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...
Exiting Electric Earth, Doug Aitken’s immersive, multichannel narrative installation first presented in 1999 and immediately confronting Twilight (2016), an eerie, translucent ghost-like freestanding replica of a now obsolete pay phone that pulsates from light to dark...
Fifty years ago—in May 1966—the Velvet Underground played their legendary West Coast debut at Hollywood nightclub The Trip as part of Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. On the first night, the joint was packed with curiosity-seeking hipster celebrities; Cher...
The perfect day had been planned: visit the Getty Center in the afternoon to catch the Mapplethorpe show, then stay for the Chris Burden documentary, Burden, with a picnic sandwiched in between.Viewing the velvety Mapplethorpes became this rich and poignant...
“Ditch the jacket. It’s always hot in there.”I disregard the warning. Hollywood is hushed, cool, with the usual spattering of sleaze and stale piss.A doorman swings open the glass doors to the baking hot Benefit Art Auction at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions....
As a student, seeking respite from the relatively hidebound painting department, I often retreated to the sculpture studios. There, the critical gaze of teachers seemed less intense; sculpture students did as they pleased. Around that time about a decade ago, I took...
Where cities are being built up and money spent, local legislation has often passed a percent-for-art program; alternately, cities look to create stable partnerships between the public and private sectors, so some of that money is made available for public art, too....
In the late ‘70s, I would carry the Sony Portapak for my artist stepmother, Rabyn Blake, across muddy fields in Southern France as she filmed a shepherdess whose name sounded like “leg of lamb” in French, or shot shimmering vistas of Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire....
Nearly all of Chris Burden’s numerous and generally laudatory obituaries include in the title or first line, “...the artist who had himself shot.” Beyond the immediate and not so subtle insinuation of craziness—“People thought he was nuts,” an admiring Ed Moses told...
Washington Post In the rarefied world inhabited by performance artists, gallery owners and MFA candidates, there is something called “non-collectible art.” Making this art doesn’t produce something that someone can buy and take home, like Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona...
Michael Govan has given a lot of thought to Los Angeles’ identity as a center for culture. While it may go without saying the opportunity to reshape an institution brought him to LA in 2006, if he is successful in revitalizing the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he...
Ry Rocklen saved oyster shells, along with some rocks, then tried to unload them one day at a garage sale. “I didn’t sell a thing,“ he told me in an interview, about his boyhood collecting obsession. Decades later, he is still drawn to treasuring odd stuff: discarded...
The residential valley neighborhood wasn’t what I was expecting when I went to Chas Smith’s studio for our interview. Big shade trees lined the wide boulevards of modest houses and neat lawns. Smith has been Paul McCarthy’s main art assistant for over a decade, and...
Up-and-coming Los Angeles-based artist Christian Tedeschi describes his former boss, Nancy Rubins as “a tornado—so much energy.” The 40-year-old assistant professor and head of sculpture at Cal State Northridge recalls his experience as a studio assistant with a...
In much the same way Chris Burden imbues his visual vernacular with his own brand of personal/social provocation, Sean Duffy, in his newest exhibition, aptly titled “Paintings,” at Susanne Vielmetter, shatters the expectation of the pristine sacred surface, electing...
Mike Kelley said for years that he would agree to be profiled in Artillery. That was practically a running joke when we would see each other at art events. Finally, in early November 2011, I contacted him to make it happen. He emailed to say he was very busy but he...
“Chris Burden: Extreme Measures,” at New York’s New Museum is the artist’s first major exhibition in the U.S. in over 25 years. A legendary provocateur, Burden has challenged traditional concepts of art through his galvanizing performance pieces and later...
THERE IS SOMETHING VERY REASSURING—;for someone whose attention, unless riveted by something truly compelling, tends to wander—about being told by her interviewee, "I pride myself on my short attention span." Chances are, though, Dawn Kasper's span of attention,...
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