columns
All Tomorrow’s Parties — Icons of Style in the age of disposable culture and personality fetish
I’m becoming accustomed to conversations changing overnight over the last year or two; and certainly the context of those conversations is being altered more or less continuously. Less expected is when the perceptions of a set of issues or phenomena of any variety –...
The Cats Are Alright – Cat Art Show 3
I love most animals, in fact pretty much all animals, including some species especially hostile to human life (maybe those most of all). But I’m not one to fetishize them – or many other things, either (I think). However, whether it’s because of social media or just...
Michael Lindsay-Hogg – Working with what it is
I have to preface this sketch with an admission that seems odd even to me – as someone fairly impervious to the lure of Hollywood legend. What drew me to the first show I ever saw of Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s fine art was that he was a Hollywood legend. But that term...
RECONNOITER
Cheyenne artist Edgar Heap of Birds has made a practice of illuminating Native-American life against dominant culture erasure. In his recent LA-area exhibitions at Garis & Hahn and the Pitzer College Galleries, he focused on activism and history. You tell...
SHOPTALK: Current Art Events in LA
LOS ANGELES: A FAIR DESTINATION This winter The Other Art Fair (March 15–18) tested its feet in LA waters—launched by Saatchi Art, the online art gallery, the fair is billed as “An Art Fair for a New Generation of Art Buyers.” On the weekend the crowds came in droves...
ART BRIEF: DO NOT DISTURB
Censorship of art must always bear a high burden—especially after an entire generation of work was nearly destroyed by the Nazis’ war on Modern Art (which they labeled “degenerate art”), involving confiscation of thousands of artworks, including those of Beckmann,...
FILM: Wild Wild Country
When I initially started hearing the buzz surrounding filmmaker brothers Chapman and Maclain Way’s Netflix documentary series about the Indian guru Bhagwan Rajneesh’s failed attempt to establish a large commune in rural Oregon in the 1980s, I was surprised—hasn’t this...
DECODER
I know a curator who used to work for Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen—her job was to look through all the old press clippings and organize them. “That must’ve been interesting,” I said, “did you notice anything?” “Well,” she said “in the ’60s, Carolee...
SIGHTS UNSCENE
RETROSPECT Warhol: The Man I Knew
Andy Warhol was not a weak, whiney, limp-wristed gay man. Quite the opposite, in fact: he had different personalities for different people. To his nieces and nephews, he was your normal uncle Andy; they loved him and wrote a storybook about how they would wake up...
BUNKER VISION
When they write the official history of artists who experimented with gender fluidity, Eva & Adele should rightfully get their own chapter. At an art fair or posh party over the last three decades, you may have encountered a pair of bald ladies attired in...
Dave & Jeff’s Wonderful Column Area
ASK BABS
FREE FOR NOTHING DEAR BABS: I am writing to you because I’m outraged at the $25 ticket price for the Jasper Johns show currently at the “free” Broad museum. That is not even close to free, and with the exclusive exhibition sponsor Louis Vuitton, why is the ticket...
COMICS: Jeff Jones
The Fatal Optimism of the Bar Graph: Nicolas Grenier
Even before pie charts and bar graphs, before we’re plotting curves and breaking down conic sections in algebra and analytic geometry, we become accustomed to the graphic visual representation of every kind of trend, concept, and systematized data or information. It...
This and That – and Taylor Mac
It’s been a tumultuous week in Los Angeles; and for a change, we can’t blame it entirely on the Putin-wannabe currently installed in The White House or his cronies and GOP enablers – notwithstanding the fact that he happened to blow into town this same week to pick a...
Something Resembling Meaning: Revisiting Jasper Johns
It was interesting to walk through the Jasper Johns exhibition, Something Resembling Truth, only a couple of days after my first look at Mark Bradford’s new paintings at Hauser & Wirth. Bradford’s paintings marked something of a departure for him – continuing to...
