It was not by accident that the ‘hub’ of the 2014 FotoFocus biennial in Cincinnati was given over to Instagram, augmented by satellite displays throughout the city, including Cincinnati’s Memorial Hall and the hotel where I stayed during my visit there. (The actual...
It has not escaped me that the order of these posts keeps keeps getting juggled as one thing or another interrupts the chronological flow. (Or perhaps it’s the ‘controversial’ flow—as controversy is what frequently drives this conversation forward.) But occasionally...
“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Don Vito Corleone to Johnny Fontane, The Godfather (Paramount, 1972) written by Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, from the novel by Mario Puzo, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. As visitors to this blog are aware,...
In case you didn’t notice, Hello Kitty invaded Los Angeles last month. If you were anywhere near Little Tokyo, you could scarcely escape the impression that not only that neighborhood, but half the population of this side of Los Angeles had been initiated into the...
The center of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Friday evening program was a shimmering pulsation of musical color, both harmonic and timbral, in a field of black and white. Both Susan Graham’s rendering of a suite of Kurt Weill songs and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s own suite...
There was a moment between the late 1960s and early 1970s when mainstream American mass culture seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief. With the first major convulsions of the American civil rights movement and the trauma of recent political assassinations...
![About town: scanning the remnants [Thomas Eggerer, Kim Kei, Luke Diiorio]](https://artillerymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/KimKeiMimesis7.jpg)
We all know what brought us to Los Angeles; the question is what makes us stay. I hate driving; but the one good thing about being pulled occasionally off the beaten path (inevitably by car in L.A.) is the opportunity to see what has changed (disconcertingly,...
For all the talk about its fragility (at least in economic terms), opera remains a remarkably durable art form. Great music wedded to a strong dramatic core can never be easily dismissed. Add some good orchestration and the human voice in its full dynamic range,...
I am preoccupied lately (see any number of my blog posts, especially recent ones), with the evolving/devolving culture(s) of Los Angeles, the way art is made and experienced in this city, the way we connect with and experience that art and culture, and the way we...
The parallel is obvious (and be assured there’s nothing personal to it). Although I did not have an opportunity to interview Kevin Moore while in Cincinnati, it was clear both from his remarks in various gallery talks and conversations and the exhibitions themselves,...
We’re back-tracking here; the FotoFocus opening week-end is just past us. But the Biennial continues through November 1st; and I encourage anyone in the vicinity of Cincinnati (or really anywhere in the Ohio or northern Kentucky area) to take in whatever exhibitions...
Well that was a pretty great lecture. Speaking of running late, I ran so late to the David Benjamin Sherry – Elizabeth Siegel conversation moderated by Kevin Moore (I sort of wonder what that means – it almost sounds more like a debate—which of course I would have...
I have a lot more to say about art and the city—more specifically this city, Los Angeles; and the way we engage both and what it all means. But I also have a lot to say about art and fashion and the way they engage each other; and it hasn’t been easy getting the...
As I rush to post this, I’m already thinking the title is either an overstatement or understatement and outrageously disingenuous either way. Let me step back for a second (I’m going to be stepping back all the way through this, so just get used to it). This is about...
Narrative art has been displaced in recent decades, not simply from the modern art canon but from serious consideration in the contemporary fine art context, generally—which is somewhat ironic, since it dominates the Western art historical canon through the 16th...
While we’re all trying to tear ourselves away from LACMA (where the lush summer acreage of masterpiece exhibitions seems to hold us captive) for a last glimpse at our faves (or misses) in the Made in L.A. 2014 show at The Hammer (or maybe Elvis Costello at the...
I threw a bit of ink (or the digital equivalent) around the topic of LACMA in the last post—its fabulous summer of art exhibitions, its fabulous trustees and director, and their plans for an even more fabulous east campus—perhaps inspired by that solar swimming pool...
I think it’s safe to say that LACMA is on something of ‘a roll,’ lately. The sheer critical mass of masterpiece art on view this summer, especially on the west side of the campus, seems almost enough to shift the center of gravity of metropolitan Los Angeles – or at...
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