In 1963, artist Allan Kaprow held a “Tree Happening” at George Segal’s New Jersey farm. Kaprow’s written instructions commanded a crowd holding tree saplings to venture into a field, which had been outfitted with poles bedazzled by tar-paper strips. A leader of these...
There is a feud taking place at CB1 Gallery; it sets in conflict the looking-glass and the hour-glass—our waning but resistant vigor versus our inexorable putrefaction. In her exhibition, revealingly titled in lower case the self-portrait sessions, Susan Silas...
Cindy Sherman's stunning retrospective at The Broad constitutes a compendium of fiercely iconic imagery that has, for decades, influenced our cultural vision of how women are represented in the media. The exhibition spans 20 years and represents the largest holding...
So I’m at brunch at Figaro (on Vermont) with two of my best (and one of my oldest) friends from out-of-town; and we’re actually sitting outside on the hottest day of the year (I’m imagining the wait-staff making bets on my imminent demise). There’s a very...
Dear Readers This is our summer issue, an issue that has become the one I’m not sure matters. It’s summer! Who cares about work? Who cares about art? Whatever it is you’re doing, you just want to get it over with, and get the hell out.It’s ingrained in us. The...
Shutting down a major museum for three years of expansion may seem like suicide, but the newly reborn San Francisco Museum of Modern Art proves it can be a great success. SFMOMA reopened to the public on May 14, preceded by several weeks of well-orchestrated previews...
In San Francisco’s downtown gallery district, one building, 49 Geary Street, once held the greatest concentration of the best galleries—over 20 on five floors. With Gallery Paule Anglim across the street at 14 Geary, and a half-dozen more at 77 Geary just down the...
Not content with a refurbished building that makes them the largest contemporary art museum in America, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is courting patrons with interactive technology that enhances and even transforms the viewing experience.Visitors are invited...
The new, the now, the influential SFMOMA is creating a bit of a ripple effect. I am happy to report that Art Market San Francisco, the art fair, is doing quite well, drawing a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd over the weekend of April 27–May 1 at Fort Mason. They also had...
Hauser & Wirth have galleries in Zurich, London, New York and now Los Angeles, but in rural Somerset, England, Iwan and Manuela Wirth have created a mini-Eden in which they bring all their interests together: art and architecture, conservation and food, community...
By way of a smallish retrospective at the New Museum titled “Al-ugh-ories,” and a major exhibition of new paintings at Anton Kern Gallery “Magnificent Delusion,” Nicole Eisenman has lately given New York audiences a lot to look at. One of the intriguing things about...
Could that structure perched uneasily on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art be from the set of a horror movie, or is it a metaphor for the psychodrama of American art? The horror! The horror!If it looks familiar, that’s because its outlines entered the popular...
“Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculptures by Women, 1947–2016” inaugurates the sprawling new complex recently opened by Hauser Wirth & Schimmel in downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District. Housed in a former flour mill that dates back to the late 19th century, the...
Street photography is one of the great genres of modernist photography, peaking at mid-century with the work of Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand, Helen Levitt and others who used the camera to capture the strange little extemporaneous moments one experiences walking city...
Even as the commercial side of the LA art world appears to be reaching historic heights, one of the titans of the local scene has been locked out of his expansive gallery and is being called to account for years of murky management.Doug Chrismas, the major-domo at Ace...
Agnes Martin, the great Abstract Expressionist painter (1912–2004), believed in cosmic connection. She labored over her famous grid paintings almost her entire professional life, except for a difficult break from 1968 until the early 1970s, and in them she strove to...
The Craft and Folk Art Museum—its unlikely frontage peering mischievously over Museum Row—has in the last few years come to the forefront of the LA art scene with its unpredictable exhibitions. Executive Director Suzanne Isken and her exhibition team (Holly Jerger,...
A SIMPLE LIST1. It’s simple really, to paint is to trust. To believe in our instincts; to become.2. Painting is an investigation of being.3. It is not the job of art to mirror. Images reflected in a mirror appear to us in reverse. An artist’s responsibility is...
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