Plus ça change

Around the same time Fidel launched his fateful attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953 my uncle Micah Carpentier boarded a Pan Am World Airways DC-6 from Jose Marti Airport on his way to visit his brother Isak in a place called Ingelwood. Untouched by ideology it was the bright southern California sunshine and not the forbidding slopes of the Sierra Madre that captivated the young adventurer's imagination.

He had only vaguely heard of Central Avenue and though Buddy Collette and Big Jay McNeely were far from the clave rhythms he was accustomed to, upon arriving in L.A. he made a B-line for the Dunbar Hotel.

It is no small irony that half a century later and barely three miles due north on the same but radically different Central Avenue my uncle's work would be prominently displayed in what in 1953 was the Union Hardware building and what is now the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Another landmark of my uncle's California sojourn was 741 S Grand Ave, the original site of the Chouinard Art Institute. It was there that he attended lectures by the painter Emerson Woelffer and was first exposed to the exotic ideas of Abstract Expressionism (albeit of a west coast variety). Completely unpersuaded, Carpentier was drawn toward making small botanical renderings of the region's various succulents.

La Planta Carnosa, watercolor, Micah Carpentier, 1953

All told Micah Carpentier spent six months in Los Angeles before returning to Havana. Though he loved the music he hated the food and he desperately missed his beloved mother Beatriz.

It's hard to say how his experiences in Los Angeles influenced the development of his work but if he was like most visitors at the time he probably left disappointed that he never managed to meet an actual movie star.