iHammer MuseumWestwood
Huguette Caland: A Life in a Few Lines
A retrospective of about 150 works by the Lebanese artist, spanning 1970-2011, exploring humor, language, gender and the body.
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Two of the first things you meet are dresses. Foule (1970) and Miroir (1974) are made of thread on fabric and shown on mannequins, so clothing sits among the paintings from the start. The Hammer also has ten of the caftans Caland designed with Pierre Cardin.
About 150 drawings, paintings, sculptures and textiles are on view, with archival material and ephemera. Caland was born in Beirut in 1931, lived in Paris, and moved to Los Angeles in 1987, spending her last decades in Venice. The Hammer says the show follows humor, language, gender, aging and the body. Her 1971 painting Enlève ton doigt means "take your finger off", which is also the advice your group chat gives you about the send button at 1am.
This is the first US retrospective of her work, curated by Hannah Feldman and seen earlier in Madrid and Hamburg. Entry is free, Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm. A curator walk-through is on 11 October, and highlights tours run Saturdays at 1pm.
Editor's pick
Thread-on-fabric dresses from the 1970s stand on mannequins next to ten caftans Caland designed for Pierre Cardin. About 150 works, from 1970 to 2011, make up the Lebanese artist's first US retrospective, with humour and the body running through it.
Look for
Foule (Dress #2), 1970
A dress worked in thread on fabric and shown on a mannequin, so you walk around it as you would a sculpture.
Miroir (Dress #4), 1974
A second thread-on-fabric dress on a mannequin, which you can compare with Foule from 1970.
Self-Portrait (Bribes de corps), 1973
An oil on linen from the 1970s series that paints enlarged, soft-edged body parts, among them legs and buttocks.
Self-Portrait in Smock, 1992
An oil on canvas of the artist in a smock, her silhouette set against a red background.
The Pierre Cardin caftans
Ten caftans Caland designed with Cardin, shown alongside the paintings and drawings.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
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Image credits
6
- Huguette Caland: A Life in a Few Lines© and courtesy of Huguette Caland Estate. Photo © and courtesy of Huguette Caland Estate
- Mountain Spirits: Rice and Indigeneity in the Northern Luzon Highlands, PhilippinesCourtesy of Fowler Museum at UCLA
- Uhengaparaoa, Taonga Tuku Iho: Ancestral Gifts and Contemporary Māori ArtCourtesy of Fowler Museum at UCLA
- Textiles as MonumentCourtesy of Fowler Museum at UCLA
- Hammer MuseumAlexis Doine / Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- Fowler Museum at UCLAFuzzy901 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0