School—the word alone makes me shiver. I was forced to go when I was five. “Forced” is an ugly, ugly word but sometimes it turns out for the better. In the ’50s I attended an all-girls school that focused on posture, a good translation of Cicero, and the perfect...
Got Talent?Dear Babs, I painted this one week in 1969 and have barely lifted a brush since. Should I take it up again? —Will, Los AngelesDear Will, Depends…is that supposed to be JFK? If so, perhaps leave the brush alone. But seriously Will, you should pick up that...
The cliché of the naughty schoolgirl is so ingrained in Western culture that it’s hard to imagine a time before they existed. You can read Japanese Anime about them while wearing a professionally manufactured naughty schoolgirl costume. You can mix a Naughty...
BIENNIAL OF THE AMERICAS 2015Denver Biennial focus on NowDenver has been trying to put itself on the map through art and culture, and one path has been the creation of the Biennial of the Americas. The third edition of the biennial (June 14–August 30) was launched...
LACMA is moving forward on the funding and eventual construction of the controversial $650-million-plus Peter Zumthor–designed building project that will replace three of the existing buildings and will bridge over Wilshire Boulevard.Zumthor has done superb work on...
Given the current narrative of Los Angeles art (dueling contemporary museums on Grand Street, hangar-sized prestige galleries in East LA, art openings timed to coincide with Oscars) it is surprising to remember that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is only 50...
It would be negligent to discuss “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” at the newly opened Richard Taittinger Gallery without referring to the eponymous film. Both attempt to test and topple our expectations and assumptions. The film’s plot centers on Sidney Poitier’s John...
Like many practicing artists, Martin Durazo is also an educator, having taught at colleges like Otis and Pomona. But he’s made an indelible mark as a public school teacher, having taught at Inner-City Arts Los Angeles, the Montebello Unified School District. Since...
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The catastrophic intersection of the man-made or engineered environment with nature may be the great subject of 21st century art. As the title of her show implies, Liza Ryan places visual brackets around our notions of boundary—of separation, protection or insulation...
An exploration of storytelling through the riotous use of color is at the core of this new body of work by Edith Beaucage. The figures dance about in light delineation embedded in a swirl of audacious swathes of color field painting. “Chill Bivouac Rhymes” is also the...
The ocean sometimes gets the best of those who love it most. The title of Alison Frey Andersson’s exhibition, “86’d” offers a surfer’s take on the hazards of that beguiling body. The Venice-based artist, who regularly succumbs to the pleasures of riding the waves on a...
At first glance the array of objects in Kristen Morgin’s evocative installation “Messages to My Twenty Year Old Self” appear to be those found in a rummage sale: old books and toys, record albums and empty tuna cans, comic books and musical instruments. What is most...
Shana Lutker’s exhibition of new work at Susanne Vielmetter is best understood in the context of her wider oeuvre, which of late has been singularly concerned with the 1920s Surrealists. Each of Lutker’s “chapters” juxtaposes her spare, minimal and conceptual visual...
It’s been said that the first half of the 20th century was Picasso’s and the second half, Duchamp’s. The transition from modernist painting to today’s mixed-media conceptualism is in large part due to a 1963 Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Museum. The show...
Cultural anthropologists have traditionally brought assumptions of Eurocentric superiority to their studies of “primitive” societies, using language and presentations that cast the subjects in a dismissive light. Turning the tables on this practice, Michael Arcega,...
For more than 10 years, starting in 1998, Zoe Leonard photographed the ravages of urban life. From New York to Eastern Europe, Africa, Cuba and Mexico, she found shuttered storefronts and fallen marquees, makeshift signs and dated logos, obsolete computers and manual...
Space and architecture constitute, for Gaston Bachelard in his book, The Poetics of Space, a site for our memories, which become real and find a location through the geography of constructed space. These locations, which function as markers on the road of our...
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