The R.M. Schindler House is unexpectedly quiet. Despite being smack-dab in the middle of West Hollywood, there’s a noticeable lack of noise around the house and grounds, as if the air is somehow thick enough to deaden dog barks and car horns. The silence somehow feels borne of the house rather than its surroundings. As one of three Los Angeles headquarters for the MAK Center for Art and...
Thérésa Tallien, the French Revolution’s ‘it’ girl, knew how to manipulate perception. Once an emblem of revolutionary glamour, she played the game until it turned against her. Even in captivity, awaiting execution, she refused to become a simple object of pity. The mirror sent to her cell each day wasn’t punishment; it was a tool. Stripped of adornment, starved, pale, she studied herself—not to...
Sophie Madeline Dess, who has written clever short stories and perceptive pieces on Cormac McCarthy, Eva Hesse, and many other things for many prestigious and worthwhile publications, has produced a novel about Ava and Demetri, a critic and an artist. They are brother and sister, unusually close, with fates entirely entwined. That was a good idea. What remains of our creative class should...
I came to the screening wearing the outfit compulsory for all such events: a faded and frayed sweater in a neutral color, sexless jeans, and a dirtied canvas tote. I had composed this outfit to signal my status as a true believer—my monkish intent to remain forever materially impoverished but spiritually rich. I entered the venue on that rainy winter night as a Jacobin for the cause(s)—which...
Tell us who you are in 50 words or less: I live, collect, and breathe art. For the past ten years, I’ve run the La Brea Studio Artist Residency, The Cabin LA (according to ArtNewspaper: “Per square foot, the most influential gallery in LA”), and The Bunker LA. Two alternative exhibition spaces in LA. I also sculpt. What do you require from an artist you collect? Originality. Even if other...
Top 3 Songs? Portishead — All Mine Ziúr J.I.D. — Surrounds Sound (feat. 21 Savage & Baby Tate) Top 3 Dead Artists? Joseph Beuys, David Lynch, Lee Lozano, Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, and Paline Oliveros. This article is available in print and in our digital edition. To read the full article, please subscribe.
If you are reading this magazine, you might be an artist. Or you have a friend who is, or perhaps you are at a Barnes and Noble flipping through Artillery while you wait to purchase an oversized coffee table book of Rock n Roll photography for some guy’s housewarming party in Silverlake. No matter the circumstance, I can safely assume you, or the artists you know, or even the guy who just bought...
To prepare for his current show “Noir” at Gagosian, Alex Israel claims to have walked about fifteen thousand steps per day around Los Angeles. This is highly unusual and, honestly, suspect. As the saying goes, no one walks in LA. Yet Israel insists on it and says that...
There’s something in the Los Angeles air recently that’s been conjuring the ghost of Charles Manson. He has been coming up in conversation frequently (or maybe I am bringing him up). California’s back on the national stage for its hippie-turned-fascist tendencies....
We recognize the legacy Jacqueline Humphries is working from the moment we set foot in Matthew Marks’ two gallery spaces; yet something throws the viewer slightly off. It’s the echt gestural vocabulary of post-World War II art, but as if viewed through a scrim or...
It’s a matter of complete coincidence that Ramsey Alderson’s show “d’Or” at Tiffany’s—an East Hollywood artist-run garage space programmed by Adam Verdugo—coincides with the 17th anniversary of the notorious Emos vs. Punks Fight held in Mexico City’s Glorieta de Los...
I left Gregg Bordowitz’s recently-closed exhibition at The Brick, “This is Not a Love Song,” thinking the same thing as upon leaving The Brutalist: “I didn’t know it was going to be so Jewish.” In both, the artist’s Jewish identity weaves through a deep consideration...
I went in blind to David Hammons’ Concerto in Black and Blue (on view for the first time since its 2002 debut)—both literally and figuratively. When I pushed back the heavy curtain shrouding the gallery, darkness swallowed me. I couldn’t pull out my phone to navigate...
There is something a little chipper about the art world right now that belies the national mood. Palettes tend toward cheery hues and uncomplicated content. Not that there’s anything wrong with upbeat paintings, it just seems like there are other types of content...
The title of the two-person show at Cheremoya, “Conversion,” has a twofold implication: religious and material transformation. Calla Donofrio’s desaturated paintings depict acts of (sometimes sexual) violence that have been censored by parts of the image being blacked...