These statues, never really alive, were visiting the Getty like ghosts from the past, and they have traveled an odd underwater route to get here. Afraid that these magnificent bronzes would be melted down into weaponry and coins, their owners dragged them out to sea...
Afro Rising
Step off the Metro line at Crenshaw and Martin Luther King in 2019, and the first thing you’ll be greeted by is the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, a gray monolith of Macy’s, Sears and Wal-Mart. But look further south down Crenshaw, and you’ll notice an afro rising like...
BUNKER VISION
Agnes Varda is the sort of filmmaker that is always worth paying attention to. According to many film historians, her 1954 film La Pointe Courte was the first French New Wave film. A peek at YouTube reveals a 200-video playlist assembled by obsessed fans. (She gives...
ASK BABS
Thirsty and SoberDear Babs, I’m an artist. I want to succeed. I don’t drink. I’m in AA. Every art opening I go to has booze. What do I do? —Nick, Los AngelesDear Nick, Drink water.Pretty BabyDear Babs, It seems like you have to be beautiful to be a successful young...
SHOPTALK with Scarlet Cheng
The Broad Is Here Inaugural Show is a Highlights Survey Here comes The Broad! The striking white cube with diagonal perforations holding the contemporary art collection of Eli and Edythe Broad finally opened to the public on Sept. 20—after a delay of nearly a year due...
ON THE COVER
Please see feature on Nuttaphol Ma by Christopher Michno.
NeueHouse Hollywood
The opening of NeueHouse Hollywood on the West Coast—their second location—would warrant our attention regardless of any new piece of art attached to it. After all, since its first location opened in Manhattan in 2013, NeueHouse has been a hub for celebrities,...
A Different Voice of the Same Generation
<p><em></em><em></em>As lookers and lovers of contemporary art, we too often encounter millennial artists making work as willing (or proud, even) participants in a culture of banality. That is, the isolation and presentation of...
Pinaree Sanpitak: Ma-Lai
A refreshing fragrance of hyacinth and tiger lilies sets the tone for Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak’s delicate installation of white garlands, or Ma-Lai, for which her third solo exhibition in New York is named. Continuing with her interest in the body that she has...
Lisa Adams, Hilde Overbergh & Gert Verhoeven, and Nathan Hayden
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Editor’s Letter
Dear Readers When I moved to Los Angeles to attend grad school for my MFA at the University of Southern California, it was apparent I was at a crossroads in my life. Making the decision to leave the place where I grew up, to leave behind all my family and friends,...
Rules of Engagement
The term, “mindful awareness,” is a buzz phrase in current therapeutic and meditation circles (and, as I discovered a year or so ago, the institutional art world—or at least the Hammer Museum, by way of its alliance with UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center). But...
(Un)Reliably Ranking MFA Education
More than any other MFA programs in Southern California—there are in excess of a dozen—CalArts and UCLA have long been associated with art super-stardom. Whether this perception is accurate or a mere distillation of selective anecdotes, it bolsters the mythology of...
The Accidental Artist
Just blocks from Venice Beach near Appleton Way I’m wandering down an alley, trying to find Jud Fine’s studio. Over the cell he tells me to look for the DWP truck parked in front. But as I turn the corner the truck is pulling away. I’m not quite sure which nondescript...
Yale Pit Crit
At the Yale School of Painting and Printmaking there is a pit. They called it a pit. There were discussions in the pit and they were twice a year, about you, and mandatory.Some people cried in the pit. They wept because the artist-professors said they held low...
Judgment Day
All good crits are alike; each miserable crit is miserable in its own way. Isn’t that the way it goes? We asked a few reliable Southern California university faculty to recommend recent MFA grad students for contributions to our Back to School issue on their critique...
Portland Photo Month
Each April, galleries in Portland, OR, exhibit photography in recognition of Photo Month. As one might expect from a small art scene, the exhibitions are locally important but seem nostalgic, derivative or touristic to outsiders. The two notable exceptions are Coleen...
The Troubles
In the perennial discussion of which of the several distinguished art schools in Los Angeles is the best, the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California has always been a contender. Until now. This year the Roski School, with its...