Aline Mare’s resplendent body art @ Beyond Baroque

Visual arts
Los Angeles-based artist Aline Mare grew up in New York City and began her career as an image maker and performer in the thriving avant-garde arts scene of downtown Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s – her collaborators and close friends included Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, Nam June Paik, and Richard Serra. Mare first met ...

Feathers, masks, veils: bodies transfigured by Charlie Le Mindu

Fashion · Visual arts
Charlie Le Mindu‘s NOIR is an exhibition of raw sculptures; through literal extensions of his existing work with the human form, he explores the competing forces that drive our daily lives and relationships. Le Mindu will present a series of performances on the exhibit’s opening night demonstrating his provocative visual imagination, in which the gendered ...

Hitting the mark with Robin Mitchell

Visual arts
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To see the world in a grain of sand is a goal shared by many creative people. In the case of Robin Mitchell, she sees the world in a mark. She’s a non-representational painter and, unlike others who work in that genre, her paint doesn’t sprawl, drip, stain or consist of hard-edge color blocks. Mitchell ...

Mike & movie mavens amass for LACMA poster exhibition 3

Film · Visual arts
Among the mavens who came out to celebrate “The Art of the Movie Poster: HIghlights from the Mike Kaplan Collection,” newly opened at LACMA, were several prominent ones cheering on their friend, Kaplan (at left). At right, the estimable Malcolm McDowell, whose association and friendship with Kaplan has Stanley Kubrick at its heart. (As a ...

The flickering of truth, by Jasper Johns, at The Broad 1

Visual arts
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One hopes for something resembling truth, some sense of life, even of grace, to flicker, at least, in the work — Jasper Johns When the first survey articles and books on Pop Art were published in the 1960s, Jasper Johns was usually included. The painter, sculptor and constructionist often depicted vernacular objects in his work ...

Oguri tops list of Los Angeles-based USA Fellows

Dance · Music · Theater · Visual arts
Chicago-based United States Artists (USA) has selected its annual fellowship class of 45 artists and collaboratives, across disciplines and selected from all corners of the United States, who each receive an unrestricted $50,000 awards. A native of Japan, Oguri became inspired to dance after meeting Butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi in 1983. He started performing in ...

He invented ‘happenings’: Allan Kaprow

Visual arts
A new gallery exhibition augurs revelations in the early painting and drawing practice of American artist Allan Kaprow (1927-2006). Kaprow’s career as a painter began with his study with Hans Hofmann. He focused on the medium from the mid-1940s through the 1950s. During this period, he immersed himself in New York’s downtown scene and made ...

My father John Garfield: a portrait by Julie Garfield 7

Film · Visual arts
This wrenching portrait of actor John Garfield recently won a ‘red dot’ award at The Art Students League. The facial expression is imagined — as the artist Julie Garfield has only distant and vague memories of her father. He perished when she was just six years old. John Garfield, who was hounded by HUAC and ...

Shepard Fairey DAMAGED: vast, beautiful, unsettling

Visual arts
Ed. note: Guest contributor Dana Ross covers a new mega-show in downtown Los Angeles, providing photos & text. DAMAGED, Shepard Fairey‘s new exhibit in Los Angeles, is vast and beautiful. His graphic sensibilities and social commentary rattle the bars on the cage and give us the strength to break out. Fairey is most famous for ...

Juan Bastos: California Portraits: people, places & pets 1

Visual arts
Shall I look at your Juan Bastos portrait? Or, should I look directly at you? That was the question at yesterday’s sneak peak of “Juan Bastos: California Portraits,” a rich exhibition of 40 portraits of prominent Californians painted by the Bolivian-American artist, a longtime resident of Los Angeles. The exhibit is part of Pacific Standard Time: ...