Preeminent dance movie posters @ Barnsdall

Dance · Film · Visual arts
We’re super looking forward to touring through a wonderful installation of dance movies posters now on display at Barnsdall Gallery Theater. We already saw it once, but it’s so fabulous that repeat viewings are called for. Twenty distinct pieces in varying sizes and rarity comprise GOTTA DANCE!, the majority dating from the golden age of ...

Word up … at Rutberg’s

Visual arts
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles has a beautiful, locally driven, museum-quality show on at its LaBrea Avenue gallery, an expansive exhibition titled “Letters from Los Angeles: Part II – Identity & Self Identity Through Text in Art.” The rich exhibit curated by Rutberg includes more than 70 works by 40 contemporary L.A.-based artists ...

Shulamit Gallery wishes us Happy Nowruz

Visual arts
Circulating around Shulamit Gallery’s quietly beautiful new exhibit that features artists Doni Silver Simons and Pouya Afshar, a single work caught my eye. [This new-ish art gallery, steps away from Venice Beach, has as its mission the support and promotion of Israeli and Iranian artists.] “Nowruz,” the photo-realist work, above, decorates an alcove of the ...

Connoisseur collection of dance-movie posters grace Barnsdall exhibit 1

Dance · Film · Visual arts
“I was born with a poster gene! When I was a kid I used to ‘color in’ the New York Times (black & white) print ads for theater. When I saw the poster, I’d compare their color choices [to mine].” Collector Mike Kaplan offers this charming anecdote in explanation for a lifelong obsession as we ...

Animated women of film-animation world step out — in gallery show

Film · Visual arts
“Ladies of Animation,” a gallery exhibit featuring personal works by female artists from major film studios including Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks opened a few days ago at GRspace. Artists Victoria Ying, Sho Murase, Helen Chen, Nicole Mitchell, Clio Chiang, Griselda Sastrawinata, Anna Chambers, Lorelay Bove, Claire Keane, Fawn Veerasunthorn, Brittney Lee, Kendelle Hoyer and Lissa ...

Good art-gab Saturday @ L.A. Art Show

Ideas & Opinion · Visual arts
The L.A. Art Show‘s featured exhibit, “Letters from L.A.,” addresses the unique use of text by the city’s visual artists, forms the centerpiece of the fair. And the fair is a huge, noisy and fun community celebration. The line-up at the Show this weekend got my attention; in particular a panel discussion that looks excellent. ...

Celebrating Iran’s Jewish artists: Shulamit Gallery

Visual arts
Two weeks after a bustling opening party launched a new house of art at Venice Beach, we revisited the multi-floored Shulamit Gallery on a grey-skied late-November afternoon. The smart, post-modern shoebox structure wedges neatly into a row of buildings that marks the end of Venice Boulevard. At this location, arguably the western-most point of sprawling ...

Carole Bayer Sager’s splendid nosherai @ William Turner Gallery

Music · Visual arts
When the baseball stadium vendor cried out “peanuts, popcorn, cracker jacks,” little Carole Bayer Sager, as a kid, took that sing-song offering seriously. The prodigious lyricist/songwriter is also proud creator of a fun and poppy collection of super-sized snacks in serious, searing colors. The show’s early November opening at William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica ...

Words matter …

Ideas & Opinion · Visual arts
… at  “Letters from Los Angeles,” a new show opening at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts this weekend. Rutberg’s showcase LaBrea Avenue gallery will offer the exhibit, co-curated by Aldis Browne, which features more than 30 contemporary L.A.-based artists who incorporate elements of words and letters in their work.  The artist roster includes: Lita Albuquerque, John ...

Sleaze as art: ‘Camera Night at the Ivar’ @ Drkrm Gallery 5

Dance · Theater · Visual arts
Hollywood’s Ivar Theatre — notorious, low-life, sleazy — presented crude peep shows, images of which I have interspersed in the slide show with ballet photography by renowned dance photog, Gene Schiavione. The images all feature the female body on explicit display. The Ivar strippers, and the men who clustered at the Hollywood theater to photograph ...