Also at LACMA yesterday I saw the two big blockbusters,
From Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Expressionism in Germany and France, which weaves together post-impressionist pre-WW1 painting through detailed accounts of who saw what exhibited when so successfully it all seems one congeries of artistic movements, and
Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic, a Frank Gehry-designed exhibit which was fun the way the spaces of Disneyland's old Tomorrowland were fun. In Calder, you weren't supposed to take pictures, though the guard let me keep what I'd taken. In the other, a few of the paintings could be
photographed, so here are two: Theo van Rysselberghe's pointillist "Beach at low tide, Ambleteuse, evening" (1900), which catches the turquoise green of many a sunset, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's electric
"Dance Hall Bellevue" (1909-10), which shows Fauvist colors washing over Dresden. They're not representative, any more than that one Calder mobile, but they suggest some of the pleasures of these shows.
