We called in at the National Portrait Gallery for a cup of tea yesterday, perplexed by the stories of a massive loss of visitors, but there was no lack of them on a wet Saturday afternoon in the Regency galleries which I remember as often deserted. We stopped to admire the creamy brushwork in Lawrence’s portrait of Lord Liverpool:-

And the studio portrait of Burke (but what is Burke doing in the Regency galleries ?):-

We had a little ceremony in his studio in which David Hockney was presented his Royal Academy medal, only thirty three years after he first became an ARA on 20 May 1985:-

I walked a bit further this morning, exploring the hinterland on the edge of the Historic District, where the streets flatten out and one can look up towards the mountains in the north, wondering how it was that postwar America allowed the grandiosity of their historic downtown neighbourhoods to decay so absolutely:-

I was pleased to have a chance before dinner to go upstairs on the celestial escalator to see the top floor collections, beautifully displayed in sections according to artist.

This is the escalator:-

First, I saw the room of works by John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha:-

Then, Sigmar Polke:-

Joseph Beuys:-

And Jenny Saville:-

I came to LA for the opening of the Jasper Johns exhibition at the Broad Museum.   They have made much more of the flag paintings:  not least across the street frontage of the Diller and Scofidio façade:-

But also in the first room, which includes Flag (1955):-

And the Three Flags from the Whitney (1958):-

After the Chemosphere, we called in at the Garcia House, not quite as futuristic as the Chemosphere, but still impressively inventive in the way that it is made to perch on the edge of the hillside on thin struts and the freedom of its entrance staircase and the view out onto the San Fernando valley and down to the city beyond.

The entrance staircase:-

The guest bedroom:-

The living room:-

The bathroom:-

And the taps:-

It was a great treat to see John Lautner’s masterpiece, The Chemosphere, at least from a distance, and admire the innocence of its 1960s utopian futurism:-

We spent the day in the Santa Monica mountains above Sunset Boulevard, looking at private collections:  impressed by the internationalism of Los Angeles collectors and the extent to which they owned work by British artists – not just Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor, but also Sean Scully, Julian Opie and Cecily Brown:-

I took an early morning stroll round the glories of the still deeply neglected streets of downtown LA, with their grand 1920s building turned into dime stores and thrift shops and the magnificent terracotta decoration and classical ornament intermingled with art deco shop signs:-