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SIGHTS UNSCENE
SHOPTALK: LA Art News LA Gallery Migration, Museum Make-overs, and more.
New York, New York! The art market is back, and here in SoCal we’re seeing it with a slew of New York galleries moving in. Pace’s “mergence” with Kayne Griffin is official, and I hear the new signage now bears the Pace name. Sean Kelly gallery is occupying a...
ASK BABS Nonna's No-No
Dear Babs, I recently acquired an old painting of mine from grad school. It looks fabulous in the kitchen. It’s from a series of feminist art, large paintings of nude women in pin-up “cheesecake” positions taken from ’60s playing cards. I now have two grandchildren...
Fran Lebowitz Will Judge You Now Fran Lebowitz at The Broad Stage, April 30, 2022
What is it about a curmudgeon? ...asked a curmudgeon. Or so have I occasionally been obliquely described. ‘Curmudgeonly’, rather than an actual ‘curmudgeon’. So far.... I thought about this inexact and usually quite inaccurate categorization intermittently last...
Remarks on Color: Ukrainian Blue and Gold May's Hue
Collectively, we are so much more than colors. We are the beating, impregnable heart of our country – now brought to our knees in the fetid air, on the bloodied streets, yet if you look up, we are the cerulean sky and the golden amulet of the sun. Now we flee in dirty...
In Our Daughter’s Eyes — opera by Du Yun, created with Nathan Gunn Self-definition and reconstruction as post-catastrophic workaround
It may be just me (and the mess that is my life), but my thinking lately is that we’re at a state of human cultural development where most of the noteworthy cultural events—music, theatre, film, fine arts and performing arts generally—are like surprise symphonies. ...
Letters in Exile, No. 5 By Maria Agureeva
Artists are experiencing a sense of gratitude for the unexpected support and basic kindness shown to them. In the midst of exile and displacement, often the best of humanity reasserts itself. As Maria says in her fifth blog, “So many of my friends and colleagues who...
Letters in Exile, No. 4 By Maria Agureeva
As Maria was working on Blog 4, I happened upon an article about photographer Edward Burtynksy, who is of Ukrainian descent and still has family there. He was scheduled to photograph in Ukraine this year for other reasons than the war. His work has been postponed. He...
Remarks on Color: Raven’s Tail Black April's Hue
As famous architect Mies van der Rohe once said, “God is in the details!” So, when Raven’s Tail Black overheard a conversation between two unassuming strangers, describing her alternately as “Coal Black,” “Carbon Black,” “Midnight Black,” and by far the most...
Letters in Exile, No. 3 By Maria Agureeva
In her third blog, Maria considers the testimony of four artists from Ukraine and Russia. Each speaks powerfully about how the war is impacting them. We like to say artists speak truth to power. Courageous artists do this, yet often with severe consequences. Some of...
Yuja Wang — April 6, 2022, Disney Hall Aerial feats and blues for Ukraine
For those of us who have followed Yuja Wang’s career for the last 15 years or so (at least since her major American orchestral debuts) and especially over the last five, we have more or less come to expect two things: to be dazzled and to be surprised. Los Angeles...
Letters in Exile, No. 2 By Maria Agureeva
The soul of the arts in Russia is withering. In Ukraine it is being obliterated, literally. In this second blog, Maria is speaking to the loss of personal freedoms occurring in Russia that is deeply disturbing, and another fall out of the war. In Ukraine, the loss of...
Letters in Exile By Maria Agureeva
Since her residency at the 18th Street Arts Center four years ago, artist Maria Agureeva has been based in Los Angeles. Born in Ukraine and attending art school in Moscow, she travels periodically to Moscow, where a gallery supports her work and various collaborative...
Let Me Talk Witness Trees, Melting Gates, and Quiet Breathing
Let me talk. How often have I had to say that? Or wanted to say that? Or conversely, put it back to an interlocutor—‘no, go ahead—you talk; I want to hear what you have to say.’ Or in yet another mood or set of conditions, thought to myself, ‘let me hear this...
Julian Stanczak: The Light Inside Other Horizons, Other Lights
I had some idea of what to expect when I walked into the Julian Stanczak show at the Diane Rosenstein Gallery a couple Saturdays ago (this is the artist’s fourth exhibition with the gallery). Almost from the outset of his career, Stanczak was identified with the ‘Op...
Jeff Koons: The Appropriation Artist Art Brief
Superstar artist Jeff Koons has been sued for appropriating the work of others—again. The latest lawsuit, Hayden v. Koons, was filed last December in federal court. It concerns a series of works, “Made in Heaven,” that depict the sexual exploits of Koons and his...
Responsible and Irresponsible Art Decoder
The art-bureaucrat class is currently in a state of great anxiety over the differences between responsible and irresponsible art. The artists aren’t, but these categories aren’t up to them. Whether she wants to be or not, Kara Walker will—for the foreseeable future—be...
The Digital Mob Bunker Vision
It’s a familiar story these days: somebody is killed in broad daylight in front of witnesses. After the lawyers (and judges) perform their machinations, the killer walks. A new round of comments and editorials appear about how there are two justice systems. The...
