At the end of his review of ”Best in Art” in 2011 review, LA Times art critic Christopher Knight wrote that in his view the ”worst development” of the year was  “the institutional confusion of fashion with art.” This after the “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” show at the Met attracted over 660,000 people, making it their eighth most well-attended show, ever.

Clearly MOCA is not daunted by such a charge, as its director Jeffrey Deitch readies for his third exhibit of fashion by California clothing designers with an artistic vision. It will be about the marvelous work of Rudi Gernreich, and follows displays at MOCA PDC of ethereal dresses by Rodarte, and, currently, the photographic and fashion fusion of Hedi Slimane. The latter closes soon. KCRW’s Abe Rivera visited the show, and wrote this:

HEDI SLIMANE: CALIFORNIA SONG

New York Cityis known for its abundance of artists and culture, but Hedi Slimane seems to argue that California rivals the obvious in his first west coast solo exhibition, California Song. Focusing on artists, musicians and young urbanites, Slimane captures a seductive vulnerability and elegance in his sometimes-unlikely subjects. He pairs his subjects with mirrors and objects or architecture as to create a narrative giving insight to the subjects at hand. His signature high contrast black and white style sheds a new light on theCalifornia lifestyle.

The exhibition is divided into two rooms. A white room, which includes a labyrinth of stacked photos, mounted on plywood and a black room, housing the highlight of the exhibition – a wall-to-wall cube that projects more photographs against an ethereal soundtrack performed by No Age.

Hedi Slimane: California Song runs through January 22nd at theMOCAPacificDesignCenter.

There are a thousand stories in the naked city, as they say, and when it comes to design in LA, many of them are good. So it’s always hard to determine what to make the focus of the once-monthly DnA. But this January, it just seemed like a natural to ruminate on a newly unveiled design/artwork that is about the big city; namely,  Chris Burden’s new installation at LACMA, Metropolis II (right).

 Known among art cognoscenti for his madcap — and at times masochistic – performance art of the early 1970s, Burden has emerged, with Urban Light, below, and now Metropolis II, as an impressionist of our strange and wonderful megalopolis (which can be read as an urban anomaly or a bellweather for cities everywhere).

On the show, hear about the making of the piece and Burden’s “utopian” vision, in which automated cars belt around at over 200 miles an hour. (The constant whirr of  the tiny cars as they whizz around may have you thinking this Metropolis is “dystopian.”)

Michael Govan — who has a genius, it seems, for melding large-scale art, architecture and landscape into an urban experience of its own —  situates Metropolis in the history of art and the history of LA; and Dan Neil, the skeptical auto critic, takes aim at monolithic fantasies.

(Also read The Good4NothingConnoisseur’s impression of the piece, without the sound effects, here.)

The topic of “city” segues naturally into two other segments, one about four Chinese-American architects who made a little-known mark on the LA cityscape in the post-war — and found themselves dividied between two schools of design: Modern, in the spirit of the time (as seen in this photo by Julius Shulman of a residence designed for his family in Silverlake, by Eugene Choy, courtesy, © J. Paul Getty Trust) , and, for their Chinese-American clients in Chinatown, Chinese-inflected architecture.

It’s truly a reminder of how things have changed in fifty years to hear that Eugene Choy, one of the four, had to go door to door in Silverlake asking for permission to move into the neighborhood; and it is fascinating to learn about Helen Fong, who made her mark on the Googie classics like Panns, Norms and Bob’s Big Boy.

Also on the show, a taster of what promises to be a tasty discussion coming up at LACMA on the 31st of this month: the conversation will be called Temporary Insanity, I’ll host, and it’s a conversation with three practitioners of what has been a fascinating trend in design these past few years: the creation of installations by architects in public spaces that serve no purpose other than to shape space in structurally and materially experimental ways. Benjamin Ball of Ball-Nogues (see their early project, right) at Materials & Applications, called Maximilian’s Schell, photographed in situ by Oliver Hess) offers up some insights as to what draws tomorrow’s architects to this mode of design and why it’s so magical for those that witness it.

The GOOD4NOTHING CONNOISSEUR went to see Metropolis II when the art-piece was switched off, the cars and trains were still and the room was devoid of the constant whirr of racing vehicles. The experience is different; one focuses on the visual, not the aural. He describes his impressions here:

Directly off the room that’s home to Richard Serra’s giant piece, “Band,”– a woozy ribbon of slithering tall towering, rust-colored weatherproof steel that lures and caresses you — past a large bank of TV sets that flick and flash alternating roiling permutations of the USA flag, called “Video Flag Z” by Nam June Paik, is the shining city on the hill of the future. . . but all in rock and roll steam punky miniature. This little magical marvel is Chris Burden’s latest, a new and shimmering full sensorial drench of an experience called “Metropolis II.” You won’t believe the spell this little mythic cityscape puts on you.

It’s a scale model right out of your brain’s faulty memory bank of your favorite urban flavored sci-fi flick. Yes, I thought fleetingly of Luc Bresson’s “The 5thElement,” Lang’s “Metropolis,” (right) “Blade Runner” LA, the planet Crematoria from “Chronicles of Riddick,” Alderan—but that all got eclipsed by the sudden overwhelming rush of consciousness that made me feel I’d shapeshifted into the all powerful, radioactive, fire belching Godzilla just out for an apocalyptic stroll to graze upon a dense oasis of miniature sky scrapers, ten-lane hot wheels traffic jams and snaking toy train sets all on super highways and train tracks swooping and cantilevering up and down and all around massively tall, bejeweled sky scrapers.

The site of it filled me with a child’s unquenchable appetite for play, fantasy and delusions of grandeur. I felt myself transforming, my muscles steroidally popping, expanding, flexing, my teeth lengthening and sharpening with galvanized titanium, all testosterone pumps kicking into overdrive, and the biggest, dumbest smile creasing my face like a madman gleefully uncaged. WARNING: Abandon Almost All Self Control Ye Who Enter Here – were the words that played on a loop in my head. I was set free… I wanted to trudge and stomp through it all, lift and heave and toss bridges and turrets and spires, mangle and munch my way to nuclear monster screeches of gleeful destruction, feasting and devastation. I lusted to bite a subway car in half and relish the passengers tumbling out like shredded taco lettuce. I felt like a punk rocker, or a punk rocker god, I wanted to fall into buildings and roll over mass transit tressels, plug in my electric guitar and feedback like a mad fool of zapmastery, then maybe leap up in the air propelled by Pete Townsendesque scissor kicks and float and hover above and through the city’s dense canopy of freeway ramps, train tracks and penthouses past the Eiffel Tower like simulation, the 100-turreted mosque, and then tread through the veritable kelp bed of office towers and mid-town 60-story hotels that felt like my home town of Manhattan.

The piece should be called, instead of Metropolis II, “Omnipotence, Too” because it makes you feel like a big hulking super creature with unlimited super powers at your fingertips. I set to lustfully photographing it, poking my camera past the stantions, and getting warned repeatedly by the security guards on duty. Sure, I turned into a punk rock Godzilla, but you might become, oh I insist, whatever your fancy dictates. Turn it loose now. And channel one of the floats in the Thanksgiving Day parade come to ominous life. Be a giant balloon Kermit the Frog or Snoopy or Bart Simpson. Are those too rude sounding, ok, then dial it down and be the Ghostbuster’s super happy, pacifist, though Navy seaman-attired Stay Puft Man, softly, dopily romping through Manhattan like a 5-yr-old in a bouncy castle. The choice is yours. You gotta try it, it’ll set you free, even if just for a precious few seconds. Thanks Dr. Chris Burden for the art as mood swinging pick me up.

If you’re like me, you probably didn’t know that the largest collection of puppets in the country is right here in Southern California, in a nondescript back building of a church on Fair Oaks avenue in Pasadena, where it shares space with the church’s weekly AA meeting. And if you didn’t know that then you also wouldn’t know that it’s probably not going to be there for much longer. That is unless something is done soon…

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