Art & Artists
147 posts found
-
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… -
How LA Grew its Art
From left: Edward Kienholz, “Walter Hopps Hopps Hopps,†1959; photo by Susan Einstein. Wallace Berman, “Untitled (Faceless Faces with Kabala),†1963-70; photo by Ellen Labenski. Larry Bell, “Untitled,†1969. For those of us who are not native to Los Angeles yet live here (some for more of our lives than anywhere else), there is a compulsion to define Los Angeles, to get control in some manner of this ever-changing city that is distinguished as much by its sprawl as its… -
Every Picture Tells a Story
[caption id="attachment_354" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Galerie Michael owner Michael Schwartz with clients"][/caption] For 30 years, Michael Schwartz has owned and operated Galerie Michael, an art gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, building, in his own words, “museum-quality collections, one work at a time.†Works by Picasso, Dali, Goya and Miró adorn the walls for the current exhibition on Spanish masters. With a staff of 24, many of whom hold fine-arts degrees and are called curators, Schwartz would be happy to… -
'Beauty' is Skin Deep
“Tooker Lips,†New York, 1965, by Melvin Sokolsky, © 2011. On the afternoon I attended the Annenberg Space for Photography’s latest exhibition, “Beauty Culture,†I was standing in the dark watching a series of fashion images projected in the digital gallery, when I was distracted by a woman who entered the room. I did a double take, as I recognized her as one of the iconic women featured in the exhibition, a former fashion model. My eyes darted between looking… -
Turning Qassams into Art
A work by Niso Maman The Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon in Southern Israel, six miles from Gaza, is a 500-bed facility with an emergency room and a teaching hospital that treats Israelis and Palestinians. Qassam rockets launched from Gaza land so regularly on the building that the top two floors are kept unoccupied as a "safety buffer." Imagine that you are Lee Wallach, an American and CEO of Community Assets Consulting, a firm specializing in assisting Israeli, international and… -
Arshile Gorky, a Kindred Spirit
TOMMYWOOD NOMINATED FOR TWO LA PRESS CLUB AWARDS! For Entertainment Reviews/ Criticism Column -- For an essay on "Holocaust Movies: Winners & Losers" http://tommywood.com/2009/02/holocaust-movies-winners-losers.html and For Entertainment News or Feature for my profile on Ricky Jay, "Extraordinary Oddities" http://www.jewishjournal.com/holiday_preview/article/ricky_jay_offers_a_rogues_gallery_of_eccentric_entertainers_in_new_show_200/ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ARSHILE GORKY, A KINDRED SPIRIT "Self-Portrait," 1937, oil on canvas, 55 x 23 7/8 in. Private Collection, on long-term loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.… -
Design with a "Z" (Lajos Kozma and Szalon)
Lajos Kozma. Photo courtesy Szalon Can a piece of furniture convey the story of Hungarian Jewry or reveal the genius of a little-known master? The story of a career undercut by anti-Semitism and cut short by death? This weekend's "Legends of La Cienega Design Walk" (May 7-9) offers a celebration of design through lectures, panel discussions, book signings, exhibits, guided tours, fashion shows and benefit parties, all taking place along La Cienega Boulevard, on Melrose Place and at the Pacific… -
City of Images
Los Angeles has long held a fascination with the visual; beholden to looks, surfaces and images, it is a city where even the buildings seem to strike a pose. So it might seem surprising that until now, there's never been an institution here devoted to photography. But that all changes this week with the opening of the stunning new Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City. Located on the site of the former Schubert Theater, in the shadow of the… -
Zap! Pow! Bam!
Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's two Jewish kids from Cleveland! The fact that Superman, the defender of truth, justice and the American way, as created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, was not so much from Krypton as, in the words of cartoon artist Jules Feiffer, "from Planet Minsk," is one of the many things to be learned from "Zap! Pow! Bam! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950," which opened… -
"Breakdowns" & The "Maus" that roared (or Art Spiegelman through the looking glass)
Art Spiegelman, the cartoonist whose graphic memoir, "Maus," won a Pulitzer Prize, was in town recently to promote a reissue of "Breakdowns," a collection of his underground comics work first published in 1978. As Spiegelman pointed out to me, his name in German means "Mirror Man" (mine means "Pond-wood") -- and revisiting "Breakdowns," now subtitled, "Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!" was like finding a letter you'd written 30 years ago. For this new edition, Spiegelman spent two… -
The Grammy Museum: The Culture We Keep
The Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, the Venus de Milo, Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," Pete Seeger's banjo, the handwritten lyrics to Grandmaster Flash's "The Message." You might wonder what all these cultural artifacts have in common. But as of Dec. 6, they can all be seen in museums -- the last two items just went on view at the new Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles. I place them together because they underline the question that… -
Yoram Kaniuk: Israel's Interior monologuist
Israeli novelist Yoram Kaniuk first grabbed my attention in 2006 when he wrote a series of diary entries about life in Tel Aviv during Israel's war with Lebanon. Kaniuk, who will be appearing at American Jewish University on Sunday as part of the second annual Celebration of Jewish Books, painted a cranky portrait of himself as aged (he was 76 then), losing his hearing, limping and living in a Tel Aviv old-age home -- a man older than the nation…