Banksy

Mr. Brainwash Goes to Beverly Hills And the Richest Man in the World has plans for a Luxury Hotel in Beverly Hills

Mr. Brainwash Goes to Beverly Hills
And the Richest Man in the World has plans for a Luxury Hotel in Beverly Hills

The late-morning crowd lining up under the sports-car replicas on the wall of the old Paley Center was in a buzzy mood. Patiently waiting to gain access to the “Mr. Brainwash Museum” were an assortment of retirees, matrons and members of the spray-tanned classes—a...

SHOPTALK: LA Art News Aspen Art Week, Tom of Finland Fest, and more

SHOPTALK: LA Art News
Aspen Art Week, Tom of Finland Fest, and more

Lonnie Holley Visits LA One of the best gallery shows this year was the self-taught artist Lonnie Holley’s solo show at Blum & Poe, and one of the hottest tickets was a recent Saturday afternoon talk between Holley and Jane Fonda. That may seem an odd pairing, but...

Bring the Pain Gary Simmons at Hauser & Wirth

Bring the Pain
Gary Simmons at Hauser & Wirth

The progress of his career has been a methodical march; carefully scripted, stubbornly stage-managed, and precisely choreographed—each subsequent exhibition enhancing the shudder of an already disconcerting thrum. The result of such a steady and painstaking pace has...

LA Art Show is Back Highlights, Fair ends this weekend.

LA Art Show is Back
Highlights, Fair ends this weekend.

Commandeering a mere 180,000 square feet the of the Los Angeles Convention Center’s 760,000, the LA Art Show Modern + Contemporary, resurrected after last year’s COVID cancellation, offers a brief glimpse of the offerings of more than 80 galleries—foreign, domestic,...

The City as Canvas Democracy in the Art World Means Inclusion of Graffiti

The City as Canvas
Democracy in the Art World Means Inclusion of Graffiti

For this democratized issue of Artillery, I’ve decided to focus on the most democratic medium of art: graffiti. Graffiti is as diverse as any medium but, generally, it is the painting of text or images onto surfaces in public spaces. The operative word in that...

HOPPING ONLINE Virtual Viewing has its Virtues

HOPPING ONLINE
Virtual Viewing has its Virtues

During these last three months art galleries have been tripping over themselves to create virtual viewing rooms and walkthroughs, and to join collective ventures in online selling such as GALLERYPLATFORM.LA and FAIR (from New Art Dealers Alliance or NADA). Meanwhile,...

WAYS OF NOT SEEING

WAYS OF NOT SEEING

If, as John Berger writes, “Oil painting… is a celebration of private property”, then Street Art is the equally joyous appreciation of public property. This difference is due to the nature of the work and their contrasting environments: Graffiti beats the streets...

HEY MISTER, WANNA BUY A BANKSY?

HEY MISTER, WANNA BUY A BANKSY?

In May this year, a Millennial identifying himself as the You Tuber Reckless Ben Schneider entered a Los Angeles gallery and told the art dealer there that he had a Banksy painting with him. The LA Art Dealer said he’d like to check it out, so Schneider pulled a...

SHOPTALK

SHOPTALK

LA ARTS DISTRICT SANS ARTISTS LA, LA, our art scene is changing so rapidly. On a recent visit to the Arts District for a preview at Hauser & Wirth, I was struck by how tidy the neighborhood is looking these days. When that gallery opened two-and-a-half years ago,...

Shot By Both Sides

Shot By Both Sides

The primary icon of Low Brow Art is also unfortunately one of the most corrupting and dangerous icons of mainstream culture. It should by all rights and agreement be stuck on the business end of a spear and left out to rot in the streets for the amusement of the...

BUNKER VISION

BUNKER VISION

Trying to actually define The Situationists is a slippery business. The more people who weigh in on what they were about, the more confusing it becomes. As an official art movement, Situationism existed from 1957 to 1972. They are considered a missing link between...

LA (Selfie) Show 2017

LA (Selfie) Show 2017

Los Angeles was just starting to glow with the encroaching night life as we rushed through the Convention Center, blindly searching for the LA Art Show (more directions please, we are simple beings). Racing against the clock, we chose to begin feasting (or violating,...

LA Street Artists

LA Street Artists

1. BeccaBecca Midwood embraces the sometimes lost connection between children drawing on walls and urban artists doing the same. Signed in lower case—becca—her wheat-poster/chalk creations seem the work of a street-art child prodigy.2. NeverResponsible for the Venice...

Worst Shows of the Last 10 Years

Worst Shows of the Last 10 Years

1. Diane von Furstenberg: Journey of a Dress LACMA (Winter 2014)The exhibition version of the “promoted article”—adjacent to LACMA, advertised on the museum’s site, but conceived of, and paid for privately, by the fashion designer herself. 2. Gagosian’s Winter...

CURFEW

CURFEW

Urban art is the great equalizer. With the rise of spray-painting and wheatpostering, the public is no longer forced to visit museums and see what rich white males call art. But one of the few mediums urban art cannot annex is sculpture; like museums, the field is...

“Let them eat cake and charge it please and thank you very much.” – Break Bread at Think Tank Gallery

“Let them eat cake and charge it please and thank you very much.” – Break Bread at Think Tank Gallery

We don’t ordinarily think of pastel colors as carrying the power or intensity of the deepest, most vibrant primaries, especially red; or for that matter a dense black or sharp black-and-white contrast. But pastels can have great associative and mnemonic power, in many...

Mélancolie to Exhilaration from Studio to Street

Mélancolie to Exhilaration from Studio to Street

There was astonishing buzz around Philippe Quesne’s La Mélancolie des Dragons at REDCAT last Wednesday night; and as a sucker for avant-garde theatre, I simply had to be there, heat or no heat. I felt cooler just looking at the stage set, which resembled a forest...

Fast Food Art

Fast Food Art

How often have you found yourself saying, “I would bring my business here, if only they had more generic, mall-safe, focus-group chosen art on the walls?” Surrounded by more museums, galleries, and out-of-work MFAs than in any other city, these SoCal establishments...

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