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The Joy of Discovery: The Art of Channa Horwitz
Sonakinatography Compositition 16, 1987. Plaka on Mylar. Image courtesy the artist. Photograph by Joshua White. Part of the pleasure of seeing a survey show of contemporary art, such as the summer show “Made in L.A. 2012,” currently at the Hammer Museum, lies in the joy of discovery. There may be artists whose works you recognize, but the WOW! of finding an artist you never knew existed but whose work is fully realized, of-the-moment yet timeless and blows you away, well… -
Online Courses: The Perpetual Student
It seems like only yesterday that my friend Teri was telling me that if she could do college all over again she would take different courses: literature, poetry and just a greater variety of subjects. Well, I’ve got some good news: turns out that you can now take an amazing variety of courses, many of them offered by universities that most of us couldn’t get into today, such as Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, many of them free. What’s the hitch?… -
Truth Beauty & Desire in Vienna (Klimt's Drawings)
Gustav Klimt is best known for his famous golden paintings, portraits of society women adorned in jewels and cloaked in gold, and for the flat two-dimensionality of his work that led many to declare it superficial and merely decorative. The Getty exhibition “Gustav Klimt: The Magic of Line” puts a lie to that characterization, demonstrating how Klimt’s work conveys complex emotions and even allegorical ideals. The Getty’s show features more than 100 drawings from throughout the Austrian painter’s career —… -
A Musical Portrait of LA
“Elvis Whispers Softly,” 1956, from “Who Shot Rock & Roll?” Photograph © Alfred Wertheimer, The Wertheimer Collection The recent regional extravaganza known as Pacific Standard Time (PST), a six-month, far-ranging agglomeration of Southern California exhibitions, installations and performances, began with a series of shows that made a very convincing argument for the importance of art created in Los Angeles from 1945 to 1980. The role Los Angeles has played in shaping American culture (and, conversely, the role culture has played… -
Culture with a Side of Popcorn
James Corden and Suzie Toase in “One Man, Two Guvnors,” at the National Theatre in London, and onscreen at a theater near you. Photo by Johan Persson When the hit comedy “One Man, Two Guvnors” comes to Broadway this spring, I’ll be able to say I saw the London production. I also saw the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Don Giovanni” with the Polish tenor Mariusz Kwiecien. As for bragging rights, it’s hard to match having seen David Hallberg’s debut… -
Jonathan Foer’s ‘New American Haggadah’: Extremely Similar and Incredibly the Same
The haggadah, the user's manual to the Passover seder, might be the world's oldest annually practiced ritual, and the story of the Jews' freedom from slavery in Egypt is, Jonathan Safran Foer said recently, "the best-known greatest continuously read story" in book form. And yet, just like there isn't a singer who doesn't think he can cover a Bob Dylan song better than Dylan himself, the haggadah remains the book that everyone thinks they can improve on. The "Maxwell House… -
Demjanjuk's Just Epitaph
The recent death of John Demjanjuk, 91, in a nursing home in Germany, brings to a close one of the most extensive and most contested Nazi war crimes prosecution in history, a process that began in the United States in the mid 1970’s and was ongoing at the time of his death as Demjanjuk awaited the appeal of his conviction in Germany as an accessory to the more than 28,000 murders of Jewish men, women and children committed during the… -
Looking at Clouds from Both Sides Now
I listen to music all day, in my car, in my office, at the gym, while walking the dog or taking a hike. Most of what I listen to I don't have to pay for; some of it I do. There are so many ways to discover new music or find old favorites that I thought it might be useful to create a guide to the various offerings - on the cloud, the Net or on the air - these… -
Art + Fashion = Life by Design for L.A. Couple
Artist Moshé Elimelech and his wife, fashion designer Shelli Segal, at their Burbank home and studio. Photos by John Hough Cubes of color intersected by bands, which the viewer can manipulate into arrangements within a grid framing the work; watercolors of narrow striations, punctuated by colors and shapes, transform abstraction from cool cerebral to emotional landscapes. Clothing made in Los Angeles but destined for the world, an ongoing narrative about fabric and color draped over the human form. Such is… -
Have a Fantastic Klezmatic Hanukkah!
Share5 From left: Frank London, Matt Darriau, Lisa Gutkin, Lorin Sklamberg, Paul Morrissett. Photo by Joshua Kessler On Dec. 19, as part of their 25th anniversary tour, the Klezmatics will perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall for a Chanukah concert featuring both their well-known and new repertoire. On the program are songs by the legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie — or, as he’s known in klezmer circles, American-Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt’s son-in-law. The band has just released a double CD, “Live… -
A Danielewski Halloween
[caption id="attachment_365" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Photo by Ricardo Miranda "][/caption] On Halloween this year, instead of being the best sugar pusher in the neighborhood, or following your inappropriately costumed progeny as they amass their candy fortunes, or abandoning your own hard-earned dignity for a night of brew-fueled revelry, let me steer the adults amongst you to REDCAT, the CalArts downtown theater at Walt Disney Concert Hall, where for one night only, Mark Z. Danielewski will conduct a staged reading with shadow… -
Lost & Found: What Wasserstein Hid, New Bio Reveals
When the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein - beloved for her plays "The Heidi Chronicles," "The Sisters Rosensweig" and "Isn't it Romantic?" - died in 2006 at age 55, Broadway dimmed its lights in her honor. Five years later, Julie Salamon's page-turning biography "Wendy and the Lost Boys" (The Penguin Press: $29.95) sheds light on the public and private selves of this author, whose own family dramas were no less gripping than those she wrote for the stage.…