Eleven-year-old arts·meme sings birthday song to self

Ideas & Opinion
Ten was a biggie. That was last year. We threw a party. A birthday bash. But this one snuck up on us, and behold, on May 24, 2019, arts·meme turned eleven years old. Happy birthday, arts·meme ! No one noticed. We even forgot the date ourselves. So little Miss arts·meme had to sing an arts·memey rendition ...

Orpheus-themed event blends music, poetry, film @ The Edye

Film · Ideas & Opinion · Music
Black Orpheus (1959) dir Marcel Camus The tragic love of Orpheus for Eurydice has inspired poets, artists, and musicians—among them Rainer Maria Rilke, Christophe Willibald Gluck, and in our own time choreographer Mark Morris and composer Philip Glass, whose 1993 Orphee Suite was inspired by Jean Cocteau’s 1950 film. An interesting event exploring the Orpheus ...

REVIEW: Diana Wyenn, theater in her veins 2

Ideas & Opinion · Reviews · Theater
First, I squirmed. Then I squiggled. I crossed my legs, then re-crossed them. Drawing a deep breath, I wondered at one point if I might faint. Talk about visceral theater! Diana Wyenn’s one-woman show, Blood/Sugar, seen last night at the wonderful Bootleg Theater, goes granular, right down to the grains of sugar your pancreas is ...

By day or night, ice or ammo: a tale told in imagery

Ideas & Opinion · Visual arts
Osceola Refetoff, “Stop-Liquor Jr Market, Mojave, California Los Angeles-based photographer Osceola Refetoff was named Photo Journalist of the Year by the Los Angeles Press Club in noting Refetoff’s work with KCET’s arts and culture series Artbound.  Refetoff also took top honors in the Photo Essay category for the Artbound story in collaboration with Christopher Langley, ...

‘Eloise’ to reign over new home after Bonhams auction

Ideas & Opinion · Visual arts
Toting a history as lively as its inspiration, this portrait of the mischievous overlord of the Plaza Hotel, Eloise, was painted as a birthday gift by Hilary Knight for his Eloise co-creator, Kay Thompson, in 1956. After displaying the work during her appearance on Edward R. Murrow’s “Person to Person” on CBS, Thompson then loaned ...

Torturing Rock Hudson

Film · Ideas & Opinion
Ed. note: Can a writer and her editors truly be so clueless? Or was this ‘hetero-normative’ article, excerpted below, part of the Hollywood cabal to cover up Hudson’s gayness? Whatever was the case, writer Jane Wilkie by-lined the following interview with Rock Hudson in ‘Modern Screen’ magazine, December 1954.  Excerpted here. BY JANE WILKIE ■ ...

Pharrell Williams: ‘Cease and desist, Mr. President’

Ideas & Opinion · Music
In a cease and desist letter sent Monday, October 29, 2016, Pharrell Williams‘ attorney Howard King called on the President of the United States to stop playing the singer’s “Happy” during events. In an act of disgusting insensitivity, the song was played at a rally over the weekend just hours after a gunman killed 11 ...

On Robbins’s 100th, his biographers raise a glass

Dance · Ideas & Opinion
I’ll leave the kudos for Jerome Robbins on this auspicious day — his 100th birthday — to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts now hosting an exhibit, Voice of My City: Jerome Robbins and New York; New York City Ballet with its planned Robbins repertory evening tonight (Afternoon of a Faun, Other ...

Wham-bam Chris Nichols book-jam to slam Tam

Architecture & Design · Ideas & Opinion
The biggest little kid we know has a new Taschen book (means loads of photos) which reminds us it’s a small world after all. Architectural historian and and Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee Founding Member Chris Nichols’ Walt Disney’s Disneyland tells the tale of the transformation of a southern California orange grove into the mother ...

Vijay Iyer/Teju Cole ‘Blind Spot’ syncopates jazz, photography, text

Ideas & Opinion · Music
by 
The intriguing image above represents the visual component for “Blind Spot,” a much-anticipated live performance soon presented by CAP UCLA at The Theatre at Ace Hotel. The collaborative effort showcases two artists at the top of their respective fields: jazz pianist/composer Vijay Iyer  and writer/photographer Teju Cole. A familiar face on the covers of Downbeat ...