This month’s game is an art contest. You must make it. Specifically, you must make a work of art that is perfect for Instagram and made at Instagram scale. Make a rectangular art object that exists in the real world (no digital art), and make that object no larger than 3 inches wide by 4 inches tall. Make the best object you can, scan or photograph it and send the result to:...
The R.M. Schindler House is unexpectedly quiet. Despite being smack-dab in the middle of West Hollywood, there’s a noticeable lack of noise around the house and grounds, as if the air is somehow thick enough to deaden dog barks and car horns. The silence somehow feels borne of the house rather than its surroundings. As one of three Los Angeles headquarters for the MAK Center for Art and...
Thérésa Tallien, the French Revolution’s ‘it’ girl, knew how to manipulate perception. Once an emblem of revolutionary glamour, she played the game until it turned against her. Even in captivity, awaiting execution, she refused to become a simple object of pity. The mirror sent to her cell each day wasn’t punishment; it was a tool. Stripped of adornment, starved, pale, she studied herself—not to...
Sophie Madeline Dess, who has written clever short stories and perceptive pieces on Cormac McCarthy, Eva Hesse, and many other things for many prestigious and worthwhile publications, has produced a novel about Ava and Demetri, a critic and an artist. They are brother and sister, unusually close, with fates entirely entwined. That was a good idea. What remains of our creative class should...
I came to the screening wearing the outfit compulsory for all such events: a faded and frayed sweater in a neutral color, sexless jeans, and a dirtied canvas tote. I had composed this outfit to signal my status as a true believer—my monkish intent to remain forever materially impoverished but spiritually rich. I entered the venue on that rainy winter night as a Jacobin for the cause(s)—which...
There’s something in the Los Angeles air recently that’s been conjuring the ghost of Charles Manson. He has been coming up in conversation frequently (or maybe I am bringing him up). California’s back on the national stage for its hippie-turned-fascist tendencies....
We recognize the legacy Jacqueline Humphries is working from the moment we set foot in Matthew Marks’ two gallery spaces; yet something throws the viewer slightly off. It’s the echt gestural vocabulary of post-World War II art, but as if viewed through a scrim or...
It’s a matter of complete coincidence that Ramsey Alderson’s show “d’Or” at Tiffany’s—an East Hollywood artist-run garage space programmed by Adam Verdugo—coincides with the 17th anniversary of the notorious Emos vs. Punks Fight held in Mexico City’s Glorieta de Los...
I left Gregg Bordowitz’s recently-closed exhibition at The Brick, “This is Not a Love Song,” thinking the same thing as upon leaving The Brutalist: “I didn’t know it was going to be so Jewish.” In both, the artist’s Jewish identity weaves through a deep consideration...
I went in blind to David Hammons’ Concerto in Black and Blue (on view for the first time since its 2002 debut)—both literally and figuratively. When I pushed back the heavy curtain shrouding the gallery, darkness swallowed me. I couldn’t pull out my phone to navigate...