So often is the label Surrealism tacked onto fantasy art that, in descriptions of contemporary work, it's become practically synonymous with utopian scenes or lowbrow. Kelly McLane's loose dystopic pictures are the opposite of such reductionistic definitions; yet she...
In her first exhibition in Los Angeles, Winnipeg-based artist Wanda Koop investigates the idea of dislocation. This dislocation is reflected in the exhibition title, In Absentia, and results from the fact that Koop’s paintings of New York City where actually created...
Who knew that Nude Descending a Staircase landed flat on her back? Who knew, too, that an artist who did so much to bring Cubism to America ended up a purveyor of something between porn and schlock? At least it felt that way at his death in 1968, when others...
Clearly I am both not from LA and do not run in VIP circles because I had never heard of the Soho House prior to my invite to see photographer Kourtney Roy’s new collection of works on display there. I mistakenly assumed it was just a cheeky name for a gallery, so was...
Last Sunday afternoon, artists, gallerists—and anyone who matters in the Los Angeles art world—piled into the crowded Wilding Cran Gallery to check out the excellent show curated by art collector Beth Rudin DeWoody. I wasn't going to have one of those appetizing...
In a corridor just inside Ghebaly Gallery, a faded sign, barely legible for its low contrast, reads "Déjà Vu." This isn't merely a placard bearing the title of Sayre Gomez' show; it's an integral painting whose dual function niftily preludes the awaiting parade of...
USC Fisher Museum's "James hd Brown: Life and Work in Mexico" is one of the few PST: LA/LA shows devoted to a SoCal-born expatriate. Born in Glendale in 1951, Brown settled in Oaxaca in 1995 after having lived in Europe and New York. This exhibition is ingrained with...
Perhaps the best way to think about “Unsettled,” the ambitious fall exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, is from a planetary perspective. As a complement, a separate project concurrently on view suggests and reinforces that viewpoint. A one-to-one scale model of a...
This past August I decided to brave the coastal traffic to make a visit to the Lux Art Institute near San Diego. I was on deadline and woke up with a cold, but I had been notified that mega-artist and LA expat Jorge Pardo was scheduled to speak as his...
Vaginal Davis is one of the better examples of somebody who mixes life with art. Her activities include performing, curating, composing, painting and writing. From the late 1970s to early aughts she manifested a series of bands, performances, publications, clubs and...
BUTTON UP At the opening of “Circles and Circuits” at the Chinese American Museum on Sept. 19, visitors rushing into the show picked up small buttons from the reception desk. Yes, those ubiquitous buttons at PST LA/LA shows, starting with the words “There will be …”...
Does anyone really believe that Michelangelo or Rubens painted all their works—every single stroke? Of course they didn’t. They had assistants working on their art to varying degrees, which is why numerous Old Master works are “attributed to” or “studio of.” Andy...
Alys Beach is a 158-acre community along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, on Florida’s panhandle coast. Each of the 107 chalk-white homes and condos evoke Bermuda, Antigua, Guatemala. Residents can choose from a book of approved architects. The streets are silent....
It’s often said that the victor writes the history, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that men, and society in general, have been victorious in writing an exclusionary narrative after ignoring women for centuries. Art history books, museums and other established...
Half the population of Los Angeles is now Latino, but its signature industry, the film business, fails to include a significant number of Latinos in feature films or deal with stories that may be especially relevant to their lives. This fall the Academy of Motion...
Apocryphal notions, like northern superiority and European “discovery” of land already populated, pervade the Western Hemisphere. Even before Thomas More’s 1516 book Utopia, our so-named New World has been a locus for European fantasy projection. Currently on view at...
Mimi Pond is a legendary figure in LA—part of the generation of independently-minded cartoonists nurtured—then dumped—by the alternative media, she also wrote the first-aired episode of The Simpsons (before being expelled from the bullpen) as well as contributing to...
We all know The Blue Boy (c. 1770) by Thomas Gainsborough, and for some of us there is a special attachment, while others only know it because it is famous. What most people don’t know is who the blue boy in the painting is, and that’s because it isn’t important....
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