randomness from unbored hands: Zorn at LACMA, part 1

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Zorn at LACMA, part 1

Yesterday we made a trip to the LACMA for a special event - a series of small concerts performed by or written by John Zorn in the galleries throughout one of the buildings of the museum. Although the LACMA series already included 5 hours of music, it was just an appetizer for another few hours of music later in the day going on at UCLA until the early morning. Supposedly John Zorn hasn't performed in Los Angeles for about 25 years, so I suppose he tried to make the most of the day with his own marathon.

We arrived a little late, missing the first piece of music. Although I'm not an indiscriminate Zorn fan, there were some pieces as part of this series that I enjoyed. It seemed that this series of concerts was more popular than was maybe expected, and throughout the day things got more crazy and packed and at many points actually getting to see the musicians with my own 2 eyes was somewhat out of the question. As I'm apt to do though, I sometimes enjoyed the music in my own way from afar, wandering throughout surrounding galleries and picking up on bits of music that traveled and enjoying the sometimes relatively alone time. Although I wasn't getting the intended experience with the selected pieces of art, I enjoyed my own experience.

I like how the statue has nearly the same position as the completely unrelated painting. I also like the woman's expression in the painting.

Rembrandt Harmensz - The Raising of Lazarus & , Van Rijn - Portrait of Marten Looten; Jack Quartet performing "The Alchemist"

It was requested that no videos or photos were taken during the performances (Zorn's somewhat picky about this)... so I took photos before and after? I hope that follows the spirit well enough...

Setup for Claude Monet Nympheas, Kenny Wollesen & Carol Emanuel performing "The Gnostic Preludes".

I felt like the painting of the old man was equally appropriate for this music at times....

Ok, so this table at first was a little weird. It was just sitting on this little platform in the middle of a room. Then I started looking at it more closely and it was SO AWESOME! First of all, the little feet on the bottom are little turtles... Then I started looking at the surface more closely and realized it was a super tiny mosaic pieces (which is why I included this picture. Take note of the size of the table and the relative size of the images on top before looking at the below images of the tabletop up close.)

According to the plaque on the wall, this table was done in a technique called "micromosaic", which was a mosaic technique that used tiny little pieces of glass as the mosaic components. This provided tremendous detail that made these mosaics look like paintings from any distance (there were a couple wall pieces made from this same technique.) I think this table was made some time in the late 1800's.