Departments
2017 Third Broad Happening
Artists and curators Ron Athey and James Spooner know that Los Angeles has become the art world omphalos and so decided to convert last Saturday’s Broad Happening into a 21st century Oracle of Delphi. Hosted in alignment with the Broad’s current multimedia show...
Frantic Melancholy: Second Summer Broad Happening
Have you ever been at a party, laughing convulsively while draining your second glass of prosecco, and then suddenly, with a cold, horrified shiver, thought—wait, oh no, someday I’m going to be dead? That’s what the work of Takashi Murakami is like. Murakami, the...
Past and Present: LA Art in the ’90s
The recognized History of Art is marked by a movement, our blue-chip Art Stars and our institutions. Often more interesting and dynamic, the smaller histories of a regional art community are established by the galleries, art spaces and the people who support them. The...
CURRENT EVENTS: documenta 14
Every five years the sedate city of Kassel, Germany, launches an art expo that attempts to capture the zeitgeist of our times, documenta. This 14th edition was an ambitious one, costing over $36 million, with one part opening in Athens, Greece, in April (ending July...
EDITOR’S LETTER
Dear Reader, “Write what you know”: this famous advice from fellow Missourian Mark Twain has always resonated with me. I apply it to my writing and I relied on it when I used to make art. The quote was delivered by many a professor and mentor in my past. It made...
FILM: Manifesto
The film Manifesto speaks in the voice of the 20th century, when manifestos meant something—a time when the latest artist or art movement stormed the Bastille of conformity, declaring the one true doctrine—theirs, naturally—and the rest of us sat up and paid...
SHOPTALK
NEW MUSEUM IN TOWN Welcome Marciano Art Foundation on Wilshire Boulevard! It’s the new museum that features the contemporary art collection of Paul and Maurice Marciano, two of the brothers who founded the hip jeans company Guess and became zillionaires. The museum...
DEAD OR ALIVE: Romare Bearden
Mar’s Warped Drives
Mar is sitting in his Marina Del Rey studio, wearing a pair of ripped, paint-splattered jeans. Behind him is the largest piece featured in his upcoming solo exhibition at Art Angels: a 6x6-foot color-wheel whirlpool. Mar points directly across from him to a painting...
The Monster Builder
From the moment the stage lights go up for The Monster Builder, the audience is caught in a whirlwind of over-the-top sophisticated banter, much of it addressing architecture. The first scene reveals an ultra modern glass house with inhabitants, Gregor, the...
Honolulu Biennial
The art world as we know it is in a constant state of reinvention and definition, continually seeking relevance. In this quarter of the great game, the self-intentioned academics are running with the ball. Global societal, biological and environmental issues are king...
Turner Prize 2017 shortlist announced
Tate Britain today announced the four artists who have been shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2017. The artists are (in alphabetical order): Hurvin Anderson, Andrea Büttner, Lubaina Himid and Rosalind Nashashibi. This year an exhibition of work by the four shortlisted...
EDITOR’S LETTER
Dear Readers, When I heard that Chris Kraus’ feminist cult book, I Love Dick, was being made into a TV series, I couldn’t actually believe it. My first reaction was: How? How could someone come up with a television script of that book? The main “action” in the book is...
Fabulous Tales
Injecting one or more inane Star Wars puns into a discussion of George Lucas’ proposed museum would be de rigueur; but I’ll abstain. It is time to take Lucas’ idea seriously. Suspend the adulation. Cut the skepticism of commercial pictures’ merit. A 275,000...
SHOPTALK
Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts Eight recipients have just been named by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts to receive their Artist Project Grants, totaling a hefty $319,000. The fortunate ones—Human Resources/356 S. Mission Rd.; The Industry; La Plaza de...
DEAD OR ALIVE: William Hogarth
EDITOR’S LETTER
Dear Readers In our last issue, which came out in January, I wrote about Trump becoming our president and the effect this potentially disastrous turn of events might have upon the art world... or not. In any case, in my last sentence I said that we would not be...
