Post Archive

  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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.…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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…

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  • 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"…

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