The cliché of the naughty schoolgirl is so ingrained in Western culture that it’s hard to imagine a time before they existed. You can read Japanese Anime about them while wearing a professionally manufactured naughty schoolgirl costume. You can mix a Naughty...
RECONNOITER
Like many practicing artists, Martin Durazo is also an educator, having taught at colleges like Otis and Pomona. But he’s made an indelible mark as a public school teacher, having taught at Inner-City Arts Los Angeles, the Montebello Unified School District. Since...
Exquisite Cadaver: Sundaram’s Couture of Surreal Salvage
The first encounter with the most strikingly original art (not unlike the most speculative scientific thinking) is always a bit strange – possibly configured, oriented or abstracted in a way toward which our minds and senses can only gradually accustom themselves. We...
A Sublime Moment on the Sixth Street Bridge
I’ve been trying to discourage art, cultural, political, fashion and retail organizations of every size from exhibiting, performing, organizing, opening, demonstrating or launching anything during the summer before Labor Day, and especially August. But I suppose it’s...
Perception Through Process and the Persuasion of Pathos – A Day at The Getty
I’d taken a photographer friend to The Getty to look at the Light, Paper, Process show curated by Virginia Heckert – a must for any photographer and, for that matter, for anyone interested in process-oriented form and media (which includes myself, in recent months)....
Mistaken Identities: What We Miss In Our Quest for the Next
It’s time for a little retrospect here at AWOL – as in looking back in an attempt to take in the whole of something. An impossible task – but you have to start somewhere. It’s also about taking the proper measure of something or someone you thought you knew –...
TOTTENHAM CORNER
There are few sights more ridiculous than a grown man wearing a pair of shorts. Back in my day, grown men simply did not venture outside clad in shorts. Anyone choosing to appear in public in such outlandish garb would be laughed off the streets. Scorn would...
GUEST LECTURE
Eve Fowler’s exhibition at Mier Gallery “The Difference is Spreading,” reflects an intense, five-year-long engagement with the words of Gertrude Stein. For Fowler, this engagement is at once syntactical, visual, haptic, lingual—each form of perception sliding over and...
SHOPTALK
Photo Time in LAParis Photo and photo independentParis Photo (May 31–June 3) hit its third year—the final year of its lease agreement with Paramount Studios, wherein it takes over several soundstages and the “New York” backlot for an art fair. This year there were 79...
ART BRIEF
I’ve come to know Ed Moses as a result of a friendship with his son, artist Andy Moses. In the last few years Ed became my client and a friend who, at the age of 89, continues to work early each morning on his art. It’s been inspiring to witness an artist who...
Raymond Pettibon
Of late, I have been selling various valuable paper collectibles online. First to go were the early punk flyers and fanzines. Now it’s time to part with a collection of Raymond Pettibon limited edition “art zines,” as they are sometimes called on eBay. Despite being...
UNDER THE RADAR
So, somehow I wound up teaching a couple of Modern Art History classes, right? I’m not exactly thrilled with the default textbooks, so I’m keeping my eyes open for a replacement. So when Thames & Hudson recently issued the revised second edition of Art Since 1900...
DECODER
The main point of a show in a nonprofit space isn’t profit—it’s you get to have an art party. There’s nowhere to sit and sometimes people wear headbands, but it’s still technically a party. A good party is an end in itself (and a good party is arguably the end to...
BUNKER VISION
One of the things that always troubled me about Andy Warhol’s legacy was the matter of people who got elevated and left behind. It is quite one thing to sign your name to a found object, but a whole other matter to treat people as found art.Warhol could be quite mean...
ASK BABS
UNDEREXPOSEDDear Babs, Please help me. I am currently living in a desolate land and deprived of adequate art exposure (and God knows how I love to expose myself to art). I once knew a wonderful artist who helped me with my art education but she left town several...
RETROSPECT
To attempt to improve upon nature can mean creating a monster, something we are quite accustomed to in the plastic surgery industry, as we are in love with artificiality. How did this happen? Boredom with nature? Love of our own capabilities? Maybe it’s not a bad...
Reconnoiter
Fabien Castanier is a native of Paris, where he previously worked in the TV and film industries. He moved to LA in 2002 to focus on his true passion—art—and established the Fabien Castanier Gallery.ARTILLERY: What’s the one thing all the artists you show have in...