Magritte Exhibit at LACMA

I haven’t posted for a while. I’ve had a bad cold, and have been pretty much out of it. I got sick the week before last, then shook it, but then had a fairly party-intensive weekend, and that put me down for the count.

Before I got sick, I went to a party at JJ’s apartment in Venice. (He got evicted as a result of this party. Always a sign of a good party.) While I was there, JJ mentioned that there were banners all up and down his street advertising a Magritte exhibit at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). He and a friend had gone to see it, but then were told that the exhibit didn’t open for another week. I joked, “And then you’re like, ‘We’ll wait!’ And then you’re camped out in front of the museum in your bowler hats.”

I actually went and checked out the exhibit yesterday. It was pretty cool. The whole floor was covered with a Magritte-esque blue-sky-and-white-fluffy-clouds carpet, and all the security guards were dressed in bowler hats. One of the pieces, a tribute to Magritte, depicted a snow-covered peak, and over it was written: “LION IN OIL.” I was like, “Why does it say lion? There’s no lion.” My friend Drew exclaimed, “I see it! You have to stare for a while.” I stared for a while. I said, “There’s no lion. Maybe sort of a face, but it’s not a lion’s face. Maybe like a skull.” We consulted the text accompanying the exhibit, which talked about how the artist combines text and images that have nothing to do with each other in order to make a point about words and their meaning. I said, “Aha!” Drew shrugged and said, “I saw a lion.”