On a Dark Desert Highway: The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project
Driving on the freeway, usually wanting to be someplace far from wherever we are at any given moment, we fixate on the speedometer, the exit signs, the lines in the road: proof that we are moving. In this liminal state, billboards become a sort of visual white noise or worse, a perceived assault that we... More
The Distinct Californication of Paris Photo Los Angeles
With nearly 200 art fairs on the international cultural calendar, it’s no surprise that art-world denizens have a case of fair fatigue. Paris Photo L.A., however, seems to have the cure for what ails them. Expecting 20,000 people for its third year at Paramount Pictures Studios in Hollywood this weekend, it is an art fair... More
Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of ‘Howl’ in Los Angeles
As the man who produced one of Allen Ginsberg’s last recorded works — and who virtually invented the tribute album as standalone art form — the record producer (and current music producer of “Saturday Night Live”) Hal Willner was truly the only person who could have put together last night’s celebration of the Beat poet’s... More
Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie” Screens at Paris Photo
Three of Dennis Hopper’s four children — Marin, Ruthanna and Henry — gathered at Paramount Studios with Hollywood friends like Andrew and Luke Wilson and Todd Phillips (director of the “Hangover” franchise and friend of Ruthanna, Hopper’s daughter with the “Zabriskie Point” star Daria Halprin) and art-world luminaries including Bill Viola and Sophie Calle for... More
“Veils” Celebrates the Art of the Obscured
As its name suggests, “Veils” — a 40-artist group exhibition opening Saturday in the West Adams neighborhood of L.A. — offers interpretations of the physical act of concealment. But the show’s curators, Jhordan Dahl and Ariana Papademetropoulos, also made a point to stretch the concept, exploring ideas about public personas and the occult. The works... More
“The Mothership” Lands in Downtown Los Angeles
Currently eight and a half months pregnant with her first child, the artist and curator Carly Jo Morgan has been exploring themes of motherhood since long before her own was imminent. Years ago, she designed a tribal-futurist “Mothership” collection for her jewelry line, All for the Mountain, that led to a commission from Sonia Rykiel.... More
Game On!
Who An eclectic array of guest came out for the inaugural MAK Games, a “tennis invitational” to benefit the art-and-architecture think tank the MAK Center at the Sheats Goldstein Residence, the architect John Lautner’s Modernist masterpiece in Beverly Hills. The event, chaired by Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s in-house architect Priscilla Fraser and the... More
Seeing the Light at Kayne Griffin Corcoran
As a full moon rose over the courtyard at Kayne Griffin Corcoran’s new home on La Brea Avenue last Thursday, guests joked that James Turrell must have ordered it for the occasion. They weren’t that far off: The L.A.-born Light and Space pioneer, who is the subject of the inaugural exhibition, did design the green... More
The Source Family Comes Home — On Their Own Terms
It was not your typical Happy Hour on the Sunset Strip. Last Thursday, the Standard Hotel hosted the L.A. premiere of “The Source Family,” a documentary by Jodi Wille and Maria Demopoulos. In honor of the 1970s Hollywood commune portrayed in the film, which is the first feature for both directors, the lobby was swathed... More
Wonder Wall
Morning, noon and night, the halls of the Armory are abuzz with creativity as locals of all ages take advantage of the Center’s extraordinary art class offerings – from studio photography to Photoshop, collage making to animation, letterpress printing to drawing, painting and ceramics. These classes are in fact so synonymous with the institution that... More
Seeing Stars
Since it was built in 1904, astronomers and scientists have been documenting the mysteries of the cosmos at Mount Wilson Observatory. It was here, in the Angeles National Forest at an elevation of 5,700 feet, that famed astronomer Edmund Hubble first observed that the universe was expanding and that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is... More
L.A.’s Art Scene Goes Hollywood
In the week leading up to the Oscars, when lavish parties are as common as movie pitches, some of this year’s most coveted invitations are being extended not by film studios but L.A.’s museums and galleries. In fact, one could skip the industry shindigs altogether and still hang with some of Hollywood’s biggest power players.... More