Lyris-ists land on LaBrea, for ‘Music & Conversations’ 1

Music · Visual arts
A high-performance moment slated, this weekend, for Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, the stellar LaBrea Avenue art gallery. Chamber music presenter Music & Conversations will host the Lyris Quartet whose punctilious playing we have so enjoyed  around town — and who have a wonderful upcoming engagement on April 5 with Jacaranda, Music from the Edge. Saturday ...

“Twin Visions” Witkin brothers @ Jack Rutberg Fine Arts

Visual arts
An immensely intriguing exhibition pairing the creative output of two brothers, identical twins, both fine artists one expressing himself in oil paint, the other through photography, has just opened at the LaBrea Avenue gallery of arts·meme friend Jack Rutberg. The show examines the mysteries of art from a new perspective, by adding a clever inquiry ...

Gracious Gainsborough sparks vivid Timken-UCLA design competition

Fashion · Visual arts
At right, “A Peasant Smoking at a Cottage Door,” dating from 1788 by the English landscape and portrait master Thomas Gainsborough. The work is on extended loan to San Diego’s Timken Museum of Art from UCLA’s Hammer Museum. “A Peasant Smoking” offers the tranquil vision of peasants in a bucolic English countryside setting. The gracious ...

Backstage intimacy from Phil Stern’s camera 1

Film · Music · Visual arts
by 
Hollywood photographers have always had to walk a fine line. Their work is contingent on access to the celebrated, but entree hinges on trust and following implicit rules of privacy. Movie studios have always wanted their actors and directors depicted in the best possible light and they’ve rewarded those whose images flatter most. But good ...

An artist embraced: Carmen de Lavallade

Dance · Theater · Visual arts
The amazing, still gorgeous, always regal Carmen de Lavallade — born in New Orleans, raised in East Los Angeles — exemplifies an Empress of dance, the kind of royalty spawned in Vernon, California. Thursday night, De Lavallade returned to Los Angeles — where she and chum Alvin Ailey attended Thomas Jefferson High School, where she ...

Hayworth by Hurrell … just because

Film · Visual arts
This stunning portrait of Rita Hayworth shot in 1942 by Hollywood glamour photographer George Hurrell  is featured in Mark Vieira’s massive coffeetable book, “George Hurrell’s Hollywood: Glamour Portraits 1925 – 1992.” photo courtesy mark vieira

Carmen de Lavallade, in homecoming, celebrated in CAAM exhibit with Geoffrey Holder

Dance · Fashion · Theater · Visual arts
So looking forward to viewing the California African American Museum’s latest exhibition, “A Memoir in Movement,” dedicated to the great dance/theater/visual arts couple Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder, an exhibit comprising photographs, paintings, sculptures, and costume designs. De Lavallade, a Los Angeles native, is a living dance treasure whose legacy ports names like Lester ...

Hooray for Hurrell 1

Film · Visual arts
We caught up recently with Mark Vieira, author of the newly published “George Hurrell’s Hollywood,” an image-filled tribute to the film industry’s lauded glamour photographer. When asked how Hurrell got his start in high-gloss movie-star portraiture, Mark explained,  “Hurrell was an unknown commercial photographer in the artsy Westlake District of Los Angeles when he made ...

Museo Jumex’s Eugenio Lopez powerfully rendered by Juan Bastos 4

Visual arts
When friend of arts·meme Juan Bastos, who is not just a talented and in-demand portrait artist but also a super nice person, shared with us his distinguished oil painting of his client Eugenio Lopez, completed last year, we were struck by the skillful rendering of a powerful-looking young man. What we did not realize was ...

“Russian Los Angeles” dance exhibition opens in St. Petersburg

Dance · Visual arts
“Russian Los Angeles: Stravinsky, Innovation and Dance,” an exhibition co-curated by Lorin Johnson, an associate professor of dance at California State University, Long Beach and Mark Konecny, Associate Director of the Institute of Modern Russian Culture at the University of Southern California, has opened in St. Petersburg at the Russian State Museum of Theatre and ...