In a 1953 photograph for a spread in LIFE magazine on LA County’s city of Lakewood, a bird’s-eye view looks down onto a newly paved suburban street. The street is lined with moving trucks as far as the eye can see as family after family busily unpack their belongings....
The pandemic has brought many issues to the fore, including health care, basic income and housing. Further down the list (but inspiring outsize passion) is how we consume movies. After nearly a year without much production and very few theaters allowed to remain open,...
Dear Babs, Desert X is putting their show on in the Coachella Valley this spring, after art-washing the murderous Saudi Arabian regime with a big outdoor show over there. In case you missed it, Saudi leader MBS had Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi killed and...
Jonathan Hepfer is a percussionist, conductor, and the artistic director of Monday Evening Concerts, the longest-running classical, avant-garde and experimental music concert series in LA. What has it been like reimagining your programming during the pandemic? Over...
Peacock Blue wishes to clarify once and for all that her name has little to do with vegetable matter and even less with genitalia, yet imagine going through life mistaken either for soup or a pecker! Such is the fate of Peacock Blue, who’s spent a lifetime in the jest...
This oceanic equine has been spotted in the mangrove forests of South America, sporting a spiny suit of luminous flames – a dapper, irreverent fellow who reads Rilke, Proust and Rimbaud, albeit, soggy in the shallows – he is the avatar of things to come, the...
Khaki Green loves to talk. Her friends call her “Yacky Khaki,” and sometimes when they’re feeling annoyed, “Quacky Khaki.” But really, it’s a compulsion as at 5 AM every morning Khaki Green begins her rants – everything from contesting this year’s champion at the...
SoCal’s Museums Museums have been shut down (again), which doesn’t effect the city of Los Angeles too much as museums weren’t reopened except for a very short week or so. Neither LACMA nor the Hammer ever reopened after mid-March shutdowns and, alas, the...
In last issue’s column I discussed the influence of the Woke movement in shaking up stodgy art museums to diversify their staff and fill gaps in their collections caused by decades of turning a blind eye to artwork made by minorities and women. Sure enough, a backlash...
Artists can make the invisible become visible, but that doesn’t mean they have to. Photographers in particular find it necessary to provide visual confirmation of a chosen moment; in the case of some Pulitzer Prize winners, their captured image has become the official...
Fifty years ago, when the Manson murders were daily headline news, the reporting emphasized anything that might pass for “hippie behavior,” while playing down Manson’s intended goal to start a race war. The dog-whistling, race-based law and order tropes of politicians...
Dear Babs, I’m a young artist a few years out of grad school. Recently my dad’s close friend asked if he could buy a painting I made about America’s racist prison industrial complex. In the spirit of transparency, he told me he planned to give it as a gift to an old...
Kevin Duffy is an LA-based actor, filmmaker and writer, who recently performed in Refracted Theater Company’s Homeless Garden—a reimagination of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard set in present-day where climate change and politics coincide. The play was performed...
CHRISTMAS IN THE BUNKER With the idea that many readers will be in bunker mode during the holidays, I have rounded up a variety of things that you can watch for free with an internet connection. Some of these were covered in previous dispatches, and some of them are...
Bashful Blue is a dreamer of impossible dreams that more often than not involve the First Lady of either political party, having once written a love letter to Hilary Clinton, begging to be the paint on her walls, the silky blue...
The Art Economy Inquiring minds want to know how galleries are faring during the pandemic. As you know, a number have opened up with limited hours, reservations and timed entry. More than once I have found myself the only person visiting a gallery, which made me feel...
COVID-19 has caused severe financial distress to art institutions—some have closed or cut back on hours and staff, and now there is pressure to sell artworks from collections to reduce deficits in operating budgets. At the same time, the “woke” culture movement has...
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