Fancy Pants at the Museum

Today I went to the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Los Angeles. One of the things that always intrigues me about museums (aside from the obvious answer which is the art) is the people who visit them. People watching is always a joy, but museums tend to attract all sorts of people with a variety of personalities, viewpoints and interesting wardrobe choices. In fact I even did a "multi-genre" project, inspired by the work of Thomas Struth, on people as art within a museum at the Whitney Biennial in graduate school. 

I tried to become a piece of art today by wearing some fancy pants, the J. Crew Toothpick Cords in Ribbon Bow print, with a contrasting leopard print shoe, the J. Crew Valentina pump. Normally I wouldn't mix up these prints, but I am beginning to see how leopard can be a neutral. I think this idea of leopard as a neutral originally came from TV personality Stacy London from What Not to Wear. Anyway, I hope my mixed pattern pallet turned out to be an artistic masterpiece!

Read on for my review of the Toothpick Cords from J. Crew if you are so inclined to purchase your own "fancy pants." When I ordered these pants I wasn't sure about the fit. I was able to zip up a size 27 but I had to do a wiggly dance to get them on and once on they felt really tight. I wondered if I ate a piece of chocolate cake would the button fly off?  I wanted to return them for one size larger, but the sales associate talked me out of this. She said if you can get the pants on and zipped up you should feel uncomfortable because they stretch out. Given this advice I decided to keep my original size. Uncomfortable artsy fancy pants!

Here are some photographs of the art I saw today at the MOCA. I tried to include my favorites from the MOCA's permanent collection. The photos include works (in order of appearance) from Mark Rothko, Alberto Giacometti, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein, Alexander Calder, and Jasper Johns. If you look really close at the Rauschenberg Combine you will see pants, which I thought was quite appropriate for my "fancy pants" blog entry. Also the Lichtenstein reminds me of the roast we had for Christmas dinner.