“What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear fine clothes are in kings’ palaces.

Then what did you go out to see?”

As I stared out at the highway coming from Hollywood Burbank airport, I could not help but draw on this passage. When Jesus first spoke these words, it was toward a crowd of Jews seeking teaching and healing. Finally standing in the desert city, the City of Angels, I now believed this question was being asked of me, but also of the city itself.

This metropolis was built on sunshine and dreams. It is hydrated through an artificial river which reaches its 4 million inhabitants. It is the birthplace of the hardboiled noir genre and NWA, yet also houses museums of Picasso and Renaissance art. It’s the home of Hollywood and Skid Row, the Watts Riots and, this weekend, the Golden Globes. Kings’ palaces of Beverly Hills, and roughly 31,000 homeless individuals [1] in the city proper. So, as I come to Los Angeles for three weeks to look at art, I too find myself being thrust with the question, “why have I come to the wilderness?” Am I any more than a voyeur or, even worse, a tourist? Well, here’s to hoping I find out . . .

My name is Daniel Roberts, and I am a theology major at Whitworth University studying LA as a domain of the arts.

Watts Towers: Our Town, Rodia’s Big Dream

This first weekend our class focused on the visual arts, going first to Watts Towers, then the Getty Museum complex, and finally Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The obvious question we are asking is first and foremost, “what is art,” with the less obvious questions of, “how does a place interact with the art that is being created there,” and “who is labelling what art (and what gives them the right to do so)?”

After visiting Watts Towers, these questions became very prominent and personal for me. Though I have been raised in a white, middle-class, Christian household, I am drawn toward the low-places and subculture groups. I prefer a $10 show at a local venue to $200 concerts and feel very uncomfortable going to fancy dinners to receive awards from Spokane’s elites (something I have had to do). I have gone to a few symphonies and even an opera; I don’t mind highbrow church or art, just not necessarily highbrow culture.

As for what art is to me, art is evocative of the human experience, whether personal or corporate. So to go into the heart of LA to the labor district of Watts and see the handicraft of Simon Rodia was truly something special. To me it is the story of America, a personal “American Dream” actualized.

What makes an Italian-immigrant-day-laborer erect 99-foot-high structures for 34 years in his yard using an Italian mosaic method to build “Nuestro Pueblo” – our town, out of Canada Dry cans and seashells and discarded plates? It is transposing one town and culture onto another, from Italy to California; that has been the American ideal for years, to create something big out west. I normally don’t hold much hope for that American Dream, but that’s what Simon Rodia did: in his own words, “I wanted to do something big and I did it.” I can’t argue with that, and the craftsmanship is a truly beautiful thing to behold. Art made by the community for the community. Across the street we hung out at the Watts Studio Garden and spontaneously met Carlos Spivey, a local Watts artist who has made award-winning single-cell animation videos and other artworks. He was laying his own mosaics down on nets, chipping at the tile, pinching it with pliers; we were given “Garden Gazettes,” which contained information on planting and how to make grout for our own mosaics. As for Spivey, we had already seen some of his artworks: a mosaic across the street from the Watts Towers, “the ducks,” lines the sidewalks. We did not really get a chance to talk about his experience about a Los Angeles artist, but he was pleasant enough to talk to for five minutes.[2]

The Getty and LACMA: How the Rich Make the Dead Speak, How the Dead Make the Rich Listen

Van Gogh. Monet. Rembrandt. Cubism. Expressionism. Impressionism. Picasso, Pollack.

Suddenly I understand what being evangelized to must feel like.

I am out of my depth, out of my understanding and almost defensive. I mean, what can a bunch of dead guys tell me about life that I don’t already know? What can they know about my struggles, hurts, pains, dreams, and longings? How can dead men speak louder than the living, and why the hell would I want to listen?

 . . . I love movies, stories, and words, but visual art and paintings can be enigmatic to me.[3] Especially the classical paintings. I prefer art loud and raw and making statements; I listen to metal and Latin jazz with equal fervor and architecture is something I think I could appreciate. What I am getting at is that subtlety is not my strong suit, so looking at muted paintings focusing on structure, form, and mythological symbolism for a few hours was a little intimidating and uncomfortable; I was looking at a statement of meaning I had no key for. That is, except for sex and violence: those are pretty easy to understand. A few video essays on “how to look at paintings” later, though, and I feel more competant.

As opposed to Watts, the Getty is far removed, literally overlooking the city of Los Angeles. It is stunning, with modern architecture weaving with ancient-appearing limestone structures, an artificial stream running across neatly placed stones to a pond and botanical garden with harmoniously arranged hedges. Stunning is its purpose. Yet I also couldn’t help feel like the place was self-aware, like every facet of its designed beauty was meant to make me feel in awe as I ride up a tram to a complex of buildings, this mountaintop fortress, to look at Marie Antoinette’s Japanese Lacquer and examine the history of Renaissance Nudes.

Though I enjoyed the Getty and being in a museum of its scale, I felt subtly patronized, as if the museum were a sovereign speaking of his own benevolence to redundancy.

LACMA was somewhat different because it felt more part of the city; we rode a city bus to get to it, and it is surrounded by other cultural centers within Los Angeles. The tar pits were just down the street, and further down was a Staples, an everyday business. Museums curating art as buildings are the epitome of how setting alters how art is experienced. They are a lot like churches in that respect; if you traded art for God and a community of believers, and LACMA felt more in-tune with the people surrounding it, even if, as I learned, the funding for it is mostly in private donors.

Resting Thoughts

At the close of this first weekend, I am left with the realization that art is a kind of forum for society. It is where we can go to shape how we think, to challenge us, to affront us with new possibilities while keeping old traditions alive. It is a place of advocacy and prophetic wisdom, as well as a place of celebration of life in community. It is all this and more. Therefore, just as the artist must ask herself ethical questions on the art she creates, the curator of art has ethical questions as a gatekeeper for art, culture, and thought. There is a civic duty for museums and curators, or any financial backer of art to be accessible and encourage thought and creativity, not just tickets; in a time of civic polarization and echo-chambers as a societal norm in the U.S., as well as continued isolationism, museums have an opportunity to be a public place for civic discourse and engagement, and yet I wonder how much museums like the Getty or LACMA take that into account. I wonder still how much the government or even taxpaying citizens pay attention to art as a part of society because of how much association it can have with class divisions, “highbrow” mentality and condescension. If this class journeys from a discussion about art to a discussion about civics, I would find myself greatly rewarded. Yet if not, I’m sure LA will continue to be a surprising wilderness to explore all the same.

[1] https://la.curbed.com/2018/5/31/17411054/los-angeles-homeless-count-2018-how-many

[2] For more on Carlos Spivey, visit https://www.wattstowers.org/carlos-spivey

[3] I know movies are visual and quasi-spatial, but they are also temporal like music, which is why I list them with stories and language.