A favorite small book, The Tree by the novelist John Fowles, is just the right place to turn for wisdom on this last day of the year. A memoir and a meditation on human and natural notions of control, The Tree can be read again and again. W. S. Merwin claims that he has carried […]
Aesthetics
I Feel You
Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Linear Minnie Pwerle, Bush Melon Seed It is in the nature of an artist to look for commonalities between contemporary concepts of form and those of ancient or indigenous cultures. Brahms and Schubert wandered the countryside listening to and absorbing native, folk and gypsy musical idioms, incorporating many of those traditions into […]
- Aesthetics
- ...
Northern Exposure: SFMOMA
Francesca Woodman, Polka Dots, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976; gelatin silver print; courtesy George and Betty Woodman; © George and Betty Woodman A few highlights from a day spent at the San Francisco Museum of Art, a visit that followed the feast that was Pacific Standard Time in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving… Francesca Woodman‘s life was […]
Pacific Standard Time: More on a Theme
More on Pacific Standard Time… PST encompasses over 60 venues, so my coverage from just a week in Los Angeles is limited. Here is an overview of other PST exhibits worth highlighting (as well as a few others thrown in for good measure): Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 Hammer Museum Breaking […]
Pacific Standard Time: Proof at the Norton Simon Museum
June Wayne, founder, at Tamarind in the 1960s, photograph by Helen Miljakovich, courtesy June Wayne More on the exhilarating Pacific Standard Time art extravaganza in Los Angeles: The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena has assembled its PST exhibit around the intriguing story of printmaking in Los Angeles—Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California. At […]
Pacific Standard Time Sidebar: Theaster Gates at the Geffen
Civil Tapestries, by Theaster Gates, 2011. Decomissioned fire hoses and wood. Concomitant with Under the Big Black Sun at Geffen Contemporary (which I wrote about here) is an exhibit by Theaster Gates called An Epitaph for Civil Rights. Tethering this installation to events during the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s campaign in Birmingham in 1963 where […]
Pacific Standard Time: A Time Out of Joint, at the Geffen
More on the exhilarating Pacific Standard Time show (extravaganza?) in Los Angeles: Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA, has its main location downtown near Disney Hall (and, until they were expelled last weekend, OccupyLA.) The MOCA’s “we could play football in here”-sized spillover exhibit space, the Geffen Contemporary, is in Little Tokyo. A former […]
Pacific Standard Time: Light and Space
Untitled, by Douglas Wheeler, 1969. Acrylic on canvas with neon tubing ______ More on Pacific Standard Time, currently on view in Los Angeles: The Southern California artists who congregated together into a loosely defined group called Light and Space in the late 1960s have gone on to be some of my favorites. The list is […]
Pacific Standard Time: Begin the Rewrite
Ocean Park No. 67, 1973, Richard Diebenkorn. The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection courtesy of The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn Ocean Park No. 26, 1970, Richard Diebenkorn. Nerman Family Collection courtesy of The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn Pacific Standard Time, the sprawling art exposition that includes encampments at 60 different venues in the Los Angeles […]
The Other Coast, Reconsidered
Buster, by Billy Al Bengston (Courtesy of the artist) When I was coming of age as an artist in California in the late 60s and early 70s, the culture of contemporary art was centered unquestionably in New York City. Art Forum, Art in America et al gave small and occasional nods to what was happening […]