This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
Margaret Keane’s big-eyed children gaze unabashedly at a girl sketched by Pablo Picasso, and cartoonist Rose O’Neill rubs elbows with Vincent van Gogh. One of Mary Cassatt’s families lives around the block from Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s poker-playing dogs, Alphonse Mucha’s “Spring” poses near an Al Hirschfeld sketch of Scarlett and Rhett, while a self-portrait of Frida Kahlo stares down a mannequin wearing the Batman costume from “The Dark Knight,” and iterations of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman appear in the most unexpected places.
It would be easy to describe the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens Sept. 22, as “unconventional,” a description the museum’s leaders seem to favor, though “oppositional” also comes to mind.
A collection that eyes 20th century mass media illustrators and cartoonists with a reverence historically reserved for art’s masters could be considered (and not just for obvious reasons) the rise of the resistance.
It certainly looks like no other museum on Earth. Architect Ma Yansong may have been inspired by the canopies of nearby plane trees, as he said in a recent preview tour, but the result is a 300,000-square-foot building that looks, as everyone knows by now, exactly like a spacecraft. One of the friendly ones, of course, a decommissioned mothership perhaps, here on a diplomatic mission.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has riveted the public with its futuristic architecture. But the lasting impact of George Lucas’ billion-dollar museum may lie in its landscape.
Narratively, this makes perfect sense; George Lucas will always be best known for “Star Wars.” Architecturally too: In a town where the Getty’s hilltop compound can be reached only by tram; the Petersen Automotive Museum evokes speed with hundreds of hot-rod red steel ribbons; and the new Geffen arm of LACMA now spans Wilshire Boulevard like a questing amoeba — a spaceship is striking, but not out of place.
But if the building appears to predict a series of high-tech galleries, tricked out with holograms, audio spotlights or mixed reality rooms, the Lucas museum is surprisingly old-school. A large and impressive exhibit of “Star Wars” vehicles, costumes and other production treasures anchors the main gallery space (with a rope line already in place for the inevitable queue of fans) but those expecting a “Star Wars” museum may be disappointed.
An introductory ground-floor exhibit titled “the history of narrative art: Heroes, Myths, the Sacred” is as close as things get to modern tech. Though punctuated by a few actual or reproduced pieces of physical art, it mostly consists of a series of screens featuring high-resolution photos of prehistoric paintings from Spain’s cave of Altamira, as well as a procession of interiors, paintings, statuary and other works from far-flung places like the Louvre, the Vatican (including a room-size rendering of the Sistine Chapel), Versailles, the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and Pompeii.
The exhibit, which professes to illustrate storytelling through art in its earliest manifestations, is a jarring introduction to a museum that houses 1,300 original works. Like those immersive Van Gogh experiences, it’s kind of cool (and great for kids) but not actual art.
Synthetic yet organic, populist yet elitist, the $1 billion Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is full of contradictions. Highlights include an extraordinary park, cascading waterfall, structural feats and unique vantages. But the galleries leave much to be desired.
The actual art is a few stories up and something quite different.
There, following the enormous loop that defines the 100,000-square-foot interior, 30 galleries are filled with pieces either collected personally by Lucas and his wife and museum co-founder, Mellody Hobson, or purchased by the museum in keeping with their vision.
That vision leans heavily on popular 20th century cartoonists, illustrative artists and painters — including Norman Rockwell, N.C. Wyeth, Maxfield Parrish, Frank Frazetta, Thomas Hart Benton and Jessie Willcox Smith — as well as photographers and muralists.
