The term “street photographer” comes with a certain set of associations: Street photographers work in public, snapping candid photos of commuters or loiterers at telling moments. They take photographs of strangers in the crowd from the perspective of a stranger themselves—an anonymous face among the anonymous masses. Perhaps the most common assumption about this class of artists is the one...
The first draft of this article was entirely different. It was a polemic. A scorched-earth condemnation of art. Ten thousand words. The next wave in a storied line of seismic criticism. As such, I titled it Towards a Number Laocoön (“number” as in more numb, not integer), referencing the ancient Greek sculpture of the suffering priest (Laocoön) who tried to sound the alarm on the Trojan horse,...
Our reporter on the ground works her way through this year’s labyrinthine fair with the help of its most visible symbol: The tote bag. The Printed Matter Art Book Fair goes high and low, and tote bags are its connective tissue. The fair provides a platform for established and emerging independent publishers, scrappy DIY zine makers, and vintage booksellers peddling archival objects. The tote bag...
Last year, I went through a phase of reading early aviation memoirs. The book that started me on this kick was Beryl Markham’s West with the Night, in which the British-Kenyan aviatrix writes about flying over the Sahara in the early 1900s, delivering supplies between remote desert outposts. What interested me about Markham’s adventures wasn’t the records she set (she completed the first...
I have a notebook from this obnoxious British heritage brand called Smythson, and on the front cover it says, in gold leaf, “Charming in Character and Appearance.” The only thing in this particular notebook is pages upon pages of what I call “unforgivable things”: confusing Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster; referring to anything as “edgy”; when a bartender asks me, “Vodka or gin?” when I...
Dear Dr. Trainwreck, I've been relatively successful as an artist, but still, I often feel less than. In a world that is becoming more inclusive and understanding of diversity, economic diversity is still somehow frowned upon. I grew up pretty poor in LA. I've had several friends decide not to bring me around their higher net worth friends or collectors. They say that explicitly. I hate to make...
We recently sat down with art collector and philanthropist Jordan D. Schnitzer during the opening of The Schnitzer Family Foundation’s “The Art of Food” exhibition, currently on view at the Long Beach Museum of Art Why art? How do we deal in a world where we are constantly being told where to go, what to buy, and who to listen to, and then plied with misinformation? How do we maintain our rights...
Adopt a Highway Old world sadness meets modern shame on a melancholy walk along a dirty shore, where the beachfront properties are indistinguishable from public restrooms. As we step around fly-strewn masses of rotting seaweed and stare at the sun as it sinks behind the town’s famous rock, we fear that the seasons may have given up— but there is joy in forgetting the things we promised ourselves...
When The Pit announced a show by the late ceramicist Viola Frey, it piqued my editorial interest. I myself first became aware of Frey when I began taking ceramics courses with other sculptors, who would often speak of her as a totemic influence on their practice and...
There is a moment in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass when the Unicorn says to Alice: "Well, now that we have seen each other…if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.” The private question of whether one sees themselves reflected in the art that is...
One of the performers—if “performer” is the right word—in The Mommy Leaks the Floor, a new work by Asher Hartman staged at New Theater Hollywood (May 16–25), is Pablo, a real-life infant, born earlier this year. Throughout the play, cradled in his mother’s arms on the...
The flattening of high and lowbrow imagery is certainly not new, indeed the painter Jason Fox has been mining this territory since the early 1990s. In his current show at David Kordansky Gallery, “Why Are You Sitting in the Dark?,” Fox refines his enigmatic...
This, remarkably enough, is Carolee Schneemann’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles, six years after her passing. Schneemann may be late, but her show isn’t. It may indeed be a case of too little; the sparse hanging (8 wallworks and an installation) barely hints at...
The central question of all ventriloquism is: Who is in charge? We know the puppet is not alive, but a good ventriloquist can move the puppet’s body so naturally and throw their voice so convincingly as to make the audience doubt their first instinct. However, the...
Christine Sun Kim’s work leaves little room for misinterpretation. Clarity, for Kim, is a reality of survival. “American Sigh Language,” the artist’s recent solo exhibition at François Ghebaly, makes it clear: for Kim and other Deaf individuals, intelligibility serves...
Impressionism, with its kitsch trinkets and gift shop ephemera, lives in a realm of surfaces. I’m not alone in thinking this—most of us know Monet through wall calendars, not the Musée. The prevalence of these reproductions make the originals, when seen, difficult to...
On the top floor of The Gaylord Apartments, a spare selection of seven new paintings by Magnus Peterson Horner tingles the optic and haptic senses, even when they’re barely paintings, even when they’re barely there at all. Horner paints people as if sensed through...
The delicate line-work in these semi-abstract sea/land/sky-scapes is incredibly controlled, almost to a fault. It doesn’t leave much room for the unexpected. This might be okay except that the overall vocabulary of forms is a bit too constrained. For instance, the...