When we set out to design the Fall Winter 2012 collection, is was the surrealist movement, and more specifically female surrealist paintings, that found their way onto our inspiration boards.  The color palettes of artists like Leonora Carrington led to rich new coated colors and dyed looks, while the deep symbolism of works by the likes of Frida Kahlo inspired our selection of deep, dark denim washes. Across the board, surrealist imagery led to our exciting new print story and influenced color and wash names.

So we were extremely excited to hear about “In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and The United States,” a new LACMA exhibit that pulls together so many of the works and artists we referenced for the line, as well as others we had never seen or heard of before. Walking through the exhibit during member previews, it was a thrill to see works that we never expected to see in person at all, displayed together in the same space.

While Salvador Dali is synonymous with the surrealist movement in Europe, there was also a thriving group of surrealists working in North America around the same time, led by an unexpected segment of the population: women. In the prologue for the exhibit, Whitney Chadwick explains that the show is “the first international exhibition to explore the legacy of surrealism in Mexico and the United States through its influence on several generations of women artists.” This is really a monumental, first-of-its-kind show that everyone who loves (or hasn’t yet discovered) surrealist art should see. Using portraits, self-portraits  and even double self-portraits, the female surrealists used their medium to delve deep into the subconscious and the space of their own dreams.

Our favorite painting in the show is Remedios Varo’s 1956 painting ‘Harmony’, whose intricate details and symbolic meaning are a perfect summation of our inspiration and the surrealist movement itself. Varo’s other featured paintings include ‘Celestial Pablum’ and ‘Woman Departing from Psychoanalyst’s Office’. Don’t miss works by the recently passed Leonora Carrington and the more high-profile Frida Kahlo. Also notable are pieces by Kay Sage and Bridget Tichenor, photographs by Lee Miller and sculptures by Louise Bourgeois.

You can catch the show at LACMA through May 6^th, before it moves to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Quebec and then to the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City in the fall – right about when the new line hits retail.

Los Angeles continues to reinforce its reputation as one of the premier artistic centers in the world with a new collaboration called Pacific Standard Time. Started by The Getty Research Institute in 2002, the initiative set out to locate, archive, and acquire some of the most important works by LA artists since WWII. Ten years on, the initiative has evolved into a collaborative series of exhibitions and public art events across 30 participating LA museums, showcasing paintings, sculpture, film, photography, design, performance art, and concept work created between 1945 and 1980.

You can explore all the exhibitis of Pacific Standard Time on their website, and even create a customized calendar of all the exhibits you don’t want to miss. No matter what your art preference is, there is something for everyone, and you will want to cancel that ticket you bought to Crystal Bridges. Here’s what we’re most excited about:

Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970
J Paul Getty Museum - October 1, 2011 – February 5, 2012.

This is the flagship exhibition of the entire intiative and also the broadest, featuring “an indigenous strain of modernism evident in the hard-edge paintings, assemblage sculpture, and large-scale ceramics of the 1950s, the subsequent development of iconic Pop images of the city in the 1960s, and the conceptual and material contributions of Light and Space art and process painting that fostered the advanced art of the 1970s.” Whoa.

California Design, 1930-1965: “Living in a Modern Way”
LACMA - October 1, 2011 – March 25, 2012

A collection of more than of the most iconic midcentury modern design pieces, including furniture, home décor, fashion, graphic design, and industrial design. You may just want to move right in.

In Focus: Los Angeles, 1945-1980
J. Paul Getty Museum – December 20, 2011 – May 6, 2012

This is a smaller exhibit, featuring 25 photographs from the Getty permanent collection. We love a good black and white photo, and we also love any excuse to get up to the Getty for a bottle of wine.

Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974 – 1981
Museum of Contemporary Art – October 1, 2011 – Febuary 13, 2012

The MOCA exhibit explores a tighter period from 1974 to 1981, when the modernist movement, “characterized by a master narrative of progress and succession, reached a dead end”. The exhibit explores a variety of styles and genres that emerged after art ceased to fit into any type of master category for Art Historians.

Trouble in Paradise: Music and Los Angeles 1945-1975
The GRAMMY Museum – February 22, 2012 – April 2, 2012

The GRAMMY Museum is an underrated museum mostly overshadowed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. This exhibit is a good excuse to finally make the trek. While details are still scarce, there is a lot of potential for an exhibit featuring a “wide-range of iconic images from the period… album art, handbills, concert posters, etc.” You can probably expect music, too.

You definitely know Tim Burton’s work as the director of films like Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Sleepy Hollow and the most recent version of Alice in Wonderland, but you may not know the depth of his artistic portfolio. We stopped by the Tim Burton exhibit at the LACMA this weekend, and we highly recommend making a visit. The retrospective shows Burton’s evolution as an artist through a collection of over 700 drawings, paintings, photographs, moving-image works, storyboards, puppets, concept artworks, film posters, costumes and props, each culled from Burton’s own archive, film studio vaults, and private collections.

One of our favorite pieces was the Edward Scissorhands costume, derived from an original sketch Burton made of the character, and complete with every detail you remember from the film (except Johnny Depp). We also loved the distressed fabric and incredible detail work of the Headless Horseman’s robe from Sleepy Hollow. And once you have viewed the surrealist imagination of his napkin sketches and pen and ink drawings, you really start to understand his wit and ability to play on words.

Be prepared for some excellent people watching, too, as the show attracts a mix of young teens dressed like they are ready for a Burton audition, artistic types, and even families with strollers. If you go on a weekend, try to get there by 12Noon, before it gets busy. The show is set to run through Halloween. How appropriate.

Bonus: On your way out, don’t miss the Zodiac Heads by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The circle of 12 bronze sculptures recreates the line of animal heads that once stood atop the Yuan Ming Yuan palace outside Beijing. The sculpture is currently on a world tour, and will stay in LA until Febraury, after spending three months in New York.

Starting at 11:00AM this morning, LACMA is holding a marathon screening of their newly acquired work The Clock, conceived by American artist Christian Marclay. The Clock is a 24-hour movie and art piece that strings together moments from cinema and television that feature clocks and watches. The most impressive part of the work is that the images are chronologically synched with the actual time of day, so if you were to look at the film at 6:04PM tonight, you would see an image from film or TV where a clock shows the time at 6:04.

The museum is keeping their Bing Theater open throughout the night until the film ends at exactly 11:00AM tomorrow, so you still have plenty of time to check it out, and admission to view the piece is free, courtesy of KCRW. You can also follow LACMA on Twitter for updates about the exhibition. In case you miss it, the piece will be available to view during regular museum hours starting on Friday through July 31st, though it is not scheduled to show in its entirety any time soon, which means today is your only shot to see the parts of the film that occur during their normal closing hours.

The museum acquired The Clock in mid-April after the work enjoyed a fantastic reception at the Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and London’s Hayward Gallery.