FBC! Will Be Temporarily Closed Until Early 2010

It's this time of the year again when rain comes to LA, there's a festive atmosphere, etc. and yours truly prepares for an annual visit in the motherland of frogs and stinky cheeses. It's a bit busy for me, and in addition to it my accident-traumatized right shoulder hurts like hell, despite being on meds, so typing away at the laptop is a bit trying. You've noticed I hadn't written much since March, it's because it is physically painful.

Before I leave you for a few weeks, I just want to reiterate how lucky we are in LA right now with the currently awesome exhibitions at our local museums. If you have a bit of free time, I'd recommend seeing all the photo exhibitions currently up at LACMA (seriously, great show, with The Sum of Myself: Photographic Self-Portraits from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection), as well as the Melendez one, who, despite LACMA's best efforts to make us believe it, wasn't a great painter (not sandwiched between Velazquez and Goya, he couldn't have been, poor thing), and was rather a century backwards in his specialization in bodegones. But the show is interesting precisely in highlighting a very minor historical figure who was working in a nostalgic and minor way (like so many artists today) and yet his work somehow survived and was kept in collections and finally was given a retrospective a long, long time after his death (and after the invention of public museums - artists were not given even solo exhibition during Melendez lifetime).
I always think that if contemporary artists were looking more at this type of historical artists they would probably be a bit more humble and realistic about where their work was going to end up and who would be looking at it and for what reasons.

There's also the absolutely beautiful Charles Burchfield show at the Hammer, which woul be unforgivable for you to miss and the Bible illustrated by Robert Crumb, so if you don't know how to spend a rainy day or two, you'll just have to head over to Westwood. There's also the MOCA collection currently on view in both facilities of the museum (Grand Avenue and the Geffen).

If you are in LA this weekend, you can go attend the opening of All Time Greatest organized at the Fellow of Contemporary Arts space on 970 N. Broadway (suite 208), 7 to 9 PM, with Dave Muller DJ-ing. Gabrielle Ferrer, Brendan Fowler, Alex Klein, Dave Muller, Eamon Ore-Giron, Vincent Ramos, Steve Roden, Brian Roettinger, Sumi Ink Club, and Stephanie Taylor are all in the show, and if you're a doll please go introduce yourself to Stephanie Taylor and Alex Klein and say hi for me. Thanks!

And right before the opening, you can swing by Eagle Rock and go see the performance organized through/by Artists Curated Projects at the home of Eric Kim, all the info is here. Please say hi to Nancy Popp for me too!

Before the year 2009 is over for FBC!, if you are stumped for gifts ideas for your families and friends, may I suggest you offer them a membership at one of your local museums? Aside from the big names out here, there are plenty of smaller spaces such a the Santa Monica Museum of Art or the Pacific Asia Museum that could use all the help possible and they often are little peaceful jewels.

Have a nice holiday, dear readers, and see you in 2010!