Spent more time in the modern art wing, which has giant stacks of plates, a giant video projection of a man moving his fingers while talking about moving his fingers, an observation deck that you can reach via a large elevator in a shaft filled with angry pop art and Orwell quotations, and this Nam June Paik video installation, Video Flag Z:
DC friends, Nam June Paik is the artist behind the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Electronic Superhighway, so seeing more of his work produced a nice, homey feeling.
But the real modern art party started with this motherfucker:
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| Metropolis II refuses to be contained in one shot. |
Metropolis II was completed last year by Chris Burden (he who created Urban Light, the forest of lampposts in front of LACMA) and eight assistants. It's basically a model train set for Hot Wheels as built by comic book artists of the sixties and seventies during an acid trip.
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| There is a Metropolis 1 somewhere. It's not like that prank where you release mole rats into an office building with "1", "2", and "4" painted on their sides. |
According to LACMA, "It includes eleven hundred custom-designed cars, eighteen highways, and a variety of architectural structures made of wood, glass, natural stone tiles, and other materials."
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| Metropolis II laughs at your efforts to photograph it. |
"The artist estimates that every hour, one hundred thousand cars circulate through Metropolis II, making it very much like a miniature Los Angeles."
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| This thing is just begging for a world-weary cop and a crooked museum trustee to have a climactic fistfight inside it. |
During my visit, whatever engine propels the miniature cars seemed to be turned off. Traffic along the eighteen highways was at an utter standstill, making it very much like a miniature Los Angeles at rush hour.
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