The center of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Friday evening program was a shimmering pulsation of musical color, both harmonic and timbral, in a field of black and white. Both Susan Graham’s rendering of a suite of Kurt Weill songs and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s own suite...
There was a moment between the late 1960s and early 1970s when mainstream American mass culture seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief. With the first major convulsions of the American civil rights movement and the trauma of recent political assassinations...
![About town: scanning the remnants [Thomas Eggerer, Kim Kei, Luke Diiorio]](https://artillerymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/KimKeiMimesis7.jpg)
We all know what brought us to Los Angeles; the question is what makes us stay. I hate driving; but the one good thing about being pulled occasionally off the beaten path (inevitably by car in L.A.) is the opportunity to see what has changed (disconcertingly,...
In September, while in New York, I popped into the Whitney to check out the occupation of the entire museum by Jeff Koons. While I’m not under the spell of what The New York Review of Books recently proclaimed “The Cult of Koons,” the “Banality” series of the 1980s is...
In a brick-arched space of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery—a Grade 1-listed 19th-century building in the middle of Hyde Park, originally designed to store gunpowder during the Napoleonic wars—a strange noise is being emitted. It comes from a pair of transparent...
As the philosopher Lindsey Buckingham once observed “You win prizes if you stay, because that’s how we do it in LA.” When I landed in here in the very early ’90s, there were a number of local art legends who had been working the program for decades, yet seemed to have...
A lover of Marsden Hartley’s landscapes, especially the “Dogtown” series, I have never been interested in his so-called cubist series depicting German symbols. Why would someone who could paint the mystical rhythms of Dogtown or the insane colors of the Mexican desert...
When Kai Loebach emigrated to Los Angeles 27 years ago, after a brief vacation during which he was blown away by the friendliness of the people and the “visual orgasm” of a clean-as-new supermarket in the San Fernando Valley, he knew no one, had no place to stay and...
By the late 1960s, whatever fun The Art World had promised with pop art was settling back into something more serious and denim-clad. Glamour was once again a dirty word, and the less there was to see at an art show, the more profound the art was deemed. If one was...
Gallery MovesIt’s a Californian Kinda ThingBy Scarlet Cheng It’s hard to keep up with the rash of new and relocated galleries this year—is this because of the economic rebound, or because Los Angeles continues to become more important in American’s cultural...
Once a city on the margins of the art world, Hong Kong now sits center stage, boasting the world’s third-largest art market. A wealth of galleries, museums and art centers can be found on either side of Victoria Harbor, which separates the commercial center, Hong Kong...
For all the talk about its fragility (at least in economic terms), opera remains a remarkably durable art form. Great music wedded to a strong dramatic core can never be easily dismissed. Add some good orchestration and the human voice in its full dynamic range,...
I am preoccupied lately (see any number of my blog posts, especially recent ones), with the evolving/devolving culture(s) of Los Angeles, the way art is made and experienced in this city, the way we connect with and experience that art and culture, and the way we...
The parallel is obvious (and be assured there’s nothing personal to it). Although I did not have an opportunity to interview Kevin Moore while in Cincinnati, it was clear both from his remarks in various gallery talks and conversations and the exhibitions themselves,...
We’re back-tracking here; the FotoFocus opening week-end is just past us. But the Biennial continues through November 1st; and I encourage anyone in the vicinity of Cincinnati (or really anywhere in the Ohio or northern Kentucky area) to take in whatever exhibitions...
Well that was a pretty great lecture. Speaking of running late, I ran so late to the David Benjamin Sherry – Elizabeth Siegel conversation moderated by Kevin Moore (I sort of wonder what that means – it almost sounds more like a debate—which of course I would have...
I have a lot more to say about art and the city—more specifically this city, Los Angeles; and the way we engage both and what it all means. But I also have a lot to say about art and fashion and the way they engage each other; and it hasn’t been easy getting the...
As I rush to post this, I’m already thinking the title is either an overstatement or understatement and outrageously disingenuous either way. Let me step back for a second (I’m going to be stepping back all the way through this, so just get used to it). This is about...
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