Costumes! Vivid colors bump up Cirque KURIOS charm
Stunning costumes, in gorgeous hues, contribute only one of many memorable production elements of Cirque du Soleil’s KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities, written and directed by Michel Laprise. A terrific holiday outing for the family, the two-act show is now on view in the old-tyme Grand Chapiteau erected in the big old parking lot of ...
Eerie time-and-space travel by photographer George LeGrady 2
Nov
30
2015
This intriguing work based upon nostalgic family snapshots from the ’30s and ’40s allows photographer George LeGrady to activate his personal past by use of a lenticular imaging process. It essentially culls a kinetic experience from static photographic imagery, activated by the viewer’s vantage point. Known for ambitious interactive installations, photography and data visualization projects, ...
Art to accompany your Metro descent, by George LeGrady
Nov
26
2015
You’d think a leaning 18′ x 24′ concrete wall above a staircase and escalator unit at a subway station would be a pretty challenging place to envision art, much less install it. And yet, George LeGrady responded to a 2006 commission from Metrorail with this vivid piece of public art at the entrance of the ...
The subtle art of the New Yorker cartoon in an HBO documentary
Whether they leave readers amused, inspired or baffled, the iconic single-panel cartoons in The New Yorker magazine have been a cultural touchstone over the past 90 years. They power not on a laugh out loud, but on a brain-tickling smile. VERY SEMI-SERIOUS, a film directed by Leah Wolchok that glimpses the process behind publishing the ...
Peggy’s place
Art of This Century, view of the Abstract Gallery, New York, ca. 1943. Courtesy Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. Left to right (paintings): Vasily Kandinsky, Landscape with Red Spots, No. 2, 1913; Kazimir Malevich, Untitled, ca. 1916; Francis Picabia, Very Rare Picture on Earth, 1915; Albert Gleizes, Woman with Animals (Madame Raymond Duchamp-Villon), 1914 (partially visible ...
Where they live: SoCal artists draw at Liz’s 2
Sixth and La Brea is populated with vintage clothing stores, trendy furniture outlets and hip boutique concerns. Liz’s Antique Hardware, at 453 South, isn’t much to look at from the outside. Inside it’s not much better. The store is filled with ancient doors, old light fixtures, bins of tarnished doorknobs, decorative heating grates. Liz Gordon ...
Thank you, Gene Allen
Saddened to learn today that the great Hollywood art director Gene Allen, the man who converted director George Cukor’s vision to rich mise-en-scene, died October 7 of natural causes in Newport Beach. Allen, who lived a long life, perished at 97. Yes, Gene Allen, the much hallowed Academy Award-winning art director of MY FAIR LADY ...
Great movies meet great graphic design: Saul Bass
An illustrated lecture by Jan-Christopher Horak, director, UCLA Film & Television Archive, presents a selection of film titles, shorts and commercials by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Saul Bass (1920–1996). Best known as the designer behind the iconic, era-defining title sequences for such films as The Man with the Golden Arm (dir. Otto Preminger, 1955), Vertigo (dir. ...
Alex Hubbard’s massive ‘canvases’ stud new Maccarone Gallery
Oct
12
2015
The British aren’t coming; they’re already here, in a pub, in Santa Monica. But the New Yorkers are piling in, the latest and best evidence is Maccarone’s tricked-out art gallery, surely a bellwether for the new, gentrifying Boyle Heights. The 6,000 square-foot SoHo-style space, the Los Angeles outpost of a West Village parent gallery, occupies ...
What a week! Los Angeles blossoms in the fine arts
I’ve inhabited Los Angeles more or less, since 1989. The city’s rich art existence, long undetected, has kept me busy and happy here. There is little doubt, however, that something arts-phenomenal is happening right now in our city. It must be true; the New York Times is sputtering about it all the time. In fact, ...