Donald Trump is a figure out of commedia dell’arte—a puffed-up clown who thinks he’s brilliant but is, in fact, an ignorant fool. His televised commentaries with the Coronavirus Task Force could have been uttered word-for-word by Il Dottore, the ridiculous “expert”...
Art Brief
Everything is Terrible! Bunker Vision
In July 2019 a new art space opened in Los Angeles. This wasn’t a neat minimal white cube for showing expensive art. At first glance one might be reminded of a vintage video store. If the space was on your radar, you would have probably noticed that it hosted...
Shoptalk: LA Art News R.I.P. Luchita Hurtado; COLA 2020 online; Carmen Argote's pandemic
COLA 2020 Sadly, so many art events, exhibitions, and performances have had to be canceled during Q time—too many to mention. Here I give a nod to the annual show for the COLA (City of LA) award winners from the previous year. They are each given $10,000 to create new...
ASK BABS Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Dear Babs, If Trump gets another term in office I think I will leave the US. Where’s the best place to go for an artist who wants to flee America? —Expat Patty Dear Expat Patty, I remember getting a question like this back when Trump first came into office, so it...
ART BRIEF New Game in Town: GALLERYPLATFORM.LA
If there’s been a silver lining for the LA art scene during the pandemic, it just might be the new Gallery Association Los Angeles (GALA) an online platform known as GalleryPlatform.LA, that has taken root while everyone was quarantining. Brainchild of uber-gallerist...
SIGHTS UNSCENE Anish Kapoor Opening, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, January, 2020
Bunker Vision Relevant References
When the lockdown ends and art-making resumes, there will be plenty of temptation to make art about what is happening in the world. Referencing popular culture in your art can carry risks. Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons were both successfully sued for things they...
Shoptalk: LA Art News Taylor Brandon vs. SFMOMA; Museums and galleries may reopen
We Will Never Forget the Spring of 2020 On May 25 the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police ignited a tinderbox over continuing racial and escalating economic inequality in this country. Of course, we were already dealing with the dreaded COVID-19, with its...
ASK BABS My Question to You
Dear Reader, Babs thinks now is the time we ask some important questions: Who are your friends, collaborators and colleagues in the art world? How many are white? How many are Black? How long has this been the case? Who controls the museums, galleries, fairs, auction...
SHOPTALK
Pomp & Zoom Spring usually heralds a spate of art-school grad ceremonies and shows—the equivalent of debutante balls for young artists and designers trained at our august art schools. This year with shelter-at-home and social-distancing mandates in place, there...
ART BRIEF
The saga of British art dealer Inigo Philbrick is testimony to the pitfalls of the trust and handshake deals that have become customary at the highest levels of the art world. The fall of Philbrick—a protégé of Jay Jopling, the principal of London’s most prestigious...
DECODER
You could draw people in masks. Paint them. Paint on them. Make videos where the face above changes but the mask does not, challenging the viewer to notice and read the eyes, the hairline. You could fashion new masks or sculpt respirators. And the gloves, too:...
ASK BABS
Dear Babs, As an artist practicing social distancing I’ve begun feeling guilty for not doing more with all this new free time. I look on social media and everyone is being so productive, making art, and learning new skills. I’m not making art or much of anything....
BUNKER VISION
If you weren’t around for the 1970s, it’s a hard era to explain. And thanks to AIDS, there are fewer people left alive to explain the queer experience of that decade. Happily, there are movies. The reason that these movies exist is almost accidental. Budding auteurs,...
UNDER THE RADAR
Quarantine isn’t much different from my old normal. In case you hadn’t noticed, this column is 99% reviews of things that I receive through the mail or via the web - anything that doesn’t require me to leave home and interact with my fellow art world and academic...
ROCK STARS
Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in 1771, the Serrano and Paiute indigenous people of Southern California created outdoor parietal rock drawings called petroglyphs in an area of the southern Mojave Desert known as Victor Valley. This once-remote desert is where the...
SHOPTALK April 2020 Edition
Three weeks ago I was visiting LACMA for their landmark exhibition “Where the Truth Lies: The Art of Qiu Ying,” featuring a Ming dynasty painter at the Resnick. Afterwards I came out to look for the plinth where a new Yoshitomo Nara sculpture would be going—the...
Deep Listening By the Light of a “Full Pink Moon”: Opera Povera in Quarantine
The planet, some of us might say, is having a moment. Panic, collapse, disruption—with the tables turned on the principal disrupting species by an errant configuration of protein presumably just doing its thing in the carbon cycle; also course-correction, regrouping,...