Part II: A Month in La La Land

After Julie’s sister returned home, several weeks were spent enjoying the sights of LA solo. On one of these days, Julie enjoyed a post-workday tour of some great spots in Culver City with new friends. We visited the fabulously named The Ripped Bodice bookshop, devoured a burger and fries at Monty’s Good Burger, an award-winning vegan diner, and enjoyed dessert at Salt & Straw where we tried some ridiculously wacky flavours of ice cream, including turkey stuffing with cranberry sauce and cheesy potato casserole, special editions in honour of Thanksgiving (which was just around the corner). Steering clear of those, we took our comparatively plain-flavoured scoops up to the Culver Steps where Julie was told a whole host of fun facts about the area, including how USC is the only university in the world to have a gold medal-winning athlete in every Summer Olympics since 1912.

As a break from work on several of the weekdays, Julie was treated to some amazing lunches at Holbox, a Mexican seafood restaurant in Mercado la Paloma, a gathering space for quality food, art, and culture in the Figueroa Corridor of South Los Angeles. You know it’s good when it’s full of locals rather than tourists. Their fresh and tangy ceviche, fish tacos and octopus with coriander rice, black beans, avocado and pico de gallo were spectacularly delicious. This was some of the best seafood Julie has ever eaten, absolutely delicious.

The Getty Centre was the first stop on a solo weekend tour of the city’s most famous galleries. The journey from Downtown Santa Monica to the Getty is possible on public transport. You take the Expo line to Sepulveda station (four stops) and then catch the Metro bus line 761 which takes you directly to the entrance. It’s a very pleasant journey and allows you to see more of the city.

The Getty Centre sits on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains, offering panoramic views of Los Angeles. When you arrive, you are immediately welcomed by its iconic curvilinear façade. Four pavilions, North, East, South and West, all positioned around a central plaza, are full of treasures. The art has been consciously displayed in chronological order. The best place to start is in the North Pavilion, which is dedicated to art from the Middle Ages, and then you can finish in the West Pavilion where some of the most celebrated works of the Impressionists and Postimpressionists are displayed. There are two levels to explore in each pavilion. The plaza levels are for decorative arts and sculptures, whilst the upper floor galleries are dedicated to paintings.

One of the day’s most beguiling paintings was Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s The Laundress (1761). In the painting, a young maid is wringing out linens, whilst staring confidently at the viewer. Small details had Julie enthralled, she was obsessed with her polished red shoe sticking out from under her dress, which complemented the tones of her rosy complexion. ‘This little laundress is charming, but she’s a rascal I wouldn't trust an inch’, the critic Denis Diderot declared when this painting was first exhibited in 1761. Another portrait that stood out was Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s Portrait of Leonilla, Princess of Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn (1843). The colour palette is particularly dreamy. The princess lies resplendent against a backdrop of aqua skies, contrasting perfectly with her ivory and pink gown. Just like the red shoe in The Laundress, the way the artist has captured her hand gently holding a fan in the creases of her moiré dress was particularly charming.

Portraits of vases overflowing with flowers are some of our favourite paintings to see and the floral arrangements captured by Gustave Courbet are no exception. Courbet began painting flower still-lifes in the summer of 1862 whilst spending time in the Saintonge region of southwestern France. His Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase (1862) is a spontaneous gathering of common garden varieties and exotic hothouse blooms, all of which were available to Courbet to pick and observe at the estate of his host, Etienne Baudry. Claude Monet’s Still Life with Flowers and Fruit (1869) is an Impressionists dream. Afternoon light hits the bulbous forms of the pears overspilling from a basket onto a white tablecloth peppered with juicy grapes. The robust, rumpled blooms of carnations in hues of champagne, scarlet, indigo and sapphire.

Particularly captivating were the dark and moody still-lifes by Flemish, Italian and Dutch seventeenth and eighteenth century masters. Giacomo Ceruti’s Still Life with Bread, Salami, and Nuts (1750s) was not only technically accomplished but offered a comment on the life of Italy’s impoverished. He earned the nickname Il Pitocchetto for his sensitives portrayals of the daily life of the poor. The details in this piece are quite mesmerising, the sinewy texture of salami, the dense bread, the textured walnuts, all atop a polished pewter plate, carry you straight into the scene. Jacob van Hulsdonck’s Still Life with Lemons, Oranges, and a Pomegranate (1620s) was a favourite. The warm yellow of the dimpled lemons, set against the blue and white of the Chinese porcelain bowl, completed by pops of juicy red pomegranate seeds, transported you to summer months in warmer climates. The Dutch artist Jan van Huysum provided a feast for the eyes with Fruit Piece (1722). Van Huysum’s work blends the dazzling realism of the seventeenth-century Dutch still-life paintings with the vibrant colours characteristic of the eighteenth-century. Plums, peaches, and glossy grapes tumble over the ledge of a table, some falling prey to insects. You could almost reach in a grab an item, so deftly and deliciously rendered are the details. The waxy surface of plums, the fuzzy skin of a peach and the crispy texture of leaves are so legible in the way Van Huysum handle paint. This piece was spectacular but even more so was his Vase of Flowers (1722). Parrot tulips, poppies, peonies, camellias, cornflowers, lilies, auriculas, honeysuckle and fritillaria, droop under the weight of their extravagant blooms, spilling out from a terracotta vase. Up close, little insects can be spotted, as well as glistening water droplets.

Many more paragraphs could be dedicated to the incredible corpus of works housed at the Getty, including Canaletto’s works of Venice, Rembrandt’s brilliant portraits, and Vincent van Gogh’s Irises. It was a fabulous way to spend a Saturday.

Julie enjoyed a coffee and a sandwich in the Central Garden, a tranquil space to take stock of the impressive surroundings. The gardens have been sensitively landscaped and designed by Robert Irwin, with vegetation, flowers, materials, and design accents selected especially to accentuate the interplay of light, colour, and reflection. It is a living work of art. During Julie’s visit, roses, chrysanthemums, and marigolds were in bloom. To get down to the garden from the main galleries you take a path that crosses a small stream and winds down through a variety of succulents and grasses. The path leads you to an opening where magenta bougainvillea climbs through rebar sculptures, toppling down like the densely foliaged crown of Socotra trees. The stream tumbles over a stone waterfall into a pool containing a flowering maze of azaleas. On an unusually hot November day, a wooden bench in the shade of a tree was the perfect spot to absorb the overwhelmingly beautiful surroundings.

A very interesting, free exhibition on the photography of Arthur Tress and Sheila Metzner concluded the visit to the Getty. Still Life, a showcase of Sheila Metzner’s work was simply beautiful. Metzner once said, ‘Photography … in its most basic form is magic’. Her fashion and still-life photography is soft, ethereal, and utterly gorgeous, very much at home in editorial Vogue spreads. Arthur Tress offers a slightly different approach to photography. In Rambles, Dreams and Shadows we see the trailblazing work of Tress in the field of staged photography. His work explores social issues, such as poverty, pollution, and the lack of open space in urban areas. He also delves into aspects of the human conditions, including one’s imagination and dreams, as well as his own identity as a queer artist. A lot of time was spent in these galleries before heading – via the giftshop – for the bus.

Once back in Santa Monica, a late afternoon stroll along the beach, passing perfectly formed hibiscus blooms in beautiful shades of pink, peach and white, was a wonderful end to a great day of solo art adventuring.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, otherwise known as LACMA, was Sunday’s excursion. After an hour long journey, that included a trip on the metro and a bus ride, Julie arrived on Wilshire Boulevard, greeted by the sight of Chris Burden’s Urban Light (2008) installation. This forest of city streetlights, a collection of 202 restored LA street lamps, draws from the idea that street lamps were symbols of a civilised and sophisticated city, stylish, functional objects that kept city dwellers safe after dark.

The rest of the morning was spent exploring three floors full of great art. A number of pieces that stood out included the delightful scene of Henri Matisse’s Tea (1919) that features a rather sweet looking dog providing company to two ladies enjoying tea in the dappled sun of late afternoon. Raoul Dufy’s sumptuous scene, Still Life with Closed Shutters (1906), was incredibly evocative of warm summers. You want to dive into the table covered abundantly with delicious fruits. David Hockney’s panoramic Mulholland Drive: The Road to the Studio (1980), that captures his love affair with the city, was a particularly captivating piece. The landscape depicts Hockney’s daily commute from his home in the Hollywood Hills to his studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was also great to see René Magritte’s iconic The Treachery of Images (1929), that features a pipe with the caption ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’. The painting captures the Surrealist and at times humorous underpinning of Magritte’s work. Known for bowler hat wearing men holding apples in front of their faces and businessmen raining from the sky, ‘This is not a pipe’ creates that same sense of philosophical confusion inherent in his work. ‘I want to create a mystery, not to solve it’, Magritte once said. One of the most interesting installations at LACMA was another work by Chris Burden, Metropolis II (2011). It’s a kinetic sculpture, modelled after a fast-paced modern city. In miniature form but maximum impact, steel beams form an extensive grid system interwoven with an elaborate arrangement of roadways, densely packed buildings, and train tracks. Miniature cars speed through the constructed city at 240 scale miles per hour. The installation runs in half an hour increments every hour. The installation captures the energy of the city’s bustle by providing a cacophony of sound through hundreds of model cars zooming around.

After a number of hours enjoying LACMA’s art, an iced vanilla latte was enjoyed whilst soaking up the November sun. The bus journey back was a little complicated, with timetables running late and buses terminating halfway through their routes, but eventually Julie made it back to Downtown Santa Monica in time to watch the sunset on her walk back home, something that was becoming routine.

Julie’s Fellowship concluded on 16 November, after she delivered a public lecture on USC’s campus about the research she undertook during her residency. Arran had arrived the night before, so after the lunchtime lecture, they headed to Downtown LA for some more art and great food.

Our first stop was The Broad, a museum of contemporary art. When you enter the gallery, you are greeted by a voluptuous, cocoon-like lobby made of grey Venetian plaster brushed to a soft, matte surface. Its organic form is shaped by the museum’s central art storage space known as the ‘vault’, which stores items from the collection not on display. Dubbed ‘the veil and the vault’, the museum’s design complements the building’s ethos: public exhibition space and collection storage. Rather than relegate the storage to secondary status, the vault plays a key role in shaping the museum experience from entry to exit. Via an escalator, you’ll shoot through the ceiling and arrive on the top floor, a pure white gallery lit by natural light. This portion of the museum is known as the ‘veil’, a light, honeycomb-like structure that filters daylight into the galleries. You are reintroduced to the vault as you head back downstairs as viewing windows have been carved out to allow visitors to peer into the storage space. The architecture is befitting for a space dedicated to the heavyweights of contemporary art, including galleries dedicated to the oeuvre of Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Jean‐Michel Basquiat, Cy Twombly and Keith Haring.

Afterwards, we headed to Grand Central Market in DTLA for lunch, a historic food site in the city. The doors to the market first opened in 1917 as the largest public market on the Pacific Coast.  Today, the market is home to a vibrant blend of vendors. It is a microcosm of the historic immigrant communities that have shaped Los Angeles. There were many delicious choices that could have been made but we chose Wexler’s Deli, an old-school deli offering bagels and rye-bread sandwiches. We devoured their O.G. (pastrami and mustard on rye) and Reuben (corned beef, sauerkraut and swiss cheese) with sides of pickle and coleslaw.

After lunch we ticked off one more gallery before our evening dinner plans. We visited the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) on Grand Avenue, which is very near The Broad. It is the only artist-founded museum in Los Angeles and their collection of contemporary art includes nearly 8,000 objects, all with diverse histories and significant stories to tell.

We then went for celebratory drinks at 71 Above, a restaurant and bar in the Financial District, timing it perfectly to enjoy several cocktails with a 360° view of the city at sunset. Being so high up (71 floors up the US Bank Tower) also put us eye level with the dozens of helicopters that circle LA’s airspace.

After 71 Above, we headed for dinner. We had a superb meal at Bar Sawa in Little Tokyo, joining eight other people for an exceptional eighteen-course sushi omakase tasting menu. The meal was memorable for many reasons, but one reason focused on what a palaver it was to find the place. Luckily, it comes with a good story involving a silent security guard, an empty office building, and a scary lift ride down to a basement. Arran had booked the restaurant and had briefly read reviews that the place was a little difficult to locate. Thinking very little of this, and failing to check the email reservation, we arrived at the supposed location to be left totally confused as to where it was. Arran’s phone had died and so we were stuck with no information about how to get in. We rang the restaurant on Julie’s phone and an automated voice told us to ‘press 1’ for entry instructions. However, since the phone has an English dialling code, the information could not be sent. We were about twenty minutes late at this point and getting increasingly concerned as to where we needed to go. Arran popped into a beauty parlour to ask for help, and neither of the two women in there had heard of the restaurant. They also rang them for us, but no answer left us further scratching our heads. We walked around the corner and happened to bump into a security guard unlocking a door. We asked him if he knew where Bar Sawa was, and with only a nod and a gesture to follow him, he led us into a rather deserted looking lobby, took us into a lift and accompanied us to the basement. Not going to lie, this felt like the start of a horror film. Anyway, we live to tell the tale and the lift doors opened to the wonderful sight of Bar Sawa. Luckily, the rest of the experience was memorable for all the right reasons. You sit at a counter, looking at a glowing bar lined with Japanese whisky bottles and a frosted screen with silhouettes of Mount Fuji and bamboo. Mixologists serve you delicious cocktails and chefs prepare delectable dishes in front of your eyes. Seasonal and market availability determine the exact makeup of the restaurant’s eighteen courses, but each Edomae bite was exquisite. Bar Sawa also has a Michelin-starred sibling – Sushi Kaneyoshi – housed in the same hard-to-find basement.

Our final day had arrived. We returned to Fig Tree for brunch, devouring a spicy breakfast burrito and salmon and eggs on toast, before walking to Downtown Santa Monica to jump on Bus 134 which conveniently takes you right to the entrance of the Getty Villa, our stop for the day.

The Getty Villa sits on a hilltop in the Pacific Palisades and is a complete oasis to view Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities. Modelled on the Villa dei Papiri, an excavated Roman site in Herculaneum buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (which we visited in summer 2022), the Getty Villa was Julie’s favourite museum in LA, so to have been able to share the visit with Arran on the last day was perfect. We thought that it might be a little kitsch, but it is easily one of the most beautiful museums we have ever visited. The architectural and landscaping details are inspired by all the elements you would find in an opulent ancient Roman home, including herb gardens, painted ceilings, marble floors, mosaics, fountains, sculptures, and atriums. As you enter, you’re greeted by the view of a 450-seat amphitheatre, and from there the visit just gets better and getter. As you walk around the galleries you get to experience 4,000 years of ancient art in a setting that literally brings the objects to life. We also visited on a day where the skies were azure and the temperatures were clement, and so you were immediately transported to the Bay of Naples. There was a special exhibition displaying an extraordinary bronze statuette of an equestrian. This was found whilst excavating an ancient Greek settlement in Babunjë, a region of Albania once populated by Greek colonists. This exhibition reveals the results of the conservation process and situates this unique example of Albania’s archaeological heritage within the region’s rich ancient history. In the East Garden, two impressive fountains provide a tranquil place to listen to trickling water and take in another famous landmark of Pompeii, a richly coloured fountain with shells, theatre masks and exquisite mosaics, a replica of one found in the House of the Large Fountain at Pompeii. We had the pleasure of seeing this in person during a family holiday to the Amalfi coast in 2022. The Outer Peristyle is the Villa’s largest garden, featuring a reflecting pool, colonnaded walkways with beautifully shaped shrubs and views of the Pacific Ocean. Before leaving, we called into the café for some refreshments and sat outside to bask in the mid-November sunshine.

We got the bus back to Santa Monica and enjoyed the last sunset of the trip from the pier. We then headed for an early dinner in the walk-in only pasta place: UOVO. We had their cheese and truffle tasting menu that included yellowtail crudo to start, followed by three delicious pasta dishes – tagliatelle in truffle sauce, tonnarelli in a pomodoro sauce and cacio e pepe – with a classic dessert to finish the meal, tiramisu. Their pasta is all handmade daily by their teams in Italy. It is then shipped overnight in temperature-controlled cabins where the flight becomes part of the needed resting time. They collaborate with independent pasta producers in Bologna and Rome, with the majority of their pasta coming from the kitchens of Bologna, the region of sfogline, women who have spent a lifetime mastering the traditional methods of sheeting and cutting, rather than the modern extrusion method of making pasta. Just as the Getty Villa had been the best museum of the trip, UOVO was the best restaurant. Handmade pasta, unpretentious ingredients, scrumptious sauces, a laid-back atmosphere, lovely service, and a moody interior made UOVO a really great place to conclude a monthlong stay on the west coast.

Before our flight home, Julie took Arran for some (in our wildest dreams) house shopping by the Venice Canals, where we saw several egrets and a cormorant enjoying the lull of a sunny Saturday. We then enjoyed a leisurely brunch at Great White in Venice Beach, which included a salmon, cream cheese, capers, and everything bagel seasoning pizza, a honey and salami pizza, an Arnold Palmer, and an iced latte with a touch of vanilla and cocoa. It was then time to head to LAX.

Thank you Los Angeles for being a truly special place to call home for a month.

If you missed Part I of the blog, you can catch up here.