Art Talk

What a difference a week makes... seven times 24 little hours... Santa Ana winds and firestorms once more wrestled to the ground our cherished illusions of our idyllic life in Southern California. No doubt, some day, this recurring calamity will become the subject for a great work of art. To my knowledge, it hasn't happened yet...

Keeping up with what's happening on the Southern California art scene is not as easy as it used to be. In the last 25 years, existing museums have greatly expanded and new museums have opened, while the number of commercial art galleries has jumped from a few dozen to a few hundred. A few weeks ago, I reported on the small, new, fascinating Wende Museum in Culver City, devoted to the history and culture of the Cold War era in Eastern Europe...

When last year the Pompidou Centre in Paris organized the exhibition celebrating LA art, it was monumental, overwhelming, and slightly tedious in its academic intention to miss nothing, no matter how minor. When last week the Orange County Museum of Art opened its exhibition celebrating California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, it turned out to be not too big, not too small – just right in size. With about 150 objects, including paintings, photographs, TV footage, furniture, and architectural pottery, this exhibition tells the captivating story of how California -– thousands of miles from New York and light-years from Europe –- came, artistically speaking, into its own...

With rare exception, movies about famous painters prove to be a disappointment. The recent film about Gustav Klimt, with the formidable John Malkovich in the title role, was a futile attempt to capture the essence of this artist's life in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. Though the beautiful costumes and authentic interiors provided a certain pleasure, it was not enough. The film disappeared without a trace. A few years earlier, the abysmal movie about Modigliani starring Andy Garcia was kindly laid to rest soon after its release...

September is the month when, after a summer lull, the art world kicks into high gear. And for me, last week turned out to be all art, all the time, virtually a 24/7 art explosion...

My dear listeners, I have no doubt that most of you are upstanding citizens with unimpeachable moral standards.  Therefore, it's with significant trepidation that I must confess to being tempted, and ultimately seduced by, a big bundle of dirty money.  And if you think that you would be strong enough to resist the temptation, go ahead and try it for yourself.  There is a place in town where a huge mound of silver coins is waiting for you.  First you will stare at it in disbelief, then you will want to touch, to fondle, these coins, and then, inevitably, you will find yourself sitting on a pile of this money the way I did...

Three months have passed since my trip to Holland, but I'm still slightly foggy from – let's be honest – being overdosed. When I tell people that I stayed in Amsterdam, they knowingly smile and then, with a wink ask, "Did you try the stuff?" You bet I did. That's what I went to Holland for...and there was plenty of it. Rembrandt! Frans Hals!! Vermeer!!! And not only in Amsterdam, in the stately Rijksmuseum, but in the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague and the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem as well...

When I met Michael and Gabrielle Boyd for the first time at a museum function a few months ago, I knew immediately who they were, thanks to a recently published article about their collection in the LA Times magazine and a profile on them in Vanity Fair. They live in Santa Monica Canyon, in a house built by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer -- the only structure he has ever built in the United States...

Now that the Getty Museum has wisely chosen to undertake the painful but inevitable step of placating the Italian authorities by sending back to Italy forty antiquities from the museum's collection, it's a good time to reflect on this controversy and try to make sense of it all.  I couldn't agree more with the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times (August 6, 2007) stating that "Legally, the return of the artworks is the right thing to do...International treaties left Getty executives with little choice.  Whether it's fair is another matter." 

One of the best kept secrets of LA's downtown art scene is REDCAT, a cutting-edge performance and exhibition space run by CalArts. Don't feel guilty if you haven't been there yet; it's not easy to find, as it's tucked away on the ground floor of Disney Hall, far from the main entrance of this famous building. Since its opening a few years ago, REDCAT has hosted a number of ambitious exhibitions, often presenting challenging conceptual and performance art not necessarily intended for a general audience...

When it comes to the official monuments decorating city squares in China, Libya, Iraq, and the former Soviet Union, one thing that all these oversized statues of local dictators have in common is the laughably low quality of the art. The infamous bronze statue of Saddam Hussein, toppled in Baghdad after US troops seized the Iraqi capital, is a perfect example of this brand of official art: the inevitable stiffness of pose, obligatory right arm thrust upward toward a bright future, and total disregard for or lack of awareness of modern and contemporary art. Needless to say, all these monuments were produced by local artisans loyal to the political regime of the country...

On any given day, Los Angeles teems with well-toned, fresh-faced hopefuls waiting for their big break. You can find them on the beach or if you get lucky, bump into one of them at Schwab's Drugstore on Sunset Blvd. At least that's where, according to legend, a Hollywood agent discovered the divine Lana Turner in the 1930's. If that same agent lived in Paris in the 1880s, I wonder what he would think about the beautiful barmaid at the Folies-Bergère, the one that Édouard Manet immortalized in his famous painting. Though the girls there were known for their easy virtues, this melancholic beauty seems lost in her own thoughts and not the least bit interested in responding to us viewers or the customer standing in front of her...

Until I found in my mailbox the eye-catching catalog of Mary Heilmann's exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art, I had never heard of her. The handsomely printed hardcover book, with its elegant layout and numerous color reproductions, is clearly a labor of love. For this California born and raised artist, who now resides in New York, this is the first retrospective covering four decades of her career...

Last month, I traveled through about a dozen European cities in just three weeks; it was all art, all the time, but don't feel sorry for me, it was not exactly heavy lifting. The invitation to visit Holland came from two Dutch organizations: the Mondriaan Foundation and the Service Centre for International Cultural Activities (SICA).  My hosts gave me carte blanche: staying in Amsterdam I could travel to other cities and see as many museums and meet as many curators and directors as my heart desired...

Intrigued by an artwork that is new to me, I like to get very close and examine its texture.  It's not unlike having a handshake with a new acquaintance that hopefully confirms a first, favorable impression. A couple of months ago, at the Seattle Art Museum, when I saw for the first time a large, colorful wall hanging by Nigerian artist El Anatsui, I mistook it for a traditional African textile...

It's midnight, and I just said goodbye to the newlyweds with whom I shared a water taxi from the airport to the Piazza San Marco.  The square is still crowded with hundreds of people sitting in outdoor cafés, enjoying a balmy night, listening to live bands playing hilariously sugary renditions of the most sentimental tunes from the 50's and 60's.  The apartment I'm renting is only two blocks away, which is great, but it sits above a noisy trattoria that keeps the neighborhood awake well past 1am.  Well, I didn't come to Venice to sleep, did I?  It's Biennale time...

Right now, there are two exhibitions in Los Angeles which have at first glance very little in common: one of the celebrated American sculptor Dan Flavin at LACMA and the other of the much lesser-known artist Richard Tuttle at MOCA.

Let's be honest; we all like to check ourselves out in the mirror.  Whether or not we are pleased with what we see there is another matter.  In the last ten years, we Angelinos have had several chances to look in the mirror that friendly outsiders propped up in front of us to generate debate. ..

She is, to put it mildly, quite obese.  Actually, she is so huge that it's nearly impossible not to stare at her.  She has been a celebrity for so long that at this point, she doesn't mind the gawking crowds.  As befitting a superstar, she is known by her first name only.  Everyone calls her Clara.  Paris Hilton would kill for the secret to the unprecedented longevity of Clara's fame -- two hundred fifty years and counting, to be precise...