Alexei Jawlensky at the Norton Simon

This afternoon I took a long meandering drive into the hellhole of Los Angeles, my way blocked at every turn, and instead of buying film at Freestyle I found refuge at the Norton Simon.

There was a show of paintings by Alexei Jawlensky downstairs. Initially I was unimpressed, but smaller early works like "The Hunchback" (1917) and "Helene" (1916) managed to go beyond rehashed Matisse; and the abstracted faces of the twenties, with their playful line and light, airy colors, made the show.



The faces of the thirties were darker, for darker times.