California cubism

[Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles. November 2011. Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

On my first visit to Los Angeles last November, I paid a lot of attention to the signage. Signage, signage, every where. The intersecting planes suggested to me a twenty-first-century California cubism. Compare the composition above to, say, Juan Gris’s Still life with bottle of Bordeaux.

[I’m happy to know that Gris is pronounced just as I’ve always pronounced it: \ˈgrēs\. Dropping the s seems to be a mistaken affectation, like speaking of Gertrude Schtein.]