It’s hard to miss the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opened in Los Angeles late last month. First off, the building, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects, looks like a shimmering piece of futuristic Hollywood kitsch. It’s spaceship-adjacent, which is perfect given Lucas’ background as a spaceship creator. Star Wars Franchise. In fact, I hate to say it, a lot of things about this museum are obvious.
Co-founded by George Lucas and his wife Mellody Hobson, the $1 billion museum took 20 years to build due to severe delays. Although less than 10% of the collection Star WarsRelated Art and Ephemera There are 30 galleries to peruse, featuring everything from comics and paintings by Norman Rockwell to comic art and murals by JR and Diego Rivera. The goal is for people to “see themselves and the world they know reflected,” Hobson said in a statement. Lucas himself said that the purpose of the museum is to showcase “the art of storytelling.”
“The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art was created to honor human stories and the artists who illustrate them,” he said in a statement. “The artists in this series don’t just create images, they connect our modern imagination with our ancient emotions – creating community with shared beliefs.”
But that’s not necessarily true. Although Star Wars Fans will likely follow any writer who criticizes the museum (“Why can’t you celebrate how great this museum is?” they’ll ask with wide eyes), and Lucas underestimated the intelligence of his audience, believing that mythology is the only thing that connects us. He approaches the idea of storytelling in a bland, opaque way.
Housed in a sleek sci-fi spaceship, this magnificent dressing table project is certainly perfect for selfies. With its luminous lights and modular shape, the building becomes one of Los Angeles’ wonders. But when you peel back the gaudy stuff — nearly everyone in Hollywood, from Kim Kardashian to Leonardo DiCaprio, has been present at the red carpet opening — you’ll find more than 1,400 relatively simple, often mythology-driven works of art categorized into categories like motherhood, work and family.
Highlights include Ernie Barnes Quintet (1989) Jazz Musician; Mary Cassatt Children playing with cats (1907); Chiang Daoge’s Starship landing platform (2000-02), Making Art Star Wars 2: Attack of the Clones;and cover by Joey Terrill modern boy,roll. 3 (1989), a cartoon by an artist who melded LGBTQ+ activism with Chicano politics at the height of the AIDS epidemic. There are paintings by Frida Kahlo, Vincent Van Gogh and Jacob Lawrence. Lucas undoubtedly had great taste, and his collection spanned thousands of years of art history.
But what exactly is “narrative art”? Is it a fictional category, or just another term for the art of cinema? The museum defines narrative art as “works that tell stories through images.” As it explained in a statement: “Much of the world’s artistic expression is motivated by storytelling, communicating narratives rooted in religion, mythology, history, literature or famous events.” To me, this label means that art must tell a story, it cannot be abstract or avant-garde, and the audience needs a narrative to understand it.
So don’t expect to find works by Barnett Newman or Jackson Pollock. They run counter to Lucas’s philosophy of “storytelling” and his overall philosophy of art and creativity. Lucas believed that when art turned to Abstract Expressionism, “it abandoned the public” because it “no longer told the human story.” But abstract art is neither mechanical nor impersonal. It’s okay to have art that you argue with, art that you disagree with, art that challenges you. After all, art is not decoration. Maybe, unless you’re Lucas.
Abstract art still tells human stories. View Lee Krasner’s 1956 painting prophecywhich all but predicted Pollock’s death and captured the emotional friction of a marriage’s breakdown from a female perspective. Or consider Piet Mondrian’s 1942 painting broadway boogie woogie Telling the story of New York City’s vibrant jazz scene.
Mark Rothko’s Color Field paintings are deeply emotive landscapes that capture the human experience of the pre-digital era, immersing the viewer in color so that it speaks to them without words or traditional images. Abstract and non-representational art have also been used by dissident artists under authoritarian regimes as a coded form of political rebellion.
Wandering through the galleries feels like browsing a billionaire’s impressive yet varied art collection – they’re impressive, especially in quantity. The only exception might be the fascinating Comics Gallery, showcasing the work of artists like Robert Crumb, Alison Bechdel, and Jack Kirby, which makes perfect sense since comic art can be read like a storyboard, which is what filmmakers prefer. But overall, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has no real thematic framework beyond the label text for each gallery, which is odd considering how many visitors are movie or sci-fi buffs who probably expected Lucas to tell a more cohesive story.