Exactly one week ago I found myself standing in a long line in Hollywood in the parking lot of the old CBS news building at Gower and Sunset. I had consumed in its entirety, one two-week old copy of the New Yorker, financial articles included. My cell phone was dead, and so was the Blackberry. I waited. I waited, with no one, with nothing to distract me from the slow belly crawl of time, for almost 3 hours to get into the MBW art show. Ironically enough, I returned four days later this past Sunday to revisit the show and I didn’t have to wait AT ALL.
So what is it about MBW’s art that caused that opening day turnout? I bumped into my old college roommate while we were in line and we had a quick, quiet little chat about MBW. Natalie sits at a light every morning on La Brea and sees MBW’s silk screened image of Muhammad Ali. “We’ve all seen that photo a thousand times – what’s he really contributing?” she said with a squint and at a whisper, so not as to upset the nearby couples who had taken to mindlessly canoodling to pass the time. I leaned in, using my rumpled well-read magazine up to shade my eyes, and added “He’s not like Bansky really, with his pointed political remarks.” Then I added less seriously, “Plus, he had an pink elephant at his last show. A real elephant!” Just then MBW appeared, in sunglasses, a cast on one ankle. He was pushing himself along on a scooter. He is a nice little French guy with long hair. After seeing him motoring about, signing autographs graciously, we no longer felt so critical. We ceased the griping and continued waiting.
Around 9:30, long after the sun had set, I finally get in and it’s a more of a hopping party than dignified art opening. At the entrance is a giant can of spray paint, but covered in the iconic Campbell Soup artwork and colors. To my left I see a large cut out of a sepia-toned family photo. Carefully inserted into the tableau in matching tones is Darth Vader and Mark Hamill. People are posing with this thing. I stand there amazed for a second, amazed that everyone wants to be a Skywalker, even at an art show in Hollywood, and also that I am holding two free drink tickets in my hand. In this same outside patio area there is a giant sculpture of a brown paper bag with a take out receipt neatly stapled in one corner. Echoes of Claus Oldenburg…or a tribute to delicious, delivered to your door Chinese food. Whatever! It’s excellent.
Inside, there is a corridor of silkscreened prints, everyone made up to look like Warhol’s Marilyn, with pink faces and vivid blue eyeshadow. Larry King is the most disturbing, Michael Jackson looks oddly BETTER. After this corridor you are in the main part of the art show, an old TV soundstage. There are two stories to the show, and one whole wing of the soundstage looks like Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks cafe, with its long curved window. Throughout the various little nooks and rooms, you are greeted with faces you know instantly – Leonard Nimoy as Spock, Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Run DMC (who also appear in old sepia toned family photos) – icon after icon, David Bowie, Tupac, Stevie Wonder, the Dalai Lama, Louis Armstrong. There are cheap oil painting reproductions with graffiti additions (Banksy also does this kind of playful work), a giant robots made up of old TVs, a room covered in books. I take a photo of everything in site, nearly 120 photos altogether and go back out into the patio area. I look for someone really nice to give my drink tickets to – at this point, I just want to go home and eat dinner. I find a young couple hugging near the jazz band. “Here, take my tickets.” “Oh, we don’t drink!” A dorkier kid in Jason Schwartzman-esque glasses leans in, right between them, his hand out, palm up, a happy smarmy smile smeared across his face. “I’ll take them!!!” (I sigh to myself over the fact that sometimes life is like a Wes Anderson movie. Only I’m not so rich. )
ANYHOW: it’s one of the most lively, fun art shows I’ve ever been to, but on a certain level,
caaahman, what’s going on here? The art isn’t all that challenging, but there is still something intensely pleasing about
the iconography, the repetition, the hero worship. MBW’s heroes are heroes to so many of us – and then to see them filtered through so many other art influences (primarily Warhol though), you get
level upon level of pleasing RECOGNITION. Ahhh, so Robert De Niro in Raging Bull through black and white rococo French patterns. My eyeball detects all these things! Little pings of happiness in the brain. You are at an art show where you GET the art instantaneously – you don’t need an audio tour, a scholarly curator, or a copy of Art in America to understand what’s going on. I make this observation out loud to the BF after we finish our second, less dramatic visit to the show. He responds to me with his usual cut-to-the-chase perception. “Ahhh, why do you have to take things so seriously? Some art is just enjoyable!” MBW’s primary talent lies in finding the happy crossroads between then and now so that some of these icons can live again, in little triumphant visual puns – Jimi Hendrix holds a Guitar Hero guitar, Ben Franklin in Kiss makeup. It makes sense – and it makes you smile.
MBW Life is Beautiful Show – now extended!
