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...
Narrative art has been displaced in recent decades, not simply from the modern art canon but from serious consideration in the contemporary fine art context, generally—which is somewhat ironic, since it dominates the Western art historical canon through the 16th century and remains a mainstay through at least the following two centuries, and moreover, continues to be referenced in 20th and 21st century art.
While we’re all trying to tear ourselves away from LACMA (where the lush summer acreage of masterpiece exhibitions seems to hold us captive) for a last glimpse at our faves (or misses) in the Made in L.A. 2014 show at The Hammer (or maybe Elvis Costello at the...
Until his suicide in 1995, Ray Johnson was one of those fringe artists that most artists had heard about, but very few were familiar with. Even then, it wasn’t until John Walter’s 2002 biopic How to Draw a Bunny—certainly one of the best biographical art documentaries...
The inclusion of Emil Nolde in the excellent exhibition, “Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is a brilliant decision, though Nolde was not known for joining groups for very long. Many of his...
I attended the opening of a show of the recent work of David Hockney at the L.A. Louver gallery titled “The Arrival of Spring.” These colorful prints of the East Yorkshire English landscape were composed by Hockney on his iPad with an app that allowed him to create...
There are artists for whom the process of making art has become primarily a lucrative business: the brands of Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst come to mind. Collectors and galleries make demands for signature work, and artists may reach a certain point where they delegate...
Five years ago, when news spread that Harmony Korine was shooting a feature on VHS, it was hailed as an ingenious use of a retro technology. More recently, the band Prodigy was lauded for shooting a music video on VHS. Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams)...
BOON OR BUSTPost Rail Plan on Wrong Track at Bergamot “They’re basically destroying Bergamot Station,” says Wayne Blank, who holds the master lease on the galleries and art institutions at the Bergamot Station arts complex. (He’s also the “Wayne” of Shoshana Wayne...
I threw a bit of ink (or the digital equivalent) around the topic of LACMA in the last post—its fabulous summer of art exhibitions, its fabulous trustees and director, and their plans for an even more fabulous east campus—perhaps inspired by that solar swimming pool...
I think it’s safe to say that LACMA is on something of ‘a roll,’ lately. The sheer critical mass of masterpiece art on view this summer, especially on the west side of the campus, seems almost enough to shift the center of gravity of metropolitan Los Angeles – or at...
Awol – as you gentle readers may not have noticed – was a little more awol than usual the last week or so. Once upon a time that might have implied too many bars or after-hours clubs. Or piles of actual paid work (remember salaried employment?—once almost as...
It’s no secret to readers of this blog that awol’s location coordinates can occasionally be tracked to an opera house, whether in this city (the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, or more recently, across the street at Disney Hall), Long Beach, or further afield (which...
One rainy afternoon, Edward Goldman’s parents popped into the winter palace of the Russian Czars, known today as the state Hermitage Museum of Russia, with their young son. The next time it rained, Edward asked to go again to the “place where naked men and women are...
In a recent documentary called $ellebrity, we are treated to the spectacle celebrities face every time they try to leave their abodes. If a good shot of a celebrity can fetch a high price, there might be 50 photographers yelling insults to get a dirty look. Such an...
Our eyes are drawn to remnants and remains in recent years – the ancient, outmoded, rejected, the discarded; remnants of the industrial 19th century, the post-industrial 20th, even the proto-digital cyber age that preceded the present within the millennial memory...
One thing that came across in Jeff Koons’ recent Broad-sponsored (“Un-Private”) conversation with John Waters was a sense of the satisfaction Koons took from his work as a bond salesman and commodities trader on Wall Street. His fascination with commercial exchange began early, while still a boy, selling items door to door. He has been fascinated with selling – and what sells – ever since. Critics tend to place undue emphasis on his appropriation of kitsch as subject and substance of his art, sidestepping the more fundamental aspect of the work which is the sell itself: the implicit promise of a chimerical trust, even ‘transcendence’ – something seemingly tangible yet intangible, entirely fungible yet unique to each purchaser.
As regular visitors to awol are familiar with by now, I tend to veer off the track a bit, linger a bit too long over this curiosity or that novelty (hopefully without pushing you all into a full-blown meditation – I assume you have your own facilitators for that), or...
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