The din of art talk filled the Foundation’s sunlit third-floor loft. So did the industrious output of Herb Alpert creativity. No, not the trumpeter’s music nor his music producing, but rather his colorful paintings and outsized sculptures that decorate the space.

Chatting with choreographer Nora Chipaumire (on left in the photo) about her $75,000 Alpert Award stipend, the Zimbabwean expatriate (now Brooklyn-based) said with charming eloquence: “It’s a jump start on everything. It’s a rosy garden.”

Her flashing smile was equally rosy. The award is huge prestigious honor.

“It’s a promise, but it’s also scary … how to best move forward.”

Chipaumire, whose challenging solo dance-theater is charged with global and sexual politics, said: “I intend to wage relentless propaganda. And I’m not ashamed to use the cold war language.

“I come from the third world, so I’m willing to do more with less. But I’ve always been in want of a safety net. We work without a safety net — we’ve made an art of it.

“I’ve got no time to experiment — with what money? I say what I mean. I’m here to mess up peoples’ perceptions about African women.”

Winner slideshow here …

Herb Alpert speaking at his Foundation

2012 Alpert Award winner for dance Nora Chipaumire

2012 Alpert Award winner for music Myra Melford

2012 Alpert Award winner for theatre Eisa Davis

2012 Alpert Award winner for visual arts Michael Smith

2012 Alpert Award winner for film & video Kevin Everson

Chipaumire & Davis

arts·meme & the awardees

CalArts President Steven Lavine

Director, Alpert Award in the Arts, Irene Borger

Alpert Award honorees in dance constitute an interesting bunch. Over the years they have included

Like this? Read more:

• Herb Alpert, local hero
• Herb & Lani at Disney Hall [concert review]
• Back to school with Herb & Lani
• Rennie Harris discusses his Alpert Award in The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles

_{Photo credit: Scott Groller, CalArts, also Caroline Graham, C4 Global Communications}

The Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) have awarded the 18th annual Alpert Award in the Arts to five exceptional mid–career artists. The award, a prize of $75,000, recognizes past performance and future promise to artists working in Dance, Film/Video, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts. Herb Alpert, the legendary musician and artist who created the Herb Alpert Foundation with his wife Lani Hall and gave the first Alpert Award in the Arts in 1995, says, “All of this year’s winners represent the essence of the Alpert Award. They take aesthetic, intellectual and political risks, and challenge worn-out conventions. They’re unafraid of the unknown.”

The 2012 Alpert Awardees are: Kevin Everson, Film/Video; Nora Chipaumire, Dance; Myra Melford, Music; Eisa Davis, Theatre; Michael Smith, Visual Arts

A conversation with dance awardee Nora Chipaumire — straight outta Brooklyn — to follow!

Like this? Read more:

• Herb Alpert, local hero
• Herb & Lani at Disney Hall [concert review]
• Herb & Lani at Vibrato [performance review]
• Back to school with Herb & Lani

_{Photo credit: Scott Groller, CalArts}

• _{Sylvia Fein, “Lady with Her Baby,” 1947, egg tempera on masonite
  © Sylvia Fein, Photo courtesy of the Chazen Museum of Art, by Eric Tadsen}
• _{Leonora Carrington, “Green Tea (La dam ovale),” 1942, oil on canvas
  © 2011 Estate of Leonora Carrington/Artists}
• _{Frida Kahlo, “The Two Fridas,” 1939, oil on canva, © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo courtesy Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City}
• _{Francesca Woodman, “House #3″ Photographs by Francesca Woodman courtesy of the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York}
• _{Dorothea Tanning, “Birthday,” 1942, oil on canvas © 2011 Dorothea Tanning Collection and Archive/Artist’s Rights Society (ARS) New York/ADAGP, Paris, Photo © The Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY}
• _{Frida Kahlo, “Portrait of Lucha Maria, A Girl from Tehuacan,” 1942, oil on masonite, Photo courtesy of Colección Pérez Simón}
• _{Muriel Streeter, “The Chess Queens,” 1944, oil on canvas. Photo © Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art/Art Resource, NY}

[That would include me.]

Get thee to Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, where a strong show now hangs, “Ruth Weisberg: Now & Then,” works by the Los Angeles artist pictured above. This Saturday afternoon, Ms. Weisberg will personally guide a tour through her paintings and drawings that are on beautiful display in the LaBrea Avenue gallery.

The exhibition reveals Weisberg’s long interest in re-imagining the works of past masters Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Velazquez, Blake and Corot. Through fresco-like effects in her unstretched paintings, as well as the veils of washes in her masterful lithographs, Weisberg brings past-time into contemporary context.

Since her arrival in Los Angeles in 1969, Ruth Weisberg has been a formidable influence and mentor to decades of artists in this city and beyond. With more than 80 solo exhibitions and nearly 200 group exhibitions internationally, Weisberg is the first living painter to have been afforded a solo exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum of Art.Ruth Weisberg’s work is included in the permanent collections of over 60 museums, including the Metropolitan Museum, National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art, Portland Art Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, Norton Simon Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Detroit Institute of Arts, Biblioteque Nationale in Paris, and the Instituto Nationale per la Grafica in Rome, among many others.

She is currently a professor at the USC Roski School of Fine Arts.

And to double down on supporting talented female artists, as gallerist Rutberg obviously has done, you can also view, concurrently, “Claire Falkenstein, An Expansive Universe.”  Together these two shows give a superb museum-like experience in an art gallery. 

Ruth Weisberg guided gallery tour | Jack Rutberg Fine Arts | Saturday April 14, 2 and 4 pm | rsvp required

_{Nancy Buchanan
Wolfwoman
1977
courtesy of the artist and Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art}

It was quiet as hell in Pasadena this past Easter Sunday. Spurned by Target’s closure (isn’t Target always open?) I had the great good fortune to drive by the Pasadena Museum of California Art, only to realize I had not yet viewed L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy.

Part of Pacific Standard Time, “L.A. Raw” traces the distinctive aesthetic of figurative expressionism from the end of World War II, bringing together over 120 works by forty-one artists in a variety of media–painting, sculpture, photography and performance.

The show strikes me as di riguer viewing if you are part of the contemporary Los Angeles arts community, either on visual or performing art side. The work is a lot about the body and a good deal of it performative. There are lots of naked painters expressing extreme emotion and ideas with their bodies. Dance people need to see this.

The personal courage and freedom of expression is noteworthy and inspiring. Loneliness, space, and a profound detachment from society, all themes of the creative artist, just ring out across the spectrum of the 41 L.A. artists assembled in this survey.

I quote from Patricia Cronen’s excellent overview in artnet.com:

In Los Angeles, artists responded to post-war existential questions in a dramatically different fashion than their East Coast counterparts. While the New York School turned to Abstract Expressionism (simultaneously shifting the epicenter of the art world from Paris and Europe), artists in L.A. fashioned a much more direct and populist response to the realities of the Vietnam war, the horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, and the threat of McCarthyism. The hallmark of this kind of work is the expressively distorted human body, constituting a new, distinctly West Coast kind of humanism.

What a great personal catch-up exercise it was for me, and what a gripping experience to view it work-by-work, quietly, in an empty gallery. We have curator Michal Duncan to thank for a spectacular — and shattering — show.

There is another film night coming up, the closing night May 20, featuring three artists, Conner Everts, James Strombotne, and Charles Garabedian. This time, I suggest that the museum incorporate the show; during the last film event, which I attended, the exhibit was roped off and nary a word spoken about it. It was mawkish and weird.

L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy | Pasadena Museum of California Art  | thru May 20

Marc has shared unstintingly from his Bison Archives collection, letting us eyeball wonderful images of:

• Anna Pavlova‘s first and only foray as a Universal Studios movie star;
• James Dean, moody, filming “Rebel” at the Griffith Park Observatory;
• Carl Laemmele’s Universal Studio tours, dating to 1916;
• Boris Karloff filming “Frankenstein” at Malibou Lake;
• Our favorite: the Ballets Russes danseur noble, Theodore Kosloff, teaching a barre-ful of truly hopeless Paramount Studio chorus girls;
• God bless Marc, he also scanned in an image of an Alexei Kosloff ballet studio pin. You cannot get more connoisseur than that. On behalf of all the ballet fanatics, Marc, we thank you!

What we did not know was that beyond the marvelous material Marc gave his permission to publish here, he was hoarding 70,000+ others, the purchase of which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences today announced. The collection is headed for long-term archiving at the Academy’s superb public-access facility in Beverly Hills, the Margaret Herrick Library.

Marc, you were holding out on us. This means we could have had 69,995 more blog posts!

According to the Academy, the images document nearly every facet of film production between 1909 and the present day, focusing on the first half of the 20th century. Many of these images are the only known photographs of their subjects, including a group of eight behind-the-scenes color images of the filming of the opening sequence of Orson Welles’s 1958 noir classic, “Touch of Evil.”

Bison Archives was named in tribute to the Bison Company, an early motion picture studio (formed in 1909) that produced Westerns featuring Native American casts.

The collection features rare images from more than 100 major and independent studios, many of which ceased to exist past the 1920s, including Biograph, Edison, E & R Jungle Film Co., Essanay and Vitagraph.

“I felt very strongly that the collection should be with the Academy,” said Cecilia DeMille Presley, who helped the Academy acquire the Bison photographs on behalf of the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation.

Other highlights from the collection include vintage set and location photographs of such legendary directors as D.W. Griffith, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg, as well as many of their below-the-line contemporaries, including film editor Anne Bauchens, cinematographer Billy Bitzer, art director Ben Carré and costume designer Gwen Wakeling.

Wanamaker began amassing the collection in 1971, as he was researching a book on the history of the American motion picture studios. Over the years, the collection has been used by authors, historians and filmmakers from all over the world for hundreds of books, films, lectures, exhibitions, publications and other scholarly works. “The Herrick is one of the premier archives in the world,” said Wanamaker. “It is appropriate that much of my life’s work will have a permanent home there, including a photo album compiled by Ralph DeLacy, D.W. Griffith’s property master for “Intolerance.”

It is with great joy that we congratulate Marc and his patron for the purchase, Cecilia DeMille Presley, granddaughter to one of the founders of the Academy — a magnificent addition to the recorded visual history of Los Angeles!

Mazel tov, Marc!

Claire Falkenstein: An Expansive Universe, a major survey of the late California multimedia artist’s work now on at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles, coincides with the release of the newly published, comprehensive book on the artist’s work and life, Claire Falkenstein.

The Falkenstein material is paired at Rutberg’s with work of another important California woman artist, the painter and USC professor Ruth Weisberg.

Rutberg and his wonderful team, including his wife, Mary Lou Rutberg, are hosting a book talk on Saturday, March 24 [call for details]. It’s an excellent opportunity to learn about the influential and prolific artist while seeing the Pacific Standard Time exhibit on view through April 28.

Plus the nicest people hang around this gallery. So go.

§     §     §

Bay Area-artist Claire Falkenstein studied at the University of California, Berkeley; later, she taught studio art courses at Mills College in Oakland and the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA), now the San Francisco Art Institute. She maintained a life long friendship with Clyfford Still and other significant CSFA artist-teachers of the era.  

Relocating to Europe in the 1950s, Falkenstein was associated with many influential American and European artists of the time; among her best-known works are the gates at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts in 1978.

Later, she moved to Venice, California, turning her attention from organic “structures” to painting after 1990. She produced over 4,000 sculptures, paintings and drawings.

_{Text courtesy of ArtFix Daily. Images courtesy Jack Rutberg Fine Arts. Credits to follow …}

_{101
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997)
SUN, 1960
Copper, 30 x 75 x 38 inches}

_{107
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997)
GAME, 1944
Forged Iron and Paint 20 1/2 x 20 1/2 x 4 1/4 inches}

 _{110
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997)
AERIAL, 1947
Etched and Painted Aluminum 34 1/8 x 29 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches
JRFA #10336}

_{112
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997)
PAIN, 1949
Ink and Watercolor on Paper, 14 1/8 x 11 inches}

_{118
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN
SPACE STRUCTURE, 1978
Nickel-Plated Iron, 35 x 39 x 32 inches}

_{120
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997)
BARCELONA #2, 1949
Gouache on Paper on Canvas, 39 x 25 inches}

 _{121
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997)
BARCELONA SERIES, 1949
Gouache on Paper on Canvas, 18 x 35 1/2 inches}

_{128
CLAIRE FALKENSTEIN (1908-1997)
SIGN OF U (SMALL SUN), 1970
Copper and Bronze. 10 1/2 x 16 x 14 inches} 

Like this? Read more:

• Patrick Graham’s patch of earth

Read our story about Paul Taylor Dance Company’s premiere season at Lincoln Center. Read it in The Huffington Post.

Hans Burkhardt
Hans Burkhardt: The Artist’s World
1987, 37 min
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Estate Films, Inc.
An intimate portrait of Hans Burkhardt, this documentary features interviews with the artist in his studio and home as he reflects upon his life and work. Burkhardt reminisces about his early years in his native Switzerland and his arrival in New York, where he shared Arshile Gorky’s studio. Along with commentary from distinguished art historians, dealers and artists, Burkhardt traces the development of his art and life in Los Angeles, and his sojourns to Mexico, where created provocative works which proved prescient to his contemporaries’ in New York and Europe. Burkhardt is shown engaging many of his favorite works which today are increasingly regarded as being among the major paintings of Contemporary Art.

Ed Kienholz
The Story of an Artist
1961 25 min
Directed by William Kronick, David L. Wolper Productions

Robert Cremean
Metaphor and Process: The Work of Robert Cremean
1988 25 min
Directed by Patti Day, Marguay Productions

Film night, in conjunction with “L.A. RAW” | Pasadena Museum of California Art | Sunday March 11, 5:30 pm

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