Dear Babs, One of my greatest music heroes recently started painting. So when a local gallery showed his art in a pop-up show, I was excited to go. But his paintings are really not good. He’s had a very long career as a musician and always puts a ton of effort into...
There has never been a year in Los Angeles—certainly not in this century, more probably the last 30 years—when our artists haven’t delivered something surprising, extraordinary, something to change the way we talk and think about and look at the world. This year was...
It’s that time of year again, when the mistletoe has wilted and bedraggled Christmas trees line the city streets, slumped against dumpsters like drunken sailors. It’s that time of year when Resolute Red makes BIG plans, none of which will ever be realized, but it’s...
We revisit the canonical operatic repertoire for many reasons. And—notions of gesamtkunstwerk to one side—it’s really no different with the Wagnerian repertoire. You could almost attach that description to operas dating from the Baroque. (One might easily make a...
Perspicacious Periwinkle is an avid reader of The Tarot, having once predicted the sudden death of the world’s oldest rhinoceros in Zambia, and a cataclysmic wind event that no one witnessed off the Cape of Good Hope. It is safe to say that PP as she calls herself on...
The age of artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived whether we like it or not and now it has come to the art world. That should not really be much of a shock. It’s now five years since AlphaGo defeated the best Go players in the world. Writers have auto-complete...
Dear Babs, What advice might you give to an older artist who would like to return to making art after a two-decade hiatus? I experienced a dead-end art career in my mid-40s, showing in copious group shows and occasional college gallery solo shows. I want to return to...
Insouciant Indigo doesn’t care. In other words, he simply does not give a rat’s ass about anything or anybody. A lifetime of ever darkening dreams has laid him low once and for all. To add insult to injury he’s never been popular with the ladies, being mostly...
Robert Berman has always understood one essential factor driving the art market—and especially the auction market: the passion of collectors. To hear him tell it, you might think it was his own collector’s passion more than anything else that pushed him into the art...
Weird-Ass White has a secret death wish, a deep and unwavering desire to fall headlong into the arms of night with its ever-widening black mouth swallowing her alive, but being the good girl that she is, she never lets on. Instead, the world at large swallows her...
Mischievous Mustard often shows up where he’s not wanted—on T-shirts and dress slacks, in the car (like the time Joe Morrison ate a hot dog for breakfast on his way to work and dropped it on his brand new leather seats), at the corners of Virginia Ramona’s mouth...
You don’t need a DSM to figure Adam Greener out, but it can’t hurt. Not to worry—he’s not quite there yet, though there are indications that as post-pubescent hormones flood his bloodstream, he’ll be on his way in no time. Adam is an American student aged about 10...
Dear Reader, As I’ve been saying since the dawn of Artillery (16 years ago now): LA is the most vibrant art city in the country. This isn’t exactly a revelation, so why focus on LA—yet again—in this current issue? Because we felt it was worth revisiting the subject in...
Jean-Michel Basquiat, some say, was an artistic genius. His paintings’ auction values now equal or exceed those of his friend and mentor, Andy Warhol. A couple of top-notch Basquiat shows wowed New York City this past summer, including a major exhibition sponsored by...
What do we imagine when we think about art in the most primal form that it has taken throughout the ages? It is easy to pick out important sculptural works or historic paintings on canvas—but often overlooked is the pureness of paint on a wall. Whether looking back to...
It can be a disservice to describe an artist whose art describes a constantly changing self. 1. Kayla Tange looking platonically calm, platonically Asian, platonically a performance artist, dressed in an all-white so crisp it might be paper, in a great glass box...
Back in the days before television, radio and movies, a popular form of entertainment was the Tableau Vivant. People would pose in costumes alongside elaborate props to reenact historical events, or to mimic paintings and statues. If you have ever encountered the...
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