LA County Fair 2024: Rufino Tamayo art exhibit makes impression

Rufino Tamayo was a Mexican painter and muralist, hailed alongside such giants as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco, even if his work was quiet and apolitical.

An artist who tried to capture something essential to the Mexican character, Tamayo, who died in 1991 in Mexico City at age 91, turned increasingly to printmaking in his later years. His prints, like his other works, focus on individuals, often abstracted down to outlines.

On view at the LA County Fair is “Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation,” an exhibit devoted to six decades of the artist’s prints, which occupy the entirety of the Millard Sheets Art Center building.

This is the second straight year in which two mighty institutions — the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Los Angeles County Fair — have teamed to bring art to the fair-going masses. The exhibit, along with the fair, ends on Memorial Day.

Speaking as a LACMA member who doesn’t make it out to its Wilshire Boulevard museum as often as I’d like, it’s certainly welcome to see LACMA bring some of its art to me. (It means missing my ritual stop for lunch at Langer’s Deli on the way, but we can’t have everything.)

The Tamayo exhibit is made up exclusively of items in LACMA’s permanent collection. It’s been seen only once before, briefly, at a LACMA satellite facility, the former Charles White Elementary School. That show opened near Christmas 2019 and, due to the pandemic, closed early.

“We’re very excited to bring it back and show it to a larger audience from across Los Angeles County,” said Rachel Kaplan, the museum’s associate curator of Latin American art, as we walked through the exhibit earlier in May.

One standout is “Two Personages Attacked by Dogs,” which shows a fleeing couple, arms upraised, as two dogs menace them from behind, the colors dark and foreboding. The scene is reminiscent of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden.

At its unveiling in 1983, it was touted as “the largest mural ever printed” — it looks a bit larger than a ping-pong table — and required special machines, both to make the paper and to make the print. A video shows a team of people producing it.

Another work of interest is “Hands on Blue Background,” an etching that includes the imprints of Tamayo’s own hands, probably pressed directly onto the paper. Rarely is an artist’s presence felt on such a basic level, his handiwork quite so literal. (Also of note: He had very long pinkies.)

Printmaking, Kaplan explained, was “a place for him to play with forms and techniques.”

The exhibit also includes several small Mesoamerican sculptures of the sort Tamayo collected, which date as far back as 1200 B.C. They must be among the oldest objects ever displayed at the LA County Fair. (At any rate, they’re older than Thummer.)

I’d say “Rufino Tamayo: Innovation and Experimentation” is a bit more successful than last year’s collection of modern photography. Frankly, though, the Millard Sheets Art Center still seems empty, with prints on the walls but the vast floor space bare even of benches.

There are limits to what art LACMA can bring and the fair can display. The 1937 building has no air conditioning. Museums need a narrow range of temperature for preservation reasons. Then there are security concerns.

“The level of security dictates the level of the art,” Fairplex CEO Walter Marquez told me.

Thus, Tamayo’s paintings, some of which are in LACMA’s holdings, stayed in storage. Still, it’s an interesting exhibit, worth checking out if you’re at the fair.

Marquez said he and LACMA’s Michael Govan, its director and CEO, continue to talk about how the building might be upgraded, how the costs would be shared, whether grants might be available and how the building might be used year-round.

“Michael and I are still in conversation,” Marquez told me on opening day of the fair. “We texted today.”

More Tamayo

If I’d seen Tamayo’s name before encountering his work at the fair, I didn’t recall it. But you know how once a name or a word registers, suddenly you see it everywhere?

During my visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum two weeks ago, I happened to notice “Torso Blanco,” a print by him. Pretty sure it was on display last time I was there.

The difference is that this time I thought, “Oh, Rufino Tamayo! I just saw his work at the LA County Fair.”

100th (or not)

The Fairplex Garden Railroad, whose lengthy history was the subject of my May 8 column, began in 1924, albeit indoors rather than in a garden. Is 2024 its 100th anniversary? The fair says it is. I asserted here that it’s really the 101st.

Wrong.

Reader Robert Kintner: “If your neighbor was married in 1924, would this not be his 100th anniversary year?” (Forestalling the obvious question raised by his example, Kintner added: “He married very young.”)

Kintner’s correct. I got lost in the nuances between birthdays and anniversaries and tripped myself up. Or derailed myself.

Happy 100th anniversary!

Jams and jellies

The fair’s competition for preserved foods — jams, jellies and marmalades, mostly — was the subject of my column March 6. I showed up to watch people check in their entries.

Sadly, I missed Francine Rippy. She’s a celebrity in the Home Arts contests due to longevity, volume and prizes won. This year her 60 submissions amounted to almost one-third of all preserved food entries. (No one-trick pony, she also brought in a rug.)

Rippy, who lives in Hacienda Heights, told me by phone Thursday that she’s attended the fair since girlhood, has been canning since she was a teenager and believes she’s entered Home Arts contests for 62 years.

How did she do this year? She doesn’t know.

“This is the first time in 70 years I haven’t been to the fair. I’ve been too busy,” Rippy told me. She’ll find out when she picks up her items June 1.

I asked why she’s competed for so many years. “Compulsion,” Rippy admitted. “I’ve already got a list in my cupboard of 10 things to enter for next year’s fair.”

That’s why she’s a legend.

David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, his own compulsion. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.