CLAES, COOSJE & ME
a travelogue, a rendezvous, and a critique
Where: Venice Beach, CA
Installed: 1991
Visited: August 12, 2019
Met: Jocelyn Ma, Momoka Sasaki, Joanne Lee, Nicholas Scalfaro, Robert Peltekov
Blog Entry: Oct. 12, 2019
What becomes former students who minted their senior year in a zany English teacher’s zero period class? The fun they had, the Hamlet soliloquies, the extra credit trips to DTLA, the cultural and intellectual exchanges. What becomes these kids, who, thinking they have just experienced the most formative and enervating year of their lives—only to relegate that so-called-meaningful year to second level epiphany by the time junior college year comes around—are now flung countryside, like Frisbees. What becomes the veteran teacher, who once sent kids callously into the world—have a good life!—but now silently realizes the emotional and burdensome drag of losing 120 students each year. Into thin air.
One mid-August day, I was meeting up with five recent high school graduates in Venice Beach near the boardwalk. We’d have tacos and then walk over to the Binoculars Building a half mile away on Main Street. Anticipation was high, but I was nervous.
We had planned this rendezvous for months, jigsaw-ing the various summer schedules into the last day possible. Nic would be off in two days to Vassar, Robert and Momo to Berkeley by week’s end, Joanne to the University of the Pacific next. And then there was Jocelyn, who would have to wait another month for UCLA to commence—a long wait without her friends. Would I notice a big-heart sadness in her eyes?
More pressing, would they find parking? Would they like Teddy’s Red Tacos? Were my toy binoculars for the photo shoot too kitschy? What would we talk about on our walk?
These five, clustered together in my zero period AP English Language class during their 2018-19 senior year, would grow closer throughout the year. It’s a natural momentum I’d seen happen to students throughout my years of teaching, but with these–let’s call them The Thumbs-Up Five–it seemed more, what…endearing. I hold them in high esteem.
They have a giddy, gently teasing manner, the five. Jocelyn and Joanne, I found out later, had been friends since 6th grade. Jocelyn knew of Momo junior year through Nic and Joanne, but one day J and M were thrust in front of the class explaining the health benefits of coffee and that was it. Robert, the mechanically-minded one and robotics-wiz, and Nic, a Renaissance-knowledge wonder, were half a Scholar Quiz team—the finals packed the school gym at lunch—that won this year. Here are a couple videos of them dancing during the competition.
I had bonded with Nik early after discovering his foreign film fanaticism—sadly, film buffs, a la Greg and Earl in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl are no longer common among high school hipsters. (They can talk about coffee shops and tacos, but not Werner Herzog.) Joanne, who received a big scholarship straight into Pacific’s Pharmacy School, was a detail-oriented girl, who often came up to me after class for clarification on an assignment. Momo always seemed interested in my humanities and approach to literature. Later I learned her father collected prints of Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama and Keith Haring. She was surrounded by pop art.
They were a late, this August day. I was texting Jocelyn. They found a parking spot but couldn’t quite decode the meter instructions. Parking restrictions in L.A. are tricky. Still, these were five of the smartest kids I’d had, and it was amusing.
When we finally gathered in the back patio at Teddy’s for birria vampiros, my anxiety evaporated amidst the cavalcade of summer stories. Nic traveled with his parents throughout Turkey. He had also DM’d a picture of Central Cafe in Vienna that I had talked about in class. “Found it,” he said. Robbie did his usual summer-in-Bulgaria-with-family thing; Momo and Joanne traveled to Korea and Japan with some other kids. (Thanks for the pink-chocolate KitKats); Of course, they wanted to know all about the Europe trip.
And then there’s Jocelyn, who stayed home and tutored essay-writing kids. I once promoted a book in class—Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black; I needed feed-back to see if it could be taught in school—and only two kids took me up on it: Jocelyn and Katherine Nguyen. Here they are doing their Museum Walk presentation.
They both wrote impressively detailed responses, and in consequence, I’m teaching it this year (Wish me luck). So even though Jocelyn didn’t travel, she had an apropos summer job. As all were relaying their travel stories, she didn’t seem worse for wear. She’s also very good at needling Robbie about his bagpipe-playing—the Bulgarian equivalent is called the Gaida.
Then we walked, and time flew and, boom, the binocular building was looming right above us. I have seen the binocular building 50 times, but they had not. I’m not sure if driving past—Woa, look at that!—or walking past makes a bigger impression. But they were surprised at the enormity of the structure. When you’re up close on the sidewalk, the looming presence is disorienting, and I’m sure that’s what Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen intended when they agreed to build this for Frank Gehry in 1986.
Frank Gehry was commissioned by Jay Chiat of Chiat Day Advertising to build something new and post-modern. The binoculars hold together two clashing office structures: one white and rectangular and modern, the other obtuse and angular and rust-colored. The circular dark-gray binoculars complete an abstract triptych: squares, circles, triangles.
Van Bruggen, in her essay, “Leaps into the Unknown: Large-Scale Projects in Collaboration with Frank Gehry,” said, “We visited Frank and agreed with him that the binoculars, balanced as it was between architecture and sculpture, could become an integral part of the design.”
In one way, the viewer should forget they are giant binoculars; they’re just the middle form, anchoring the other two as a geometric trio. Van Bruggen wanted to avoid merely “mimetic architecture.” The binoculars, in fact, are functional: it’s the entrance way—like the Colossus of Rhodes, maybe?—to an underground parking structure, and the two lenses house conference rooms. I had another student, Jade Eng, who interned there this summer—it’s now a Google office building—and she confirmed it.
But let’s get real: this does not have the golden 4:9 ratio. This is not the Parthenon. This is a giant pair of binoculars, simply. But it forces us to ponder the meaning of the ordinary and everyday. Displace it and blow it up. First you laugh and and then you think.
Maybe it is our Parthenon? There is symmetry and weight and grandeur. Charles Demuth in 1927 painted My Egypt, suggesting the grain elevators were the pyramids of America.
Venice Beach is a city of unexpected and cool and weird, and the Binoculars belong. Taking pictures here requires non-serious poses.
I remember the security guards on the Acropolis yelling at us for taking jumping shots—it’s shameful and dishonorable, they said. Jumping shots work just fine in Venice.
In fact, one block down Jonathan Borafsky’s 30-foot tall Ballerina Clown hanging from the CVS building kicks a leg in agreement.
I suppose the Clownerina, as locals call it, is the real symbol of Venice. The sadness in her/his/its face is a nod to the city’s homelessness. Oldenburg and van Bruggen rarely created installations that brings viewers to tears.
As we gathered around in the late-afternoon Pacific Ocean glow, I was glad I brought props. Pictures here inspire reverse audacity. So they posed and posed and posed in different formations. The boys together, the girls together. I brought books too—to remind us all how many books they had to read in my class. They played the part, their giddy and eager participation showing in the pictures. I only wish I had a real camera to go with fake binoculars, because this is a photogenic group, wouldn’t you say?
We walked back towards the cars, and now the conversations seemed more relaxed and natural. I told them the quick version of how Barb and I got lost on a 8 hour—what ended up being a 19-hour—mountain hike in Colorado a few days earlier. They ooh-ed and ahh-ed. We all promised to stay in touch. I looked at Jocelyn, the organizer of the rendezvous, and she seemed happy.
But when I drove away, I felt a little sad.
Claes, Coosje and Me 
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