Until his suicide in 1995, Ray Johnson was one of those fringe artists that most artists had heard about, but very few were familiar with. Even then, it wasn’t until John Walter’s 2002 biopic How to Draw a Bunny—certainly one of the best biographical art documentaries...
If you asked beginning art students to name a living artist in 1998, the most frequent reply would be Thomas Kinkade. Given the art world’s fascination with popularity and money, this is hardly surprising. By this point in his career many upscale malls had galleries...
The inclusion of Emil Nolde in the excellent exhibition, “Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is a brilliant decision, though Nolde was not known for joining groups for very long. Many of his...
I attended the opening of a show of the recent work of David Hockney at the L.A. Louver gallery titled “The Arrival of Spring.” These colorful prints of the East Yorkshire English landscape were composed by Hockney on his iPad with an app that allowed him to create...
There are artists for whom the process of making art has become primarily a lucrative business: the brands of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst come to mind. Collectors and galleries make demands for signature work, and artists may reach a certain point where they delegate...
Five years ago, when news spread that Harmony Korine was shooting a feature on VHS, it was hailed as an ingenious use of a retro technology. More recently, the band Prodigy was lauded for shooting a music video on VHS. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams)...
BOON OR BUSTPost Rail Plan on Wrong Track at Bergamot “They’re basically destroying Bergamot Station,” says Wayne Blank, who holds the master lease on the galleries and art institutions at the Bergamot Station arts complex. (He’s also the “Wayne” of Shoshana Wayne...
John Altoon couples his relaxed, entirely convincing painterly hand with a flippant disregard for norms whether social, societal or artistic. His retrospective at LACMA cavorts, galumphs and saunters through a wide variety of styles, approaches and modes of...
In much the same way Chris Burden imbues his visual vernacular with his own brand of personal/social provocation, Sean Duffy, in his newest exhibition, aptly titled “Paintings,” at Susanne Vielmetter, shatters the expectation of the pristine sacred surface, electing...
The concentric circle, or target, has been one of the predominant motifs in American abstract painting for the last half-century or more, and, as a result, to wring unexpected changes from it has become increasingly difficult. Gary Lang has made the multi-orbital...
Piggybacking on Kim Stringfellow’s recent successful documentary, exhibition, and publication—JACKRABBIT HOMESTEAD: Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape—Flora Kao explores and examines remnants of abandoned homes in the Mojave desert, the...
Can the aftermath of a nuclear disaster or any other kind be measured or quantified? Certainly not with a handmade yard-stick. British twins Jane and Louise Wilson ponder these questions in their compelling exhibition “Imperial Measure.” The installation of...
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Or not. Fred Lonidier’s recent show of photographic work provides a telling demonstration of two inextricably interconnected facts. First, that a vast cultural chasm has opened up between the present world and that of the...
New York sculptor Leonardo Drew’s dark and somewhat foreboding constructions of thousands of pieces of wood might seem oppressive, were it not for his elegant forms and subtle wit. Eight wall-hung sculptural assemblages (all works 2014) strongly make the case for art...
Maps may serve as metaphors for our journey through life, compelling in their ability to arrange potential experience around an objective matrix; the paths taken, and those missed, forever resonate in our subconscious. Taking the map as a point of departure is San...
Jeff Koons consumes five floors for the Whitney’s last show on Madison Avenue, and no wonder. Surely the artist who installed a giant floral poodle twice in Rockefeller Center can fill every nook and cranny. No one else takes such pains to rub in the obvious, to...
Vasco Araújo’s “Under the Influence of Psyche” features works of various media that draw on the traditions of art, literature, opera, dance and music to construct new narratives demonstrating the instability of the canon. Happy Days (2006) records the stage directions...
Our September/October cover is a portrait of Nicholas Bowers, the right-hand man for Shepard Fairey. Bowers goes where Fairey goes. Read about Bowers and his experience with Fairey and his own art, by Shelley Leopold.
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