[contextly_auto_sidebar] RAISED at a time when Europe was still the center of the art world, and coming of age as New York was beginning to replace it, the sculptor Alexander Calder can seem about as "East Coast" as a strand of ivy on a stone chimney. But he spent three crucial early years in Pasadena, CA, where his parents ran with the artists of the Arroyo scene and others in Los Angeles. … [Read more...]
The Return of Jeffrey Deitch
[contextly_auto_sidebar] AS recently as a few years back, it would have been hard to predict that controversial art dealer Jeffrey Deitch would have any reason to come back to Los Angeles for anything more complicated than a French Dip at Cole's. But now the man pushed out of the Museum of Contemporary Art -- and for a while, synonymous with faux-sensational, shallow Warholism -- is one his way … [Read more...]
The Dark Magic of Ottessa Moshfegh
[contextly_auto_sidebar] IT's not often that I pick up a book and get a new favorite writer. But that's pretty close to what happened when a story collection called Homesick For Another World, by a young author I'd not heard of, arrived in the mail one day. I read a few dark, alienated short stories, some of which were set in a dreary, bleached-out, dingbat-lined Los Angeles. I found a noirish … [Read more...]
The Sacred Art of John August Swanson
[contextly_auto_sidebar] EVEN as a lifetime religious skeptic, I've long been fascinated by artists, writers and other culture-makers who bring religion, spirituality, and related matters into their work. Most likely, the art impulse and the urge to worship and praise originated in tandem; what we now call religion and culture were almost seamlessly joined for many centuries. (The agnostic or … [Read more...]
Lauren Greenfield and “Generation Wealth”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] GENERALLY, I think the art world has missed the opportunity to address the Great Recession and the amping up of income inequality and the one percent that followed. But some visual artists have made strong and eloquent statements, and one of them is longtime Los Angeles photographer Lauren Greenfield. I caught her Generation Wealth late in its hometown run at the … [Read more...]
Walter Hopps and “The Dream Colony”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] FOR Angelenos in the visual arts world, Walter Hopps (1932-2005) was an almost godlike figure -- an eccentric, disorganized, perpetually tardy pill-popping genius who both discovered young artists and found ways to frame established figures that made them seem new. Hopps -- best known in these parts as a founder of the legendary Ferus Gallery in the late '50s and … [Read more...]
Art, Censorship, and the Death of Emmett Till
[contextly_auto_sidebar] WELL, it's really come to this, hasn't it? Having to defend the very existence of a piece of visual art not against Puritans or Nazis or Southern Fundamentalists or the Taliban but against.... other artists. The story of how the New York art world has been divided between people who think artist Dana Schutz should be able to paint (and exhibit) a picture of Emmett … [Read more...]
Music and Design: “Seeing Noise”
[contextly_auto_sidebar] WHY do we talk about "seeing" bands or orchestral groups? How did album jackets and photography of musicians -- whether Francis Wolff's shadowy shots of jazz musicians smoking in the shadows or Astrid Kirchherr's images of the Beatles in post-industrial cityscapes -- become important parts of music's aura? Is a rock video a betrayal of what music is really about? I … [Read more...]
Guillermo Del Toro at LACMA
[contextly_auto_sidebar] I MUST admit to being the kind of museum-goer instinctively suspicious of exhibits about popular culture. I say this as someone who loves pop culture and spends most of his life there. But these exhibits can be ways of pandering in an attempt to draw new audiences. I'm all in favor of the new audiences, but turned off by the pandering. But I had high hopes for the … [Read more...]