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RECONNOITER
Carolyn Merino Mullin is the Founder And Executive Director of The Animal Museum whose new space opened December 3rd in the heart of LA’s Downtown Arts District.ARTILLERY: What inspired you to start an animal museum? MERINO MULLIN: Other social movements—women’s...
RETROSPECT
We talk about this art and that art, and then we either start seeing influences or start making them up. A popular one is the Asian influence on the Impressionists, who we like to consider our greatest artists but we really mean most popular. However, comparing these...
Sometime between the morning of November 9th and the current holiday season, there was an interruption in the more or less weekly postings in this space. It’s not like it’s never happened before. I do drop out of sight now and again; and there are those intervals when...
GUEST LECTURE
UNDER THE RADAR
Installation artist and drone improviser Gabie Strong has been a playa in the surprisingly vigorous Los Angeles experimental music community for some time, with her radio show Crystal Morphologies as one of the anchors of pirate radio KCHUNG’s programming lineup for...
RETROSPECT: Macbeth
Macbeth is the story of a villain who people understand and have pity for—when the story is told correctly. Both Macbeth and his wife have the difficult task of being evil and asking for our sympathy. They are tortured souls not because they are losing the battle but...
BUNKER VISION: The Magic Christian
You’re sitting at an art fair (on what you hope is a chair) while your spouse has another look around. They handed you a magazine before they left, and you’re already back here. You can afford anything in the place, but everything was covered in hold stickers when the...
ASK BABS
SOLD! (NOT!)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 to sell? Is...
SIGHTS UNSCENE
RECONNOITER
Gerard O’Brien founded The Landing a year ago and is the owner of Reform Gallery in Los Angeles, a store that quickly became a leading source for furnishings, crafts and accessories in the California Modern style.ARTILLERY: You’ve gotten a lot of admiration and good...
Home Is Where the Horror Is – Guillermo del Toro (2)
It’s Halloween and it’s about time I finished my walk-through of Guillermo del Toro’s reconfigured ‘Bleak House’ home/office/inspiration space in the Art of the Americas Building at LACMA. What, after all, could have been keeping me so long? Maybe I simply needed a...
Weightless line, transparent plane, unbroken horizon, and the constructive dilemma: the art of Brian Rea
You probably know Brian Rea’s work even if you’re not familiar with his name. In fact, it’s probable that you do know his name by now because his illustrations seem to be almost everywhere from book jackets and frontispieces to half the magazines you pick up, and even...
Gun Crazy: Playing with fire at Liz’s Loft
Let me just start by applauding Liz Gordon and her team for the bravado and sheer celebration of mounting a show titled, Guns, in the current political environment. I was about to say ‘contentious’ – but there’s really nothing contentious (or new) about it. Guns are...
‘Are the stars out tonight?’ Harmonic convergence for a new art season
The beginning of another arts and culture season also marks a point where we really start to feel the impact of everything we’ve been experiencing over the preceding orbital/calendar year and start to take its measure. Events move swiftly; you can feel as if you’re...
Sexy Beast: A Benefit for Planned Parenthood Los Angeles
It’s the first post-Labor Day week-end and we’re approaching mid-September, which means one thing in Los Angeles (and New York, too, I guess – as we head into Fashion Week) – the start of the new arts and entertainment season. LACMA just unveiled an elegant exhibition...
ART BRIEF
The greatest collection of art in the world may not be at the Met or the Louvre any longer. The secret vaults of the wealthiest collectors in the world may hold much more art than the top art museums, with the vast majority of it locked away in so-called freeports in...
RETROSPECT
Does anyone remember the Paragons and the Jesters? In high falsetto voices they whined about the ache of first love way before I ever felt it. They prepared me for heartbreak in such a visceral way that I couldn’t wait for it to happen. Love? Was it going to come to...
