CHOOSE ME DEAR BABS: How do I get a studio visit with the curators of Made in L.A. [The Hammer Museum biennial]? None of my artist friends know how to get works considered for the biennial. I wish there was more transparency in terms of how they survey the emerging...
“Why do we call Deutschland Germany?” Kischnec asked his friend Linda, one of the passing chickens dangling from the conveyer belt. “It’s not like it’s hard to say: DOITCH-londt. What’s the fucking problem? Same with other countries. But I imagine you know more about...
Naima J. Keith is the deputy director of Los Angeles’ California African American Museum (CAAM), arriving in 2016 from the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Being an LA native, what was your awareness of CAAM, their programs, and their history before leaving Los...
Entre le coucher de soleil et le clair de lune, les feux d’artifice nous appellent encore. There is something tragic about the decline of a great operatic voice. It’s a tragedy that encompasses all the smaller tragedies of decline – including our own individually...
A little more than 40 years ago, I was home from school and living in an apartment in Westwood. I didn’t see my brother – who was also in Los Angeles that summer, freshly graduated from Yale – very often; but when I did or when we spoke over the phone, we would...
As we move forward into 2018, we recognize a bit more concretely how our experiences in 2017 and immediately prior influenced and began to reshape our perception of the larger (and certainly the political) world. This is nothing new. Radical cultural change (or its...
CODE ORANGE is a new Artillery feature, a web-based, issue-oriented photography contest curated by LA artist and photographer Laura London. Winning entries will be published in upcoming issues of the magazine, and finalists will appear online. CODE ORANGE is a...
Although I’m not a big fan of Norman Rockwell’s artwork, a painting of his caught my eye after becoming the centerpiece of a controversy that has rocked the art world. Rockwell, the longtime cover illustrator of the Saturday Evening Post working from the 1920s to the...
This whole end-of-net-neutrality panic is a bit of a mystery to me. Sure, it sucks, but what were people expecting? That businessmen would suddenly do the right thing, because, like, information wants to be free? So did Frederick Douglass, but trickle-down economics...
Bill Sheehy is the director of Latin American Masters, which he founded in 1987. What led you to exhibit only Latin-American artists? Do you think that LA’s proximity to Latin America lends its art a special relevance here? I was led to exhibit Latin-American...
If you happen to be looking for a textbook example of film as collaborative art, a special feature on the DVD of The Lure might be one of the best. The movie itself is a sort of musical/horror hybrid. It involves a pair of mermaids (not the cute kind) who come ashore...
DIFFICULT SUBJECT MATTER DEAR BABS: In my art practice, I gravitate toward using ephemeral media and creating installations. Sometimes my work deals with “difficult” subject matter. Do most gallery owners steer clear of those qualities in art because it is challenging...
In my second year at Cornell my family were happy because they thought they could finally stop worrying about me. I don’t know why they worried so much; I thought I was doing fine. Of course, I was still a virgin, but so what? I had some pretty deep crushes: one on...
French conceptual artist Sophie Calle’s exhibition at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, "Beau doublé, Monsieur le marquis! Sophie Calle et son invitée Serena Carone" is Calle’s first exhibition in France since her retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in 2003,...
Picasso knew what he was up against – literally. He pasted it into his art, more or less inventing collage in the process. He (along with a few of his other Cubist colleagues) also played with trompe l’oeil, but he understood this wasn’t the same thing – a device...
I’ve always thought the human preoccupation with borders and perimeters had more to do with its relationship with animal wildlife (not that humans have ever exactly been ‘tame’). I realize I’m speaking a bit off the top of my head – I’ve never done any serious...
I’m thinking about family albums right now – not something that comes to mind very often (and now I’m wondering if this is the first time I’ve ever considered this). I suppose this could also be something captured and stored digitally – but for some reason, it doesn’t...
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