During one of our trips to Los Angeles, we decided to stay in Hollywood rather than our usual spot in Orange County near family. This gave us the chance to try something new—using LA’s metro system. We took the Red Line to the Civic Center/Grand Park station and walked from there to The Broad, passing right by the striking Walt Disney Concert Hall, Frank Gehry’s stainless steel landmark that shares the next block.
Enjoy a tune while browsing.
The Broad is a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles. The museum is named for philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad, who financed the $140 million building that features two floors of gallery space to showcase the Broad’s comprehensive collection. The museum opened in September 2015 and will be 10 years old later this year.
The Broad makes its collection of contemporary art from the 1950s to the present accessible to the widest possible audience by presenting exhibitions and operating a lending program to art museums and galleries worldwide. Below are a selection of the works that we saw.
At over 6 feet tall and nearly 17 feet across, we thought they look like giant Christmas decorations.
Jeff Koons, Tulips (1995–2004) presents a monumental bouquet of balloon-like blooms in gleaming, mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating.
Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Blue) (1994–2000) is a part of Koons’ Celebration series of artworks and is one of many playful yet technical sculptures inspired by inflatable characters, rabbit, swan and monkey.
In 2013, Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at Christie’s for $58.4 million. As of January 2025, it is the fifth most expensive work sold by a living artist at auction. In 2019, his stainless steel Rabbit was sold for $91.1 million at another Christie’s auction. We saw a mini porcelain version of this blue ballon dog on sale at a Parisian museum gift shop for a mere 50,000 euros.
Here, the chimp’s gaze is directed upward, as if seeking approval, while Michael Jackson appears slightly ill at ease. To us, it is simultaneously adorable and unbearably kitschy.
Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988) – celebrity worship is combined with religious iconography in this life-size porcelain sculpture.
The museum also has on view a large collection of at least 10 paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and provides a pamphlet on the artist’s biography and his works.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Obnoxious Liberals (1982) – Basquiat delivers a critique of politics and commerce in the 80’s: three stylized figures—a self-portrait with “Not for Sale” written on his body and a hand full of arrows (symbolizing the act of painting). This figure is flanked by Samson, the strongman of the Bible, chained to two pillars and caught in a toxic air of asbestos. To the right is a squat man in a fedora, covered in dollar signs.
By far, this one interests me the most.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Santo 2 (c. 1982). The santo (saint) refers to a small religious figurine usually found in homes of countries with a Spanish colonial history. Here, the god Apollo is visibly dissected into parts labelled with dimensional indicators and symbols. His signature crown and copyright symbol are included alongside.
We have seen many paintings depicting people in awkward poses and Robert Longo’s Men in the Cities paintings are particularly good examples.
Untitled (Men in the Cities: Ellen) – the series consists of large charcoal and graphite drawings of well-dressed men and women between moments of confinement and release. These works have apparently become metaphors for the success and money-driven “yuppie culture” of the 1980s.
Untitled (White Riot) – Robert Longo photographed his friends as they danced, then he made large charcoal renderings of the photographs depicting the figures as a mass and exaggerating their twisted and tangled poses.
This work by George Condo is a remix of snippets of modern paintings—daring but not original.
Double Heads on Red (2014) – each face is fractured into geometric planes and features, seemingly based on motifs by modern painters. Condo believes that painting is defined not by its ability to invent, but by its ability to reconfigure and retool styles for new audiences in interesting ways.
Here, we are catching up with Takashi Murakami’s recent output.
CLONE X x TAKASHI MURAKAMI #17495 Astronaut (2022) – from the Clone X NFT collection that consists of 20,000 digital avatars collaboratively created by RTFKT and Takashi Murakami. RTFKT is an organization that creates digital fashion items like sneakers for the metaverse.
There are eight DNA types and more than 300 traits, with a Clone’s DNA determining its rarity and hence its value in the metaverse. This was Murakami’s second NFT project, while the first was unsuccessful.
Takashi Murakami, Flowers Jigsaw Puzzle (2024 gift shop edition) – consists of a grid of 108 flower/emojj-like faces reproduced across 900 puzzle pieces, on sale at the Broad’s shop.
The above small selection of works illustrates how consumer gloss, urban graffiti, cinematic drama, or pop-anime exuberance can be turned into personal statements about the spectacle of modern life in the artists’ respective time frame.
More to come in Part 2 of this series.