Saw two art shows in two days … The Magritte Show at LACMA is pretty corporate – Michael Govan got Lexus to cough up sponsorship bucks in exchange for putting one of their cars on the sidewalk in front of the museum – primo advertising space on the crowded Wilshire corridor. The show itself is a walk down blue chip lane with every big name in the museum’s collection plopped right next tow a Magritte, screaming SEE WE MATTER. A lot of it is overcrowded overkill with Mike Kelley and Ed Ruscha showing up on the walls of a party they just don’t fucking belong at, disappearing into inconsequence in a gallery setting camouflaged as fun.

The LACMA cannot be faulted for milking the historic importance of the THIS IS NOT A PIPE painting in its permanent collection. The Louvre has the Mona Lisa, LACMA has history’s alleged first conceptual painting. And they milk it like a cow sentenced to flood the valley or die trying.

Tonight I saw two shows in Hermosa Beach – one at the LA Art Assoc’s Mike Napoliello Gallery and the other at the Gallery C – these two spaces are a short walk from each other. Jen Cielo’s drawings were the highlight of the LAA exhibit and Jennifer Poon’s tragic expressionist portraits were the heavy, dramatic highlights of Gallery C’s show – the Poon drawings a re large anti-anime anti-cutesy renderings of a recurring psychologically (and occasionally physically) scarred character. It is like a “fuck you” to the Takashi Murakami sinking ship.

Two good days of art in a row – I will try for three on Friday afternoon … stay tuned!