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Will a Pair of Beloved Jewish Summer Camps Rise from the Ashes of the Woolsey Fire?
From the Pacific Coast Highway, just past Neptune's Net, you can see Camp Hess Kramer's giant menorah still standing. However, after last fall's devastating fires and the winter's subsequent mudslides, the fate of the landmark and its surroundings remains uncertain. On a recent visit to the beloved Jewish summer camp, which is still closed to the public, the nature-made destruction is so great, savage, and indiscriminate that saying it's "of Biblical proportions" is entirely appropriate.On t... View Original Article -
Painted Words, Day-Glo Posters and Hotel Rooms: The Influence Of Allen Ruppersberg
Allen Ruppersberg: Intellectual Property 1968-2018 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (through May 12, 2019), features an artist you may not know well and the extent of whose influence you never realized â until this exhibition.To set this in context: One of the most significant developments in Los Angeles in the last decade has been that as LA continued to rise in prominence as a 21rst Century hub for creativity and art, its cultural institutions have looked back to… -
Buried by Vesuvius Explodes the Getty Villa
Almost a year ago, I visited Pompei and Herculaneum, marveling at the extant evidence of the lives of the Romans as preserved when Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.Turns out I didn"t have to travel to Italy to see many of the magnificent treasures from the greatest of Herculaneum's Roman Villas (although I would do it again in a second!). The Getty Villa is currently exhibiting: Buried by Vesuvius, Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri, with a show of artifacts from… -
The Sorrow of Soviet Poetry: On Lev Ozerov's "Portraits Without Frames"
PORTRAITS WITHOUT FRAMES is a singular work of literary biography: a history of Soviet-era literature and culture that is also a masterful poetic sequence in its own right. In Portraits, Lev Ozerov (1914âÂÂ1996), a relatively little-known Russian literary figure, recounts his personal encounters with a who's who of 20th-century poets, authors, artists, composers, and musicians. It seems like he met everyone that was anyone, from Isaac Babel to Dmitry Shostakovich, from Boris Pasternak to the gr... View Original Article -
"Almost Famous: The Musical" Rocks On
This Sunday October 27th, "Almost Famous," the Musical based on the 2000 Cameron Crowe movie will end its run at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego. Tickets for the run have been sold out for a while but I was lucky enough to attend a matinee recently, and am here to report that when "Almost Famous" turns up on Broadway or in your town (and I"d be shocked if it doesn"t), you and your family will very much enjoy… -
Mariinsky's "Jewels" Shine Not as Bright
At the Music Center in Los Angeles, The Mariinsky Ballet of St. Petersburg performed George Balanchine's "Jewels."In a very informative pre-performance lecture at the Music Center, journalist and dance historian Elizabeth Kaye explained that Georges Balanchine, born Georgiy Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg to Georgian parents, studied at the Imperial Ballet before joining the Mariinsky (the Soviet incarnation of the Imperial Ballet) where at a young age he began choreographing ballets. In 192... View Original Article -
The Vanishing Point of Cool: Glenn O"Brien's "Intelligence for Dummies"
Glenn O"Brien was an artist, a filmmaker, a musician, editor of Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, a columnist for Interview, Paper, ArtForum and other publications, and a very successful advertising copywriter and creative director of advertising for Barneys Department Store. For much of his adult life he stood at the cusp of contemporary culture, at the vanishing point of cool.As a contributing writer at Interview during the 1980s Warhol era, I met O"Brien on several occasions and attended ... View Original… -
The Gift of a Great Photo
With the holidays imminent, whether due to the spirit of the season or the constant barrage of advertising and emails, one's thoughts turn to gift-giving â for others and, even, for oneself.Many gifts are easily consumable or disposable or subject to the whims of trends or fashions. However, there is one gift that in my experience continues to give pleasure, and that is the gift of a great image â a photograph that is a work of art, that imparts… -
Four Quartets, A Memorable Dance Performance For Our Times.
Coronavirus has given me the opportunity to catch up-to write about exhibitions, performances, books, that I had meant to address but that slipped by until Coronavirus got in the way. I feel like Larry David who has finally found the perfect excuse for avoiding going out and social interactions â sorry I can"t because it's shut down/I"m socially distancing.But that doesn"t mean that, alone in my guest room turned office-for-the-moment, and with internet access, I don"t recall and relish th...… -
Travel From Home
Star Trek famously called Space the final frontier, referring to the explorations of the space ship Enterprise to distant galaxies and planets. But in light of the current coronavirus pandemic quarantine, any travel right now seems far-fetched.Still, I tried to think if going forward I can"t (or won"t) travel in the foreseeable future, then: What can I revisit or see virtually. What I found is, as Dr. Seuss says, "Oh the places you will go!"Thinking about this fell into two… -
Why are we so obsessed with John Demjanjuk?
On Tuesday, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum released a photo of Sobibor guards that purports to reveal Nazi collaborator John Demjanjuk in a guard uniform at the Sobibor Death Camp. German historian Martin Clippers said the museum used the German police to conduct a biometric examination to affirm it was Demjanjuk.I have seen the picture and it may well be him. But this photo is not what proves that Demjanjuk was at Sobibor. It is the overwhelming amount of… -
A Heart Shaped LA Dream Drive
Saturday Night Live has regularly mocked Los Angelenos for their obsessive and unending conversations about their routes driving to and from any destination â and it is funny because it is true: Traffic and its avoidance is an inevitable fact of SoCal existence.In fact, one of the inside-LA jokes in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is Brad Pitt's ability to zoom around Los Angeles" freeways at top speed unimpeded by traffic. Those were the days!Nonetheless, I recently…