Passing through Pasadena

An art critic from New York snootily describes Los Angeles as "twelve suburbs in search of a city." Our old LA-based pal Mario Baluyot, a former journalist, will have none of that condescending tone. Always he is quick to point out there is a thriving cultural life in California beyond the twin examples of gargantuan kitsch: Disneyland and Universal Studios.

He designates himself our "taxi driver" during our stay in the West Coast, keeping a running commentary about how colonies of writers and other artists have made his sunny state their home.

He drives us from our temporary base, Torrance City in South Cal, to northern San Francisco via the ultra-scenic Pacific Coast Highway (ahhh, lush forests, yellow green meadows, pastures, soaring cliffs overlooking roaring ocean waves). 

Bakery in Solvang with Scandinavian touch 

and two strictly budget tourists

With Mario Baluyot at Pierre Lafond in Santa Barbara , 

said to be one of Oprah's favorite dining spots

We make stops along the way in Santa Barbara, the little Scandinavia called Solvang, San Simeon (renowned for the Hearst Castle), Big Sur (where I shriek like a teenager when I spot the Henry Miller Library) and Carmel by the Sea.

 Pool at the Hearst Castle

Pinoy tourist at the Castle

During a quick stopover in Carmel by the Sea 

there was just a few seconds to take this snapshot of Mario

A few days before we fly home, Mario picks us up in Torrance again for a day trip to Pasadena. We pass through a narrow, by LA standards, four-lane freeway, the very first in California and built in the 1940s. On the right, past a wire fence, stand preserved Victorian houses that make up Heritage Square. 

Too early for the opening hour of Norton Simon Museum on West Colorado Blvd., we walk under the shade of blooming jacarandas to the nearest Pinkberry store for its famed silken yogurt.

Just a few years old, Pinkberry has been a sensation in downtown LA when an enterprising Korean woman, Hyekyung Hwang, set it up for the health-and-flavor conscious. Served like soft-serve ice cream in a cup, the yogurt "with a distinct pouty peak" is best topped with fresh fruits like blackberries, kiwi, strawberries, mangoes and blueberries—choose any three—if you are, like us, trying to keep your blood sugar to a normal level. Otherwise, go to town with chocolate chips, marshmallows and the whole armada of sweet, crinkly tidbits.

Named after the American industrialist behind such firms as Hunt Foods, Canada Dry Corp., Max Factor and Avis rent-a-car company, the Norton Simon Museum houses his collection of Old Masters, modern art and sculptures from India and Southeast Asia. The architecture is unprepossessing; it doesn't take your breath away the way better known art showcases do. And therein lies its charm. 

While one needs repeated visits to take in what bigger museums like the Getty Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art have to offer, Norton Simon with just its main and lower levels allows for an unhurried yet comprehensive tour.

 Rodin's "The Burghers of Calais"

The Rodin bronzes are like sentries along the entrance walk. His cast of "The Burghers of Calais," the art history books teach us, commemorates the six heroic leaders of Calais, France, who offered themselves up for execution to spare their city from the onslaught of the invading English. Their lives were later spared when the English queen told her husband it would be bad for her unborn child if these men were killed.

But the sculptural works that appeal to me most are those of Aristide Maillol, also a Frenchman. The life-size ones are installed in the Sculpture Garden among such trees and plants as Lily of the Nile, Corsican Hellebore, Flax Lily, Lemon-scented Gum (a type of eucalyptus and yes, it does smell citrusy), Goodwin Creek Lavender and Tulip Tree. 

Maillol's women are generously endowed (I definitely identify with that!), graceful and balanced despite their uncomfortable poses.

Trying to get close to Maillol's "Air"

Googled information on the artist yields this information: "What is it about Maillol's work that prompts museums to pay over a million dollars for one of his prized, large sculptures? Moreover, why is his name virtually unknown by the general public? The answer to the paradox lies in the dichotomy inherent in the artworks themselves. His works are heroic, yet subdued; masterful, yet crude, classical, yet primitive, elevated, yet humble; obvious, yet profound; harmonious, yet disturbing. Such contrasts as these can only be portrayed in the work of a great artist…Why Maillol is not more widely known is perhaps a testament to how thoroughly his work has filled a void we today take for granted. A void where the simple, classical abstraction of the human form can communicate epic poems from a place of immortal stillness. Our contemporary frenzy today can no more comprehend a Maillol than the patient growth of a tree. Maillol is a sage that awaits the next chosen." 

I decide to skip walls full of Renaissance works when I espy the Spaniard Baroque painter's Francisco de Zurbaran's "Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose," an oil dated 1633. I sit before it entranced, and cannot help but agree with the experts who consider this piece one of the most perfectly composed and executed still life paintings.

Because she is a woman painting at a period (1600s) when there were few women painters, Louise Moillon's "Still Life with Cherries, Strawberries and Gooseberries" is worth a second, even third, look. The exhibit card notes that her works "embraced a different aesthetic—quieter, most contemplative and satisfying in their own right."

 Degas's "Little Dancer"

Edgard Degas's "Little Dancer," the only sculpture he exhibited in his lifetime, stands bemused in a roomful of 19^th-century art. Greeted with hostility when it was first publicly unveiled, the piece is a portrait of the dance student Marie von Goethem. Why the brouhaha over it? Degas not only used a wax model but also put on it an actual silk bodice, a gauze tutu, cloth slippers and a satin ribbon for the pony tail.

The Mexican Diego Rivera is represented with his huge "The Flower Vendor," a.k.a. "Girl with Lilies," a 1941 oil.

 Van Gogh's "Portrait of a Peasant"

This is also the museum where one nods at, tip one's invisible cap to the Oriental-inspired women of Matisse whether they're sprawling languorously on a couch or dancing with tambourine in hand. 

Van Gogh's peasant stares back at the viewer in full dignity, the colors of his hat, suit, face as bright as the day the Dutch Post-impressionist painted them.

The Asian stones and deities like the sandstone torso of Buddha Shakyamuni from Thailand (approximately 7^th-8^th century) make me wonder if there are any more of them left in situ.

But that seems to be the way of the visual arts these days, whether antiquities from our own continent or art of this new century. One must know their whereabouts. God/goddess willing, one is fortunate to have a guide like Mario to help track them down.--Elizabeth Lolarga

A version of this was first  published in Ti Similla, a newsletter of the University of the Philippines Baguio, 2008.

Photos by Mario Baluyot , Rolly Fernandez and Babeth Lolarga