Tom LaDuke
Kohn Gallery / Los Angeles
I try to avoid reading too much into titles of paintings because they can rarely be more than the most tenuous captions for something effectively…
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Auction House MVP
Andrea Fiuczynski Looks Toward Profitability
The auction market, and in particular the salerooms of the two major auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, have long been a proving ground for the…
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James O. Clark
LTD Los Angeles
The show’s title, “1993 to 2011,” gave some indication of the artist’s preoccupation with the relative ‘curve’ of time; but that was scarcely half of…
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Word & Music Made Architectural
Finn Ross’ Vision for the LA Philharmonic
There were moments in the recent James Darrah directed production of the Los Angeles Philharmonic performance of the Beethoven Missa Solemnis, conducted by Michael Tilson-Thomas…
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Blur and Conquer
How Hello Kitty Made Pets of Us All
In case you didn’t notice, Hello Kitty invaded Los Angeles in November. If you were anywhere near Little Tokyo, you could scarcely escape the impression…
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The Postconceptual Multimedia
When Art Met Fashion
Is fashion the medium of the moment? I’m not talking about haute couture or luxury ready-to-wear fashion design. Since the ascendance of Conceptualism, the means…
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ALL GROWN-UP: Made in L.A.
Made in L.A. Reflects Breadth and Maturity
Climate experts have yet to advance their science to a point where we might seriously contemplate climate management, but if they ever do, they might…
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Phyllis Diller’s Greatest Work of Art: Herself
Anything for a Laugh
I always thought that Phyllis Diller’s public/comic persona (the hair, the toothy smile, the A-line dresses and feathery accessories, gloves, booties, cigarette and holder) was…
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Silly Putty – The Selling of Jeff Koons
Feeding the Bubble Juggernaut
One thing that came across in Jeff Koons’ recent Broad-sponsored (“Un-Private”) conversation with John Waters was a sense of the satisfaction Koons took from his…
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To Protect & Serve: Philippe Vergne
New director Philippe Vergne relies on conversations and trust
The word he kept returning to was “conversation,” which, under less pressing circumstances, might have described our interview, except that Philippe Vergne, MOCA’s new director,…
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B. Wurtz
Richard Telles Fine Art / Los Angeles
Even more than, say, Richard Tuttle, to whom he might (uneasily) be compared—B. Wurtz tests a viewer’s relationship to objects and construction of their meaning,…
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Profile: Marisol Rendón
The Toxic Elixir of Hope
As I meandered through Marisol Rendón’s installation, “So, Dragons Do Exist?” at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles gallery last summer (this was before I had…
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An Evening with Jeff Koons and John Waters
The Dark Side of A Shiny Dog
[Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles, February 24, 2013] ‘The best defense,’ as the old saying in legal and sporting circles goes, ‘is a good offense.’ John…
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Exile off the Strip: Dave Hickey
Dave Hickey at Grand Central Market, downtown Los Angeles, January 29, 2014
So like a few of you (not many more—which was wise—you really didn’t miss anything), I went down to the Grand Central Market at 3rd and Broadway downtown…
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Opera for the Masses
Christopher Cerrone’s Invisible Cities
There’s something suggestive of time travel as well as terrestrial travel in The Industry and LA Dance Project’s production of Christopher Cerrone’s Invisible Cities—adapted from…
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Farrah Karapetian
Between a Rock and Ice
It’s been a productive year for Farrah Karapetian, a participant in “The Black Mirror” group show at the Diane Rosenstein Gallery, L.A. Louver’s 2013 “Rogue…
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