March 25, 2022
Today we wandered through the westside suburb of Venice. Famous for its vibrant beach, it is an interesting suburb of multimillion dollar homes and small beach shacks. Running through the middle of Venice is Abbott Kinney boulevard, home of some of LA’s most fashionable stores and restaurants.
March 20, 2022
Just outside Palm Springs, Palm Canyon is absolutely stunning. The canyon runs for about fifteen miles and is lined with huge California Fan Palms. On a hot day, it was very pleasant to walk a mile or so along the shaded valley, admiring the majestic palms, surrounding mountains and slopes full of yellow wild flowers.
March 20, 2022
Today we moved on from Old Las Palmas to the adjoining neighborhood of Vista Las Palmas. It is a mecca for lovers of midcentury modern architecture lovers. In the middle of the twentieth century, the firm of Palmer and Krisel, as well as the architect Charles Dubois designed approximately 350 homes in the neighborhood, including Krisel’s iconic ”butterfly” roof houses and Dubois’s distinctive ”Swiss Miss” A-frames. Like neighboring Old Las Palmas, it has been the home of numerous celebrities, including Dean Martin and Debbie Reynolds.
March 19, 2022
We drove down to Palm Springs for the weekend. Unfortunately, due to the infamous LA traffic, a trip that would normally take two hours, took over four. Once there, we explored the town and neighboring canyons. Our first walk was through the Old Las Palmas neighborhood. The neighborhood dates back to the mid 1920’s and over the years has been the home of numerous celebrities, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas, Liberace and Elizabeth Taylor. There were many beautiful homes, although most were hidden behind high hedges, walls and ornate gates.
March 17, 2022
On occasion, people have said to us while we have been here in Los Angeles ”It’s a beautiful day today” and we wonder why, because it seems that the weather is perfect every day here in Southern California. With temperatures in the mid-seventies, the sun shining and no humidity, it was perfect walking weather. We decided to wander the streets of Greater Wilshire / Hancock Park, which is a truly beautiful neighborhood with quiet streets of stately homes.
March 15, 2022
Our son, Ben, lives in the Melrose Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles. It is a relatively small neighborhood just south of Hollywood. In the center of the neighborhood on a slight hill there is a historic preservation zone, where there are a number of beautiful old homes.
Bordering the historic district is a less affluent area of small apartment buildings and single family homes. It appeared to be mainly a hispanic neighborhood.
There were a number of small apartment complexes built around courtyards that often had beautiful landscaping.
There were also an abundance of heavily laden citrus trees in the neighborhood yards.
Apparently, G loves M.
On another beautiful sunny LA day, we celebrated having avoided the winter storm currently hitting Washington by heading out on a long walk. We started out walking along Melrose Avenue.
The Paramount Pictures studios take up several blocks along Melrose. We passed by their iconic gates.
Most of the extensive lots are hidden behind a beautiful long and high hedge.
Paramount seemed to be pushing Jane Campion’s, The Power of the Dog before the upcoming academy awards.
We then made our way down Larchmont Boulevard. If we had any doubts that we were in southern California we just had to look at the businesses in this strip mall that we passed. It included a meditation community, an acupuncture clinic, something called Integrative Health Systems, and the Staninger Institute, which apparently deals in Toxicogenomics and Bio Ethno Life Science Systems.
And then there was this house which asked us to Believe
One thing about California, the state has amazing farmers’ markets. We dropped by the Larchmont market and admired the produce.
We find LA, by and large, to be a not particularly attractive city. However, there are some beautiful neighborhoods. Case in point is Hancock Park which has some beautiful homes on treelined streets.
March 12, 2022
We have changed coasts but are continuing to enjoy art. Our son, Ben, took us down to SOLA Gallery in South Los Angeles for the closing of the ”On Black” exhibition, showcasing the art of local black artists.
We enjoyed the art, particularly the work of Showzart
And JosephBrandon Thomas
We also enjoyed meeting the curator of the event, Anefertiti Bowman.
A special treat was meeting with Ben’s good friend Crushow who is also a talented artist. He even painted the Aristocatts painting on the back of Mal’s denim jacket that was commissioned as a birthday gift from Ben.
March 6, 2022
To complete our arty weekend, we walked over to the Katzen Arts Center, that is part of the American University campus. The Center is the home to the university’s visual and performing arts programs. The Center was designed by EYP Architecture & Engineering and opened in 2005. To be frank, with its curves and bits and pieces jutting out, it’s not really our type of building.
We did, however, enjoy many of the works by contemporary female artists that were on display.
March 5, 2022
Following up on our visit to The Kreeger Museum, we decided to visit another of Washington’s prime private galleries, The Phillips Collection. The Phillips opened in 1921 and was America’s first museum devoted to modern art. It started life housed in the Georgian Revival home of its founder, Duncan Phillips, but has since that time expanded into two adjoining buildings.
The permanent collection includes nearly 3,000 works by American and European impressionist and modern artists. Many of the old favorites were there. Here’s a sampling:
There is a room devoted entirely to the works of Mark Rothko. It is an intimate room and a quiet spot to sit and ponder. The paintings appear to glow. Unfortunately, the photos fail to accurately show the depth and vibrancy of the colors.
Perhaps the museums’s most famous piece is Pierre-August Renoir’s iconic impressionist painting, Luncheon of the Boating Party.
The museum also has a large music room where they hold performances. We once saw a GoGo concert there. They had rolled a harpsichord into the space for a Vivaldi concert to take place the next evening. The ornate room definitely appeared more suited to Vivaldi than Go Go.
But what we had really come to see was an exhibition of Pablo Picasso’s blue period paintings in the adjoining building.
Some people have argued that Picasso is not the greatest modern artist of all time. But they, with all due respect, are wrong. He simply sits head and shoulders above all of the rest. Focusing on the years 1900-04, the exhibition was breathtaking. It’s just unfathomable that at the time he was creating these paintings he was just 19-23 years old. If these paintings were all he ever created, he would still rank among the greats, but he was just starting. Anyway, here are just a few of the paintings from the exhibition. It started off with some of his earliest works, where he showed that he could already knock off a portrait and still life as well as anyone.
Then the exhibition moved onto the blue period paintings.
Finally, it ended up with some paintings from his early Rose Period.
Leaving the gallery, we made our way over to nearby Connecticut Avenue for an early dinner at Bistro du Coin, where we could pretend we were eating at one of the establishments in Paris that Picasso used to haunt. Along the way, we saw some spectacular clouds over the buildings lining the avenue.
Mal and Lauren