurated last September.

 

The City of Angels is not short of icons, but few have visual clarity. The most explicit are the Theme Building at LAX, the Hollywood Sign, the Watts Towers, and the Disney Hall. To these, the Geffen Theater marks a significant addition. It becomes even more important because it is linked to the adaptive reuse of the May Company Building of 1939, now renamed the Saban Building.

 

The Geffen Theater, a concrete-and-glass sphere -150 feet in diameter – on the north side of the museum, seems to be suspended in space like a spaceship from another planet that just landed. It was first called “Death Star,” like the space station and galactic superweapon featured in Star Wars. Piano detests that label! He suggests “Dirigible,” “Zeppelin,” “Spaceship,’ “Flying Vessel,” “Soap Bubble.” I would call it “The Geffen Sphere.” Geffen means grapevine in Hebrew. The theater’s shape relates to the spherical grapes that produce the human finest drink, wine.

 

Context

Museum’s context: building, art

The museum is amid eclectic surroundings. The neighboring Pavilion of Japanese Art, designed by Bruce Goff and realized by Bart Prince, is the jewel of the lot. But there are others. The functional yet not exiting Resnik Pavilion, also designed by Piano; Michel Heizer’s “Levitated Mass,” intended to be a “large-scale” 340-ton granite megalith that in reality will remain minuscule in relation to the surroundings; across the Saban Building, the exhibitionist Petersen Automotive Museum red box structure wrapped in a series of convulsing steel ribbons; the now-under-construction $750-million LACMA Museum expansion, designed by another Pritzker Prize-winning architect, Peter Zumthor; and further away, the La Brea Tar Pits Park and Museum define a prehistoric area in total contrast to the Geffen Sphere’s modernity.

 

Some Details

 

The new 300,000 square-foot new museum includes 250,000 square-foot exhibition areas, the 288-seat Ted Mann Theater, the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater, and the cascading glass-covered Dolby Family Terrace, where guests have stunning views of the LA skyline and the Hollywood Hills. Additional uses include the Shirley Temple Education Studio, the Debbie Reynolds Conservation Studio, the Fanny’s restaurant and café, and the Academy Museum Store.

 

The museum Director and President, Bill Kramer, was pivotal in the puzzle of coordinating the design team. It included Renzo Piano Building Workshop, executive architect Gensler, preservation architect John Fidler, structural engineers Buro Happold, general contractor MATT, and the exhibition’s designer, Kulapat Yantrasast, from Thailand, founder of the LA-based firm wHY. Yantrasast worked closely with Academy representatives and more than a dozen curators. They wrangled the Academy’s extensive array of film artifacts and memorabilia into immersive experiences rich with diverse narratives.

 Piano stripped the former May Co. department store to its bones. Then he created an atrium that contains the escalators and the elevators. A glass curtain wall entirely replaced the north façade of the Saban Building. The two parts of the building are connected by filigree steel-glass bridges. The bridges consist of glass roofs and parapet glazing. The museum’s massive, 690-panel theater is supported by four columns with seismic isolators and can move freely up to in an earthquake. The Geffen Sphere is covered by a steel-glass dome that has been manufactured and installed by the German firm Gartner.

 

“The idea of the sphere,” says RPBW project architect Jonathan Jones, “was to create an otherworldly object that transports you, as movies do.” With most of its form hovering above a pedestrian plaza, the sphere was envisioned, explains RPBW partner Luigi Priano, “almost like a spaceship—levitating above the ground, as if ready to take off as soon as the movie starts.”

 

Unlike many famous architects, past and present, Renzo Piano is not a mannerist of his style. He confronts projects open-mindedly, relating to the surroundings in many different ways. In the building that made him famous, the Pompidou Center, Piano and his British partner, Richard Rogers, approached the Parisian project through total contrast. On the other extreme, at The Fondation Jerôme Seydoux-Pathé, he developed the building inconspicuously, behind an entrance made by young August Rodin. In my film As We Saw It- Paris Builds, you may appreciate the contrast between this poetic project and Paris’ new huge Palais de Justice.

 

Beyond becoming a new icon in Los Angeles, the Geffen Sphere is a new landmark of architecture from now on.

The Wende A Museum of Art and Culture Behind the Iron Curtain

The Wende Museum is a unique depository of memories from the Eastern European countries beyond the Iron Curtain that endured Communism-labeled fascism during the Cold War. It is dedicated to preserving this period’s art, culture, and stories.

West and East Europe divided by the Curtain Wall

When my friend Elisa Leonelli sent me a recent article she wrote about her visits to The Wende, we followed after her steps. It was quite a surprise. We found very appealing both the museum’s content and the space that architect Christian Kienapfel of Paravant Architects created within Culver City’s old National Guard Armory.

Engels, Mark, Lenin, Stalin

 

Bust of Lenin, Istaravshan, Tajikistan, 1965

The Cold War era started with the end of World War II and ended with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It was a conflict between American-led democratic capitalism and Russian-led Communism. It includes the atrocities committed by Stalin and the Gulag it created; it includes Russia’s invasion of Hungary and the Prague Spring’s crashing; and it also includes the obsessive period of McCarthyism that contributed to a distorted view of socialism.

The Wende Museum (wende in German means in English, “change, turning point”) is the brainchild of Justinian Jampol, its founder and director. It raises awareness to the world behind the Iron Curtain. Arts and artifacts, censured literature and publications, and human stories about everyday life can now be seen, read about, and listened to. The artifacts exhibited in the 13,000 square foot space are only a fraction of the collection, which is more geared to educate and entice curiosity rather than to enshrine masterpieces. Segal Shuart Landscape Architects designed a pleasant rear garden to accommodate outdoor events.

My personal experience with the subject is indirect. I heard stories from Ruth, who spent her teens in Communist Romania. While we were students in Rome, we befriended Romanian artist Ion Nicodim, who in 1963 made a tapestry, Ode to Man, (approximately 32 x 15 feet) that was donated by the Romanian government to the United Nations. We traveled throughout Romania during Ceaușescu’s regime and felt the oppression in the air. In 1976 we visited then Berlin divided Berlin. Years later, in 2018, we made two documentaries in the unified city.

Ode to Man, by Ian Nicodim, 1963

The film included in this article brings some visuals of paintings, murals, and monumental sculptures from that period (such as GDR’s painters Heinz Drache and Willi Sitte,) and also artworks by some Eastern European contemporary artists that became famous in the West, such as Christo and Marina Abramović, and younger ones still living in those countries, such as Pazza Pennello (Kyiv, Ukraine,) Jana Želibská (Bratislava, Slovakia,) and Ewa Juszkiewicz (Warsaw, Poland.)

The Wende Museum is an inducement not only to learn about a recent past but also to us warn about the dangers of fascist movements at the present time.

The Kiss – leonid brezhnev and Enrich Honecker, 2009, Berlin Wall

The Ford in Hollywood Theater Setting as a Hidden Treasure

When you go to the Long Beach Opera, expect the unexpected. The program fitted our expectations: Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar (2012.), an all-women performance. Jenny Wong directed the music, the choreography was directed by Danielle Agami, and the singing was by soprano Laurel Irena. Yet the greatest surprise was its staging at The Ford Theater by the Cahuenga Pass, next door to the Hollywood Hall.

The Ford is, since its renovation, a hidden treasure, a cultural gem, one of the best-kept architectural secrets of Los Angeles.

The Holywood Bowl and The Ford Theater

In 1918, Christine Wetherill Stevenson (1878-1922) bought a 60-acre land known as Daisy Dell, including the Hollywood Bowl area. An amphitheater was built in 1920 as a venue for the religious-themed Pilgrimage Play. In 1929 a fire destroyed the original theater, and in 1931 a new one was built made of cast concrete to resemble the ancient architecture of the Holy Land. In 1952 the Pilgrimage Theater closed for two years due to the construction of the Hollywood Freeway. It came to a final close in 1964.

Following popular periodical productions, including rock band performances, an extensive renovation started in 2014, designed by architect Brenda Levin and landscape architect Mia Lehrer. The renovation was dedicated in 2017. In 2019 the theater’s operation was transferred to the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

The Ford’s 1,200-seat setting is unique, not only by comparison to the nearby 17,500-seat Hollywood Bowl but also to classical amphitheaters. The Greek amphitheater was conceived to have a natural horizon behind the stage. The Roman amphitheater had its stage built, and therefore could more easily adapt to urban environments. What is unique at The Ford is that nature beyond the stage is steeply uphill, a background of a different character than historical precedents.

The picnics areas are also very different than the ones at the Bowl; their terracing makes them humanly scaled, more intimate.

The project faced many challenges. First and foremost, a lot of water flows off that hillside. One of the deferred maintenance problems was the infiltration of water into the theater. There was also needed to stabilize the hillside. Acoustics was a significant issue, considering the proximity of the Hollywood Freeway.

Besides its design qualities, The Ford’s renovation stresses the importance of the relationship between a building and its setting on the land.

Spring 21 & Mumuki Plants, Planting and Piazzolla Music

My short documentary “Spring 2021 & Mumuki” is about plants and planting;

it is about growth, renewal, decay, and death;

it is about being in touch with the land;

it is about Astor Piazzolla’s “Mumuki;”

In the early afternoon of June 3, Ruth asked me to accompany her to the site of a yet-to-be-built permaculture master plan she designed. I said OK. I had no agenda, but I took the Go Pro 6 and the Lumix with me, just in case.

We crossed the recently completed Gateway Bridge over the Long Beach-Los Angeles harbor and reached the site in San Pedro. The contrast with the bridge’s high-tech and 10,000-year-old agriculture was striking. While Ruth helped Peter Rothe, a designer, with his planting, I wandered around.

During the weeks since the completion of “Piazzolla Con Brio,” I have been reading Maria Susana Azzi and Simon Collier’s excellent biography of Piazzolla. In it, the composition “Mumuki” is mentioned, which I didn’t know. It sounded Japanese. I went to listen to it. It touched me deeply, differently than other of Piazzolla’s works.

Mumuki was a term of endearment that Piazzolla applied both to his wife, Laura and to one of his dogs, Flora. It is relatively unusual for a work composed for quintet in that the bandoneón is silent during the first three and a half minutes as the beautiful melodic lines are passed between guitar, violin, piano, and bass. When I started to edit the film, I thought of bringing Mumuki into it.

I don’t know what Piazzola may have been thinking or feeling when he composed it. I am sure that it was nothing remotely close to my images, but I felt a link, a kinship. I included it entirely. Mea Culpa.

You may watch two videos of Mumuki’s performances:

  1. By Piazzolla’s Quinteto Nuevo Tango, recorded in 1984:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXjmKmxeuiY

  1. By Pablo Ziegler’s Ensamble, with Karen Gomyo at the violin, recorded in 2012:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK18SiLa24I

Works by Astor Piazzolla:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astor_Piazzolla#Work