RECONNOITER
Sarah Williams is co-founder and executive director of the Women’s Center for Creative Work (WCCW). What was your background before WCCW, and how did it influence your approach to the organization? I grew up in Hawthorne, CA, left to go to UC Santa Cruz, and came back...
BUNKER VISION
There is an old saying about documentaries: If you are the subject of one, it probably isn’t for the reasons that you think. Perhaps, by the same token, if you are included in a documentary on another subject, it might be for the right reasons. A recent documentary...
ASK BABS
Just One Word: PLASTICS DEAR BABS: I am really feeling the lack of creativity in my current occupation as a therapy/social worker, and am seeking to return to my passions and study either art history, curation, or some combination of the two in graduate school, which...
Shot By Both Sides
The primary icon of Low Brow Art is also unfortunately one of the most corrupting and dangerous icons of mainstream culture. It should by all rights and agreement be stuck on the business end of a spear and left out to rot in the streets for the amusement of the...
Bernardo Bertolucci (1941-2018) as miracle-master: The Conformist
We generally think of chance or random selection, in opposition to composition, certainly in opposition to mise-en-scène; but there are moments and circumstances that bring these very different conditions into dynamic interplay. I had occasion to consider this...
FLUXUS ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
In many ways, opera is the high point of the Western classical music tradition. Originating as royal entertainment in Italy at the close of the 16th century, opera evolved to become fashionable throughout Europe. This remained the status quo until the early 20th...
SHOPTALK
AI WEIWEI IN LA We haven’t seen much of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in these parts since LACMA presented his installation “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Head” in 2012. This fall he returned with a well-orchestrated splash—with three high-profile exhibitions opening in LA, all...
ART BRIEF
The first week of October was Ai Weiwei week in Los Angeles—a triple-header of shows including the Marciano Foundation, the opening show of former MOCA Director Jeffrey Deitch’s new Hollywood gallery, and at the recent UTA gallery in Beverly Hills. First stop was the...
UNDER THE RADAR
NOTE: Ultimately, the correct response to each of these prompts is one or more paintings. 1. How is a painting different from the screen of your phone? 2 Does the image in a painting end at the edge of the canvas, or continue to infinity? 3. What is a painting? Give...
DECODER
Writing “It’s beautiful but…” means you’re stupid. Other fields don’t put up with this shit. “Delicious” is no joke: in the 17th century the Dutch and Portuguese went to war over it (Spice War: 1602 to 1663, ended with the Treaty of the Hague). No matter how...
SIGHTS UNSCENE
BUNKER VISION
Chances are that if you show a civilian a 500-year-old painting, they won’t be able to name the painter, unless it’s Bosch. His name is even listed as an adjective (“Boschian”) in online slang dictionaries. For somebody who produced fewer than 30 paintings in his...
In Remembrance: Artillery Co-Founder
Charles Rappleye died on Saturday, September 15, at his home in Echo Park at the age of 62. He battled with cancer for nearly seven years. Charlie had a rich career as an award-winning investigative journalist and an author of four nonfiction historical biographies....
RECONNOITER
Roger Herman is a Los Angeles-based artist and professor at UCLA department of art. How long have you been teaching painting at UCLA? Was teaching a profession you wanted to do, or was it a matter of practicality, a way to supplement your income as an artist. I have...
COMICS: DEAD OR ALIVE
Cover Versions
Like many Pre-Millennial truths that were once irrefutable, the adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is waning into obsolescence. After all, what is the utility of a book cover in the era of e-books that claim neither form nor substance? In his exhibition...
The mad machinery of everyday life: The drawings (and paintings) of Philip Rich
The surrealist impulse in art taps into not merely a human stream of consciousness, but the life and aura of everything around us, from the natural and organic to the built or crafted an inanimate. Nothing is definitively inanimate in the surrealist domain. Warhol saw...