My father John Garfield: a portrait by Julie Garfield 7
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
Nov
10
2017
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
Nov
3
2017
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: ...
‘Variety’ got it dead wrong: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) 1
On the occasion of the hugely talented, innovative and original filmmaker George Romero receiving his star on Hollywood Boulevard (the auteur director died in July) and the wonderful tribute event we attended (screening Romero’s marvelous and underrated CREEPSHOW) this past week, we sense that Romero’s pioneering in the horror genre can’t have been easy. A tough ...
Strange times for women echoed in Sullivan-Beeman paintings
Oct
26
2017
These are disorienting times, as a parade of women spills forth the secrets and lies they have been porting in private, some for decades. Stories rife with shame, collusion, dominance, desperation all tap distressing emotions. Upside-down post-feminist realities careen, as well, through the fantasy portraits of Los Angeles artist Deirdre Sullivan-Beeman. Sullivan-Beeman is soon to ...
LACMA ‘Found in Translation’ documents Mexi-Cali design dialogue 1
From Sacramento to San Diego, California’s Mexican and Spanish underpinnings are as historic as they are pervasive. We often take those connections for granted, but LACMA’s exhibition “Found in Translation: Design in California and Mexico, 1915-1985” offers a fascinating view of the influence and confluence between the two cultures in the 20th Century. It’s part ...
The Guadalajara scene seen by Hans Burkhardt
Sep
23
2017
Hans Burkhardt, City At Night I – Guadalajara, 1957, Oil on Canvas, 50 x 60 inches Hans Burkhardt in Mexico, opening tonight at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, features major works painted in Mexico by the Los Angeles artist Hans Burkhardt over a span of more than 10 years beginning in 1950. Mexico’s contrasting architecture and ...
Pond·ering sixty years of art history
Sep
19
2017
Sixty years, more or less one generation, brought us from Monet to Almaraz. To my eye, two works aligned in hot harmony. Above, the majestic vision of Los Angeles painter Carlos Almaraz, in his reconstituted four-panel Echo Park Lake (1982) — now on rare display at LACMA, as part of Pacific Standard Time LA/LA. (Our ...
Showing & telling the difficult: Laura Aguilar @ Vincent Price Art Museum
Sep
13
2017
The wonderful Vincent Price Art Museum on the campus of East Los Angeles College has as its Pacific Standard Time LA/LA exhibit, “Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell,” opening Sept 16, the first comprehensive retrospective of the challenging photographer’s works. A series of talks and community events accompanies the show. This exhibition tells the story of ...
Tales of neuroses from Roz Chast
New Yorker magazine cartoonist Roz Chast has a new book. That makes me anxious. It’s not that I’m jealous. I would be totally fine, but I couldn’t sleep last night. I think the waiter at that restaurant was looking at me funny. Then my neighbors were keeping me up … argh! Chast’s new book, Going ...