Quiz: Who got the best gig @ MOCA gala, dancer or bartender? 3
Rehearsals 15 hours none Performance four hours four hours Competition 800 applicants me & my buddy Training MFA in performance from UCLA California bartender license Interactivity Stare like a zombie while guests gnaw on foie gras Chit-chat & flirt all night Drinks Bottle of water after four hours Free drinks all night long ...
The courage of Sara Wookey 4
The subject is the so-called performance art featuring nude dancers on display as dinner-party decorations at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s fundraising gala in mid-November. Some poked heads thru tables as patrons dined; others lay inert with skeletons draped on their bodies. All women decorating tabletops, mind you. No men. It’s a tired idea that ...
WeeGee shoots “Newark with palm trees” — Los Angeles
Nov
26
2011
arts·meme visual arts correspondent, Liz Goldner, contributes this review. “Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles,” at the Museum of Contemporary Art (part of the Pacific Standard Time initiative), brings out of near oblivion 200 photographic artworks and a few films, from the late 1940s through the 60s, by and of tabloid photographer, “Weegee” (real name, ...
Go south, PST people — to Long Beach and Orange County
Pacific Standard Time got you overwhelmed? Me too, guys! But here’s a way to break it up, geographically speaking. The weekend of 3-4 December you can lose the L.A.-centricity and check out what’s going on Down Under, you know … Behind the Orange Curtain, er… I mean, you can visit our dear neighbors to the ...
James Brown’s third set in Shrevesport: “I Feel Good” before “Man’s World” 1
Pictured above [click on it for detail], a boggling play list of a James Brown set, dating from the 1970s. Scrawled in Brown’s handwriting on Holiday Inn Shrevesport Louisiana letterhead, it’s part of the James Brown tribute exhibition now at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles. The show includes costumes, memorabilia, video of the ...
Jeffrey Deitch, gallerist, performance artist
Oct
29
2011
Assuming the “presidential” posture, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Director Jeffrey Deitch, 57, displays a little known skill; his uncanny ability to anthropomorphize paintings, recreating them in real time and space. Aiming high and giving new meaning to the expression “gallerist,” Director Deitch’s subtle stab at performance art took place at the last Basel ...
A potpourri of PST
Oct
26
2011
arts·meme visual arts correspondent, Liz Goldner, contributes this overview of Pacific Standard Time events around the southern California region: Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981 at MOCA‘s Geffen Contemporary, Little Tokyo, features works that are dark in theme and execution with a strong undercurrent of self-absorption. Underneath this veneer, the show’s honesty, integrity ...
Oy. Harry. Would you please lighten up? Harry Houdini goes for a dip.
European financial system on the brink … Steve Jobs dead at 56 …. distraction and dissolution everywhere. It all feels so dire. Not sure whether this photo of major meshuggenah, Harry Houdini, will lighten your mood or not. Something in this shot of Mr. Ball-and-Chain spoke to me. Seems to suit the zeitgeist. World, could’ja ...
Look at the amazing building we are getting in Los Angeles!
Philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad and architect Elizabeth Diller today unveiled the designs of The Broad Art Foundation, a contemporary art museum on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by world-renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the three-story museum features a unique porous honeycomb “veil” that wraps the building and is visible through an ...
Eiko & Koma’s ‘Water,’ in a frigid lily pond
“Water is in our bodies, rivers, sea, our womb, and our tears.” So say Eiko & Koma, the Japanese-born performance duo, in an artists’ statement. Immersed for 45 beautiful, but bitter-cold, minutes in a Skirball Center lily pond, they encourage their audience to “remember and imagine the ancient water from which all living things came.” ...