Art Talk

Have you ever traveled to Seattle in the month of April, when all the trees sport the freshest shades of green and each blade of grass salutes the spring?  I went there twice, and -- as luck would have it -- both times in April.  It's easy to fall for this city given the picturesque quality of its waterfront and unhurried pace of its sophisticated urban center.  What I find especially attractive about the city is its deep commitment to the visual arts, fully evident last week during the gala opening of the dramatically expanded Seattle Art Museum...

In a very peculiar coincidence, for two days in a row I found, on the front page of American papers, articles dealing with Russian history and culture.  It is no surprise that today's newspapers paid tribute to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who died yesterday in Moscow at the age of 76.  A larger-than-life colorful personality, he broke with the Communist Party when it was still in power and a move like that had a heavy price attached.  Later, he became the first freely elected president of Russia and subsequently, the first leader in Russian history who relinquished his power at the end of his term.  Yeltsin presided over an extremely volatile moment in Russian history during the disintegration of the Soviet empire, with its subsequent rampant corruption...

Following closely the developments of the Los Angeles cultural scene for a almost twenty years, I'm glad to report that artwise, favorable weather conditions prevail in the City of Angels.  The Mayor's office announced yesterday the appointment of a new cultural affairs chief, Olga Garay, whose rather impressive resume bodes well for her new job here in LA...

Have you ever tried to imagine the persona of the artist behind the work?  Their look, their age.  What kind of personality do they have: outgoing or shy, maybe?  I have to admit that most of the time when I tried to do that, I failed.  For example, LA sculptor extraordinaire Tim Hawkinson, whose current exhibition at the Getty Museum is getting rave reviews, almost shocked me when I met him for the first time.  He was so quiet and unassuming, almost ordinary.  With his amazingly inventive sculptures and collages defying traditional logic, I expected a mad scientist type with bulging eyes...

Going to a museum to see a permanent collection or temporary exhibition I expect to see good as well as great artworks inevitably mixed with decidedly lesser ones which are needed to complete the story and illustrate a point of view.  After all, great and good artworks are by definition in limited supply, while mediocre and merely competent works are always plentiful...

It took me no time at all to fall in love with Los Angeles -- just a few intakes of the balmy air upon emerging from the plane shortly after midnight.  Until then, I didn't believe in love at first sight.  Now, almost thirty years later, I know better.  Never mind the wonderful climate and suspiciously gorgeous Hollywood wannabes.  This huge and sprawling metropolis stubbornly refuses to follow the rules of success established by its older rivals, and instead of the storied beauty of Paris or Rome, it offers an exotic and unsettling, but ultimately intoxicating mixture of good, strange, and ugly...

The enthusiastic response to last week's program about the daring art installation "Stations of the Cross" at San Gabriel's Church of Our Saviour made me think about how much of contemporary art is experienced by us outside of museum and gallery walls.  The problem is that most of the art we may encounter in restaurants, in hotels, in theatre lobbies or in doctors' offices is rather mediocre, to put it mildly.  I wonder how all these places would be perceived if the quality of art there was improved.  Everyone knows what happens to your body when you eat nothing but junk food.  Now think about all the bad art that is ingested through our eyes while we're in these public places.  Imagine the damage it does to our collective psyche...

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine called to let me know about a rather unusual exhibition I shouldn't miss.  It is a little bit off the beaten path, she warned, but you're an adventurous man, aren't you Edward?  It was a challenge I simply had to take.  Driving to the San Gabriel Valley turned out to be not such a big deal -– actually it's not far from Pasadena and San Marino.  The unusual thing about this conceptual art exhibition was that it was mounted neither in a museum nor a commercial gallery, but in an Episcopal church, of all places...

Like a monster out of a low-budget Japanese horror movie, it's huge and more than a bit scary.  Its translucent tentacles are a hundred feet long, and it feels as if they're still growing, ready to ensnare anyone within reach.  The creature doesn't even have an easily identifiable main body.  Instead, there are a few gigantic kidney-shaped blobs: translucent, flimsy, icky - like the tentacles that grow out of them.  I saw it last night with my very own eyes, and I swear I was stone cold sober...

It takes chutzpah to roll into LA just a few days before the Oscars and still hope to get some attention for a project not connected to Hollywood -- at least not directly.  To win this game, ambition is not enough; one needs to be a superstar, propelled by a superagent.  Damien Hirst, the most famous of the so-called Young British Artists, and Robert Wilson, the much celebrated American avant-garde theater director, stage designer and sculptor, flew in last week to supervise the final preparations for the openings of their high-profile exhibitions at the two most glamorous galleries in town...

If you've ever been invited to an elegant dinner where every bite is a delight and each new course makes you hungry all over again, then you want to treat yourself to what amounts to a sumptuous feast for your eyes -- an exhibition of Chuck Close prints at the Orange County Museum of Art...

One cannot blame British artists for their cutthroat politics in fighting for a place in the sun.  To be noticed by the public and written about by art critics, these chaps would go to remarkable lengths.  At the end of the day, the Royal Academy and admission into its famous annual Salon was all they dreamed about.  Even the lucky ones, whose paintings were accepted, were prone to anxiety attacks, wondering: Will their painting be shown in the prestigious Main Gallery or be banished into the adjacent rooms?...

The end of the year has its own inevitable rhythm; the busy holiday season is punctuated with shopping, partying, and obligations to have a good time. And still, many of us can't wait for the quiet weeks of January. Not this year, that's for sure. For a stretch of ten days starting last week and continuing through the upcoming weekend, Los Angeles became the arena for four virtually concurrent Art Fairs competing for our attention....

One of the most intriguing art events of this season took place last Sunday at the LACMA auditorium. A single famous artwork was discussed in depth and interpreted in provocative ways during a day-long symposium devoted to what is arguably Picasso's greatest print. Seven art scholars argued their points of view regarding one particular etching, Minotauromachy, that the artist printed in 1935 -- the worst year of his life -- according to his own statement. Picasso's marriage to Russian ballerina Olga Koklova was falling apart, and he was involved in a clandestine love affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter, who, at the time they met, was only fifteen years old...

Last week was good for gallery hopping, with a number of interesting new shows popping up all over town.  Given the art world propensity for the discovery and promotion of fresh young talent, it was especially satisfying to find an exhibition celebrating the sophisticated art of one of LA's most renowned sculptors, John Mason, who turns eighty years old next year...

At the turn of the 20th century, collecting contemporary art used to be serious business for a relatively small group of people.  It was an exclusive gentlemen's club with only a few ladies, such as Gertrude Stein in Paris and the Cone sisters in Baltimore, allowed to join in.  An annual trip to Paris, a visit with the preeminent dealer Ambroise Vollard and, maybe, knocking on the door of Matisse or Picasso's studio would be enough for an adventurous collector with an eye on contemporary art...

With 2006 coming to a close, it's tempting to look back at the year's most memorable encounters with art.  In April, a large crowd of journalists gathered inside a plastic tent in the courtyard of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  It was raining cats and dogs but Michael Govan, the recently appointed museum director, was resolutely upbeat.  Five famous paintings by Gustav Klimt, that were considered to be Austrian national treasures, were returned to Maria Altmann, a Los Angeles resident and niece of the previous owners.  Over the next few months long lines of bewitched visitors formed in front of the Museum gallery to see these paintings, among them two mesmerizing portraits of Maria Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer...

One of the best kept secrets of American cultural life, the ascendance of Los Angeles to the enviable position of one of the most important art cities in the world, is not a secret any longer. The recent exhibition devoted to LA art at the Pompidou Center in Paris underscored the prominence of Los Angeles as one of the four major international centers, along with London, Berlin and New York, where cutting edge contemporary art is produced. A decade ago, The New York Times would rarely mention the LA art scene in its art coverage, but this is no longer the case...

In a surprise, but nevertheless highly anticipated announcement, the Getty Trust revealed its choice for the new president to replace Barry Munitz who hastily resigned or--to put it more precisely--was shown the door last February. After a nine month hunt and--one would hope--a lot of soul searching, the Getty trustees did something rather revolutionary: they summoned up the courage to overcome the corporate mentality that currently prevails in American museum board rooms across the country...

My first trip to Mexico City was an eye opener. I knew that it was huge but still I was overwhelmed by its scale, its crowds, and its traffic. However, it was impossible not to be seduced by the operatic grandeur of the Palace of Fine Arts with its Art Deco interiors and frescoes by Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo...