Articles

Suitcase Joe and the State of Homeless Photography
Sidewalk Champions

Sidewalk Champions By Suitcase Joe Burn Barrel Press In the wake of the unprecedented court decree issued in April by a federal judge ordering the city of Los Angeles to provide shelter for the 4,600 souls currently living in downtown skid row by this October, the work of photographer Suitcase Joe could not be more timely. His recently released book, Sidewalk Champions (Burn Barrel Press), will...

In The Spotlight: Paul R. Williams
Two books on the Architect

by Scarlet Cheng

Master Architects of Southern California 1920–1940 by Marc Appleton, Stephen Gee and Bret Parsons 208 pages Angel City Press Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer’s View by Janna Ireland 224 pages Angel City Press When Paul Revere Williams died in 1980 at the age of 85, he left behind one of the most remarkable legacies in Los Angeles architecture. He not only designed...

POST YORK
Story and Art by James Romberger

by Glenn Harcourt

Post York Story and Art by James Romberger with additional material by Crosby Romberger 112 pages Dark Horse Comics/Berger Books “They somehow set fire to what was left of the East Side.” —POST YORK, p.86. The city had been ceded to climate change. It was drowned, abandoned, gone wild, given over to the feral young: a hostile, black-and-white environment, prone to violence but still...

Provenance: ASCO’s Public Interventions in 1970s Los Angeles
Writing on the Walls

by Kelly Rappleye

The artistic legacies of Mexican Muralism remain imprinted on LA’s urban landscape, in faded residues on cracked concrete structures and sometimes peeking out from peeling layers of whitewash anti-graffiti paint. Throughout the 1970s, many artists in Southern California’s Chicano Art Movement claimed the medium of the wall as public pulpit. These murals took up the pedagogical aims of Mexican...

The NFT Craze
Art Brief

by Stephen J. Goldberg Esq.

The digital artist known as Beeple sold an NFT for $69 million in cyptocurrency at Christie’s auction in March, 2021. The media treated this grotesque sale as if it revolutionized the art world, but if we separate reality from the hysterical hype, it clearly has not. An NFT stands for a “non-fungible token”—probably the most ridiculous acronym ever invented by digital geeks. An NFT is nothing...

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Reviews

Richard Mensah
Band of Vices

When writer and poet Peter J. Harris wrote in his poem Only Wine (2004): Blessed be the laughter of lovers for it separates the edges of the future / bless me with your laughter, Blessed be the music of lovers for it spices the taste of all creation / bless me with...

Keith Sonnier
parrasch heijnen

Post-minimalist Keith Sonnier, who passed in 2020, was too prominent a figure to fall into the shadows, as have so many of his contemporaries. But given his striking originality, restless inventiveness and impact upon a broad range of peers and younger artists,...

Vishal Jugdeo
Commonwealth and Council

Two men are talking in a car, as low green fields stream past the windows. “This used to all be fruit trees but the new owner tore them up,” says the driver. “And he planted rice?” the other man incredulously asks. The first man doesn’t answer but shakes his head in...

PICK OF THE WEEK: Fin Simonetti
Matthew Brown

Suspending the administrative and bodily powers of fences and safety cones, Fin Simonetti's sculpture exhibition, "Hardening," at Matthew Brown quizzes viewers to ponder, "Am I safe, am I scared, or am I in love?" Perhaps it's a bit of all three. The gallery features...

GALLERY ROUNDS: Claudia Keep
Parker Gallery

As with many works of contemporary art, Claudia Keep’s compact paintings first entered my field of vision on social media, where her imagery retains its appeal, even as her textured, varicolored and economical brushstrokes are flattened out. Keep often makes blunt...

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