Carl Andre’s star is ascendant. Again. This is ironic because the artist has long ago earned his place in the canon of art history. But he hasn’t been much of a presence on the gallery scene. Slowly but surely we are seeing Andre pieces reemerge in the exhibition landscape, no doubt catalyzed by the fact [...]
Pick of the week for June 25th, 2012 Frank Stella has created distinct bodies of work every decade for the past 50 years. His working methodology has defined the template of the contemporary artist-variations on a theme. Whether by his artistic nature or by design, this approach has all but become de rigueur in MFA [...]
For decades now, a sure way for an artist to be irrelevant would be to become an abstract painter, the form having long gone the way of Existentialism, black turtlenecks and angst. At its height in the 1950s and early ‘60s, avant-gardism and abstraction were practically synonymous, but since then very few artists have attempted [...]
Dialogues between Fine Art and Architecture abound this month in Culver City. No less than three galleries opened June 2nd featuring Architecture driven work. The media harnessed are diverse, and the results are equally varied. Amy Park At Paul Kopeiken Gallery Amy Park’s Watercolor renditions/homages to the late great Julius Schulman are intoxicating. Anyone familiar [...]
Pick of the Week for May 29th, 2012 Good things come in small packages. The best example of this bon mot is an intimate exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum titled Lessons of the Cherry Blossom. A scant 16 color woodblock prints are on the display in a room commensurately intimate. But no more space [...]
Los Angeles is the most misunderstood city in the United States. LA stereotypes abound, most of them quite negative, and everyone somehow thinks they know all about this place—even the ones who have never visited. This can be blamed at least in part on the Hollywood phenomenon—images of LA get beamed into theaters and living [...]
Pick of the Week for May 21st, 2012 Alexander Calder is essential. A wonderful exhibition at L & M Arts in Venice handsomely makes the case for Calder’s continuing relevance, both historically and contemporaneously. Here then, a couple of reasons for Calder’s imminence and the urgency to witness, first hand at L & M, the [...]
Pick of the week for May 14th, 2012 Every so often you stumble upon something fresh which blows the cobwebs of pretension off your eyelids. Such was the effect seeing the colored pencil drawings of Kirk Demarais at Gallery 1988 in Venice. The artist has carved an amusing little paradigm for himself. From the treasure [...]
Pick of the Week for May 7th, 2012–Penises and Pussies, OH MY! The Carroll Dunham Drawing retrospective currently on exhibit at Blum and Poe is an uncommon pleasure. Just under 400 drawings, ranging in size from 3 x 4 inches to 16 x 20 inches, fill the second floor galleries with bravado, perspicacity and balls. To [...]
Pick of the Week for May 3rd, 2012 There are three weeks left to visit Newport Beach and bask in the multifarious light of Richard Diebenkorn. The Venue is the Orange County Museum of Art. The exhibition is a remarkable concentration of the artist’s Ocean Park series. The opportunity is not to be missed. There [...]
