Articles
Grappling with Globalism
The downtown Los Angeles arts district has been evolving, somewhat in tandem with adjacent downtown districts, since at least the 1980s. There was a stabilizing shift at the turn of the century when SCI-Arc took over the old Santa Fe rail depot east of Alameda and...
LABOR OF LOVE: Made in L.A.
With its third installment at the Hammer Museum, “Made in L.A.” has settled into its brand as a well-researched survey of current trends and practices in regional art. But there is never a “settling in” as far as expectations for a biennial, which raises the bar not...
“As a Woman of this Culture”
Like Robert Mapplethorpe, who has had exhibitions at two LA museums this spring—the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—Cindy Sherman is a difficult subject because the work is so well known already. The exhibition at The Broad museum does...
The LA River Comes of Age
So much about the Los Angeles River is not immediately obvious. That it’s a river at all, for example, still comes as a surprise to some. Others wonder when it will ever get the help it needs to really look like a river. The natural river was at least 80 percent...
The Battle of Forevermore
The Day of Forevermore, Marnie Weber’s first feature film, is the culmination of the artist’s long career as a weaver of macabre and otherworldly scenarios through art, film and music. Over the last 25 years Weber has created her own distinctive realm of avant-garde...
PRIVATE EYE
Native New Yorker Beth Rudin DeWoody may be one of the most energetic collectors in the world, with a collection that includes about 10,000 works, mostly of 20th and 21st century art. Collecting since the 1970s, Rudin DeWoody consistently makes ARTNews’ Top 200...
Amelia Clipart
Little Nemo
Mark Gash at Coagula Curatorial curated by Johanna Went
Opening night with live music by Dick and Jane Family Orchestra and a special reunion of LA's original art rock band (with actual talent) the Fibonaccis. If you weren't there, you were nowhere. All pictures by Lynda Burdick. [fbalbum...
SFMOMA Gets an Art Recharge
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...
Seismic Shifts on the SF Gallery Scene
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...
“Sponsored Content”
SFMOMA Up-to-Date
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...
Down on the Farm with Martin Creed
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...
Nicole Eisenman’s Allegorical Possibilities
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...
Barn with a Metropolitan View
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...
The Feminine Nonfigurative
“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...
Astract Animation
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...
No Chrismas at Ace
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...
Craft Revolution
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,...
UNDER THE RADAR
The mighty Atlas Press—London-based purveyors of “pataphysical texts,” Dada documents, Viennese Aktionist manifestos, and Oulipo anthologies—has reissued a legendary art book that uses a tabletop cluttered with the detritus of daily life as a jumping-off point and...