Dear Readers, Cold trickling creeks, running rivers and green woods were my surroundings growing up. That’s where we played as children and partied as teenagers. When I moved to Southern California, the unchanging climate and landscape were a bit unsettling—they still...
EDITOR’S LETTER
Dear Readers, Suddenly, big is all around. Big, meaning huge spaces to create art in. Big, meaning large works to hang in gargantuan galleries. Big used to be considered vulgar but now it’s vogue. Big was garish, wasteful, decadent and dumb. Now it’s smart and...
Magic Carpet Ride
From the shaded parking lot, a stark beam of light shines through the loosely shut double doors of a nondescript white brick building. It is late morning, and the sun is already beginning to assert its presence as I approach the now-defunct Regen Projects gallery. It...
Editor’s Note
Artillery was always skeptical about the selection of Jeffrey Deitch as director of MOCA. In 2010 we did a cover story musing on the idea of Deitch at the helm. Preposterous! was our first reaction. And we backed it up with interviews from Los Angeles and New York...
The Big Cheese
I’m listening to Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass’ Classics, Volume 1 as I write this. Besides being famous for his ’60s music, Alpert has apparently been making art for almost as long. I ran into his formidable sculptures again recently, this time at the Robert...
Editor’s Letter
Dear Readers, I didn't get a chance in my last column to talk about art critic Dave Hickey's announcement about being fed up with the art world and "quitting." This is old news by now, but I feel compelled to continue the discussion. When I first read the...
MIKE KELLEY: STRAIGHT OUTTA DETROIT
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT! ART STAR STOPS MAKING ART! That was going to be my headline after hearing the remark Mike Kelley made at the close of our interview. I was wrapping up our conversation, all ready to ask the final question, like Barbara Walters: "What's...
My Lunch with Zak Smith
This interview took place December, 2009, at the restaurant in Los Feliz at Fred 62. Zak ordered the spaghetti. Find this article in our Jan/Feb 2010 issue; Artillery's first Biennial Sex Issue...(time for another!) https://artillerymag.com/product/janfeb-2010/ ...
All Her Children
It was two years ago when I first saw Susan Anderson’s photographs at an art fair in New York. They were images of little girls all dolled up, seemingly for one of those kiddie beauty pageants. I was struck by the pictures for several reasons: The photographs...
Data and Surrealism
Tracking down George Legrady for an interview can be tricky. A man who juggles art and science for a living has a lot of demands on his time. Hence, I found myself at a panel discussion on Database Aesthetics at the convention center in Los Angeles early one Saturday...
Extremity in the First Degree
Waters once said, “To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.” And after seeing his place in San Francisco, I would have to say he practices what he preaches. Antique furniture, tapestries and decorative drapery adorn the small but elegant 1920s apartment...
No Beauty, No Truth
Mike Kelley’s first feature length movie takes place mainly at a high school. Cheery bright classrooms are full of 30-year-old sloppy students. Auditoriums stage assemblies with campy musicals and pageants. Gleaming lockers line the polished hallways. It’s a regular...
Catherine Opie
California is known as the land of fruits and nuts. And it’s true, we’ve got wacky environmentalists, kooky lefty liberals and fruity homosexuals. And artist Catherine Opie actually fits all three categories, sans the loaded adjectives. Nothing wacky about Cathy, and...