Our city’s beauty is often overlooked. This is a subject I’ve touched on in the past, and it’s an unfair generalization that Los Angeles is an “ugly” city. Maybe it’s because our city is difficult to walk through, and so you don’t notice the beauty. Maybe it’s only...
The Impressionists, at the end of the 19th century, turned away from traditional muses and academies and became chroniclers of their contemporary era. They were described as flaneurs, self-styled spectators of modern life and people in leisure. But throughout their...
There’s no such thing as an alright abstract painting. They fall, without exception, into two categories: great and garbage. And for whoever’s looked at an abstract artwork, smugly harrumphed and muttered, “I could do that,” I’d...
Everyone has a fascination with the more macabre parts of life. Not that everyone is John Waters, but there’s a reason we all slow down to look when we pass an accident. It’s just human nature to be transfixed by the dark and the deadly, to find it not only shocking...
With spring just ahead, we are on the precipice of a momentous transition. Rays of hope are beginning to warm the cold landscape of our world, as they have again and again throughout humanity's existence. Caitlin Keogh explores this cyclical nature of history (and our...
Sprüth Magers is currently exhibiting two shows by two of the most notable creatives of the last forty years: Cindy Sherman’s "Tapestries" and John Waters' "Hollywood’s Greatest Hits." Though, if you’re anything like myself, one will leave you elated, and the other,...
A painting requires nothing more than a painter. Everything else is malleable. Once a painter has been established, that which they create are paintings no matter the form. Michael Henry Hayden is – as he has been throughout his long career – a painter. But in the...
In the 1950s-60s, Jasper Johns created two works – Flag (1954-55) and Target (1961) – which both carved his place in the art historical canon and established a new conceptual framework for art. These encaustic versions of instantly recognizable icons (an American Flag...
The artistic process is often private. Artists seldom actively show the steps taken to craft an end product, but to some, like Ludovica Gioscia, revealing all is vital to their work. In a large, multi-faceted installation at Baert Gallery entitled Arturo and The...
I am certainly not alone in feeling that their idea of the American identity has changed drastically in recent years. The “American Dream” has proved itself to be as fanciful as the name suggests. It simply never existed for the majority of Americans. Even the...
It is no stretch to say that the COVID-19 pandemic – principal among several other tragedies, injustices, and horrors over the past year – has fundamentally altered the way we see our world. It has revealed inequities more sharply than any other time in recent memory,...
Nature has been the font from which many artists have taken their inspirational sacrament. And it is a pleasure to see an artist who takes that inspiration and so masterfully manifests the power and majesty of our natural world into something entirely new, which is...
There is a natural tension drawn between old and new, conservative and progressive. Often times, it can feel that between those two positions there can be no resolution. Even in art, it can be difficult to fit the opposing ideals together; though when it happens, the...
Beauty is all around us. This thought feels simplistic, and given the past year, even wrong. Stuck in our homes, away from family and friends, a city as large and vibrant as Los Angeles becomes terribly claustrophobic. And even for those fortunate enough not to be...
Art, at its most essential level, attempts to fix in space the experiences that pass like sand in an hourglass. On the whole, reality is almost always more complex than can be accurately represented, and meaning is missed in the variety of expression. But Shiyuan Liu...
Nothing is just one thing. This is a sentiment that many of us here in the United States, particularly those of us with privilege, are coming to terms with in an entirely new way. From recognizing that many workers who previously went unseen are in fact essential, to...
In 1839, the very first portrait photograph was captured of (and by) Robert Cornelius. It must have been a difficult – albeit likely humorous – process, as Cornelius set up his camera before hurriedly running to sit motionless in front of it, arms crossed and hair...
Sculpture is a medium of art with infinite possibilities. Unbounded by canvas or wall, a sculpture is only defined by the space itself. Yet despite the limitless potential definitions, there is only ever one realized in the moment that the iron is cast, the glass...
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