THE TORTURE GARDEN: The other place I went in LA was the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach. We went to the main galleries, where the most memorable things for me were the Warhol-riffing Cuban soup cans sardonically lauding “America’s Favorite Revolution,” and a… lenticular?… picture in which the shining girders and industrial debris shimmered and shifted, if you tilted your head, to reveal a small overlooked human being at the far corner of the frame.

But the current exhibit is what I really want to tell you all about. It’s billed as landscape paintings by David Siqueiros, who apparently is better known (though not to me) as a muralist. But these aren’t landscapes in any traditional sense. They were mostly painted from photographs or from the inside of the man’s own head, rather than from nature; many were painted while he was in prison. Some are surreal, science-fiction scenes of bulbous future cities. Some are (often unsatisfying) allegories of various aspects of Mexican history and revolutionary politics.

But some are just horror. Black, churning waves; twisting shapes which could be trees or monsters or both; thick, lurid reds; martyred men and menacing ravines. The whole world has turned against itself in his art. It’s frightening and it’s impossible to look away from.

If you’re in the area you really should check this out.