Art & Artists
147 posts found
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A Turn on Kienholz's Merry Go-Round
The work of Ed and Nancy Kienholz is mostly junk. Junk assembled to reveal the dark secrets of the American soul â our violence, our racism, our addiction to the screens that haunt us. Assembled from the detritus of the modern world , their work is deeply political and, in some instances, deeply disturbing. Other times, their works show a mordant humor.If you have never seen their work, or even if you have, you need to go to LA Louver… -
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… -
Seeing Picasso in Palo Alto
It's time to see Picasso anew View Original Article -
California's Marciano Museum Closes
Los Angeles" Marciano Art Foundation, the three-year-old art museum founded by Marciano brothers, Paul and Maurice - who made their fortune in the jeans business - has unceremoniously closed.Paul and Maurice Marciano came to Los Angeles in 1981 from France and founded a denim company that eventually became the very successful GUESS? clothing and lifestyle brand. According to the Museum's website, around that time the brothers started collecting contemporary art. In 2012 the brothers established ... View Original Article -
Sometimes The King Is A Woman: The Paintings Of Amy Sherald
Amy Sherald's show at Hauser & Wirth in New Yorkwhich I regret to say will close October 26th, is a joy to behold and a revelation. Go see it, if you still can!Sherald is perhaps best known for her portrait of Michele Obama which can be seen at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. In that portrait, Sherald invests an authority and a greatness that becomes Obama. So much so that Parker Curry, an African-American toddler, gazing up at the… -
The Art to Being David Van Eyssen
Recently, I went to an art opening in Santa Monica, where a doorman stood guard, clipboard in hand like at some private party or club. A spiral staircase led to a basement gallery where new works by David Van Eyssen were on display that combined film and still images layered upon each other and interacting in various ways, projected on screens or shown on flat screen TVs.At times, there were video images that unfolded in a loop and appeared among… -
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… -
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… -
Woven Women: Helen and Dido Tapestries at the Norton Simon
As I stood before the magnificent tapestries and tapestry cartoons (full sized drawings made in preparation for weaving) on display in "Once Upon a Tapestry: Woven Tales of Helen and Dido" at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena (on view until May 27, 2019) I wondered if during the Middle Ages persons of means looked at the woven narratives unfolding serially across larger wall hangings as we do movies, TV and our smartphones â as entertainments, as chronicles of human… -
Contacting The Artist in Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol is currently the subject of a much-praised career survey at the Whitney Museum in New York â which I look forward to seeing before the show closes next March. In the interim, for those of us on the West Coast with an interest in Warhol, there is a compelling show, "Contact Warhol: Photography Without End" at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University on view until January 6, 2019.In the more than 30 years since his untimely death… -
The British Museum: The Problematic Yet Enduring Appeal of Antiquities
In London last month, my first stop was to visit the British Museum. Going there seemed an urgent priority. My thinking was that in such turbulent contemporary times, it is reassuring to see the classics of antiquity, those fundaments of Western Civilization that remain. At the same time, given our shifting ethical rationales concerning antiquities, I wanted to see again those British Museum treasures which may, sooner or later, be returned to their countries of origin and explore my feelings… -
Using the Blues to Bridge Across the Great Americana Divide
One of the things I most enjoy about benefit concerts (beyond the whole save-the-world ethos), and music award shows (beyond the awards themselves) is seeing a wide spectrum of artists, each doing 3-5 songs. It’s sort the musical equivalent of a smorgasbord – enough to hear a favorite artist or song and discover someone worth exploring more and short enough to move from those who hold no appeal . Which is why I so enjoyed ‘Across the Great Divide,” a…