Exhibitions

I recently found myself sitting on a couch in a dark room inside the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts at USC watching a play-test of a brand-new interactive video game.  I use the term ‘interactive,’ because it was less like your typical Nintendo or PlayStation proceeding, and more akin to one of those ‘choose your own adventure’ movies, only digitalized, intricately detailed, and not a little influenced by the likes of Spielberg or Christopher Nolan.  The game takes place in a slightly futuristic society, and at one point, the protagonist, a detective, is sitting in his beat-down, windowless office going over clues, when he puts on a pair of special sunglasses.  These sunglasses allow him, and by proxy, us, the audience, to perceive his spacial environment as a pristine mountain-top, or a Redwood forest.  The effect is novel, and provokes a round of ‘wouldn’t-that-be-cool’ comments from anybody who’s watching, yet it also brings up an interesting, modern phenomenon.  I call it the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome, and it works like this: you’re sitting in a beat-down, windowless office, but…it’s not to you.

Don’t get me wrong, this syndrome is hardly new or original, although it is intensifying in our digital age.  And one person who’s exploring this intensification is artist Jeffrey Wells with his newest exhibit Seeing While Seeing at the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Art.  Wells attempts to recreate the optical illusions of everyday life—the after-image of an exit sign, the undulating intersection of two vertical walls that meet at a right-angle—using video projections.  Thus the viewer is left questioning whether or not an illusion is physical or digital.  Both are percepts, separate from what some would call “objective reality,” but only one is an intentionally manipulated percept.

What Wells—along with the interactive video game, to a certain extent—may be attempting to illustrate is the danger of the ‘it’s not to you’ syndrome.  Because how do you really know what is?  Or who’s presenting what to you, for that matter?  And as the line between what is and what is to you gets smaller and smaller, what becomes of you?

Jeffrey Wells’s Seeing While Seeing is on view until April 17th at Project Room 1 in the Bergamont Station Arts Center, a part of the Santa Monica Museum of Arts.  Bergamont Station is located at 2525 Michigan Ave, Building G-1.  For more information, please call (310) 586-6488, or visit www.smmoa.org.

Ever wonder what happened to Ed Templeton?  That professional skateboarder turned internationally renowned artist, photographer, D.I.Y. innovator, entrepreneur, ‘Beautiful Loser,’ and book publisher?  Well if you haven’t, then Ed Templeton has.

His eclectic career as both a skater and an artist has always seemed to be about his own relationship to time and motion.  In his famous photography book, Teenage Smokers, for instance, each medium to close-up image of a young person with a cigarette has the feeling of personal impermanence, like a flash-memory of a kid you might have seen at the mall once when you were nine.

Templeton, especially in his most recent work, seems to be obsessed with these fragile, ephemeral moments, and what they might mean.  His 2008 book, Deformer, which took him 11 years to complete, examines his youth growing up in the ultra-conservative suburban “incubator” of Orange County, using childhood letters, notes, photographs, sketches, and paintings to tell his story with as much physical accuracy as possible—even if it’s all long gone.

His latest photography show, The Seconds Pass, at the Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Culver City once again has Templeton on the move.  These thirty-some separate collages of pictures, mostly all taken from the vantage point of a moving vehicle, attempt to capture exactly where he’s been these last few years, so as not to miss a passing second.

Ed Templeton’s The Seconds Pass can be viewed at the Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Culver City until April 3.  Roberts and Tilton is located at 5801 Washinton Blvd.  For more information, please call (323) 549-0223, or visit www.robertsandtilton.com.

When most people think of portraiture, images of aristocracy adorned in their finest medieval robes atop a crackling grand fireplace in some remote European castle probably come to mind.  When I mention that I focused on 18th-19th Century portraiture in college, people look as if they’re about to fall asleep before I can finish the sentence.  But this past Saturday, I attended a lecture at Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum presented by John Klein, Associate Professor from Washington University in St. Louis, that reminded me of the magnetism and presence of portraits. In his lecture, “Matisse, Picasso and Beyond: How Portraiture Survived Modernism,” he examined the means by which the art of human representation prevailed through an era defined by its antipathy to historical convention.  Through the study of modernist masters like Picasso, Matisse and Giacometti, Klein arrives at a universal truth: human beings will always and forever be obsessed with themselves, others, and how others perceive them.

“Damn Portraits!” began Professor Klein, quoting Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres—an abrupt and honest exclamation that served as a perfect prelude to the difficult battle that portraiture was doomed to fight once the modern age descended on a timeless artistic tradition.  Ingres, like many artists of his time, despised portraiture.

He often complained that the overwhelming number of commissions from high society kept him from focusing on “more important” subject matter.  In the 19th Century, it seemed as if the only demographic that had an affinity for portraiture was the social elite.  When the 20th Century began, many creative figures decried the art form’s declining relevance.  Portraiture posed a series of difficult questions for the artist: How does one capture the complexity of human identity? How can an inner quality be expressed outwardly?  How can a still representation do justice to a personality trait that is defined by its movement? Modernism, says Klein, provided the platform that was so desperately needed: a movement that joined portraiture with the abstraction of the avant-garde.

Through an array of examples, Klein revealed how artists like Picasso and Matisse were uninterested with the centrality of the sitter, which historically would have been fundamental.  In works like Girl with Green Eyes (1908), Matisse blended his sitters into a decorative pattern where no single component of the painting could dominate.  Picasso’s Gertrude Stein (1906), on the other hand, showcases both the artist and the sitter, serving as a visual statement of the height and legitimacy of both Stein’s and Picasso’s careers. Klein taught the audience that through the execution of her face, as was common with many of Picasso’s portraits, the artist imposed a mask-like quality that hardly resembled Stein’s genuine appearance. The primitivization of her face is a symbolic and telling mark of the beginning of an important aesthetic shift.

After the First World War, artists became increasingly cynical of humanistic values, and rapid advances in photographic technology threatened representational portraiture.  Expressive abstraction began to take hold, providing the artist with infinite ways to communicate power, status and legitimacy—and the line between art and vulgarity became harder to define.  Marcus Harvey’s Myra (1995) is an example of how modern portraiture could become a PR dream come true. Harvey’s portrait of Myra Hindley, a woman convicted of murdering multiple innocent child victims, is comprised of tiny flesh colored hands, hands meant to represent those of the children that she murdered.

Portraiture’s many levels of expression, as in Myra, have the potential for endless symbolism and emotion.  I could feel the tension in the lecture hall when Myra came on screen, and I could see that the man next to me was trying to conceal his goose bumps.

Professor Klein’s lecture was most certainly a personal highlight of my many years of studying and appreciating portraiture. Regardless of one’s knowledge of art, he was able to communicate his subject with admirable passion and vigor.  Professor Klein carried the double-barreled theme of portraiture and its modernist survival from the turn of the 20th Century through the fall of Saddam Hussein. It was quite frankly one of the most fun Saturdays I’ve had in a while, and I don’t think I was alone.  The jam-packed lecture hall’s enthusiastic applause was proof enough that nobody was falling asleep before Klein could finish his sentences.

-By Brittany Krasner

The Norton Simon’s calendar of educational lectures will certainly expand your art related intellectual repertoire.  For more information on upcoming lectures, please visit their website.

Kimberly Brooks had a great idea recently.  The local, Venice-based painter decided to look into the art that plays a role in our everyday lives and the people holding the cards behind it.  She looked beyond museum shows, beyond advertisements, and into the world of fashion that is so often considered less of an art form and more of a necessity.  The men and women working behind the scenes to make our world a touch more glamorous are artists who recognize that the necessity of fashion can be one of the more creative enterprises in our lives and it can be one that makes (or doesn’t make) the right impression.

In her latest series of paintings, called “The Stylist Project”, Kimberly Brooks scoured the world of stylists, costume designers, and Creative Directors to delve deeper into the minds of who exactly is dressing our most photographed celebrities and our most watched characters in TV and film.  She painted Vogue’s Creative Director Grace Coddington and Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant in their most comfortable settings (albeit in their most fabulous clothes).  She painted Elizabeth Stewart, a stylist for the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar, with a gorgeous and colorful palette and she captured the nervy and frazzled essence that is Rachel Zoe.

We got a chance to sit down with Brooks to discuss just what went into “The Stylist Project” and the upcoming show at Taylor de Cordoba gallery in Culver City.  We learned very quickly that stylist is a pretty loose term to us amateurs, but in the business, a stylist can be anyone who fashions a photo shoot (often-times called a Creative Director) to someone who styles a celebrity for a red carpet event.  Brooks’ colors and masterful way with a paintbrush allows us into this inner sanctum of fashion via the world of art – it’s almost as if we know them just by looking at these paintings.

Check out our video interview and go say hi to your new friends (the stylists, of course) at the opening reception at Taylor de Cordoba gallery on Saturday evening (February 27).  The show runs through April 3, 2010.  For more information, please click here or call (310) 559-9156.

From George Washington on the Delaware, to Huck Finn on the Mississippi, to Katrina on the Gulf, rivers make up an integral part of the geographical, historical, cultural, political, and artistic landscape of the America we know.  And Los Angeles is no exception.  Yes it’s true that for the good part of the year, the L.A. River remains hopelessly barren, and provides a better bike path to Long Beach than it does a waterway.  But if you’ve ever actually step foot into that mighty concrete divider of our city, then you’d know it’s every bit as organic and symbolic as any other great river.  Whether it’s the plastic bag trees, the graffiti-worn banks, or the garbage disposal current, one would be hard-pressed to not find the same beauty that Mark Twain once described in his memoir, Life on the Mississippi, as “…a wonderful book…which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it had uttered them with a voice.”

On show until July 3^rd at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, the collective exhibition entitled The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River (UGLAR for short) also uses the metaphor of a book, only this one screams its secrets.  Consisting of a wide range of contemporary, LA-based artists, this unique assortment of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and illustrations all converge like tributaries into one central theme: the Los Angeles River.

One oil painting called “Confluence” by Tyson Dolan portrays the intersection of two concrete canals, meeting and opening into the space of the viewer.  The colors are muted, almost foggy, and with the installed background sounds of dripping water and distant train bells echoing throughout the room, one gets the distinct feeling of being alone and drifting through Dolan’s industrial river-basin.

Another piece, up-and-comer Rob Sato’s “Land Admiral Lefebvre’s Fleet Makes Sail”, takes a more surreal, maximalist route.  This multi-medium, ‘Where’s Waldo’ mash-up depicts an elaborate, farcical, eighteenth-century showdown between the Blue-Coats and the Reds on the battlefield of the Los Angeles River.  There’s of course no water for the huge wooden ships, so the implied Admiral Lefebvre sails upon his own ocean, with hundreds of tiny minions carrying the actual waves themselves.  Not to be ignored in this spectacle are Sato’s frequent dips into brash absurdity: slave-like giants, a monstrous fish-man-beast riding a whale like an Avatar pterodactyl, and if you look hard enough, a modern car wreck upon the bridge over the river.

The biggest work on show, however, is a mural completed by all the contributing artists.  It’s title is “The River Experiment,” and it speaks to the theme of the collection, which is one of evolution, or perhaps more accurately, mutation.  Because The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River – to complete Mark Twain’s quote – “[is] not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”

The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River runs until July 3^rd at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.  For more information, please visit pmcaonline.org, or call (626) 568-3665.

Rachel Whiteread, Study for Village - 1st, 2004

It is fascinating to see a sculptor’s preliminary study of his or her work. Especially if the artwork has been created, it is a glimpse into the ever evolving nature of the creative process.  These type of drawings are like a secondary, kid sister manifestation of the artist’s idea.

Rachel Whiteread, House, 1993

Speaking of sculptors, Rachel Whiteread, one of the British Young Artists, is well-known for her encompassing sculptures that depict negative space. For an example, the work House is a concrete cast of a house’s inside.  It is as if someone had poured concrete through the chimney, filled up the interior space of the house, and then cracked the roof and walls away with a huge chisel.  But before the sculpture, there were the drawings.

The Hammer Museum presents the first museum retrospective of Whiteread’s drawings and other preliminary work. And the drawings are coupled with objects that Whiteread found and sought inspiration from for her artistic practice.

This show will make you want to dust of your black book to get drawing again.

Rachel Whiteread Drawings closes April 25th, 2010.  For more information, please click here.

When you stop to think about women in countries like Argentina or in the countryside of Spain, what do you picture? If you’re anything like me, it’s a romantic vision of a flamenco dancer in a black dress with dramatic makeup, a lace fan, and the attitude of a seasoned temptress.  Ruven Afanador knows this woman – in fact, he knows many of them.

Photographed in a desert looking uncomfortably hot in long black dresses and striking wigs, Afanador’s women are the bold image of Latin women that remains burned in our brains from John Singer Sargent paintings and films by Luis Bunuel and Federico Fellini.  They are the women who look like they could teach you about the ways of the world in the most basic sense – they look like they’re from the earth.  That’s particularly why Afanador’s photographs, in his “Mil Besos” exhibition are so memorable, enticing, and true.  He photographs women of all shapes and sizes in various forms of undress at their most intense – one image shows two women nearly kissing, one shows three women who look like they’re on the verge of spontaneously imploding (in good and bad ways), and one shows two women in the midst of a certain kind of dance and wearing long skirts that almost seem connected.

In his “Torero” exhibit, showing in the smaller of Fahey/Klein’s two rooms, the images are more portrait-like and show the young men who become bull-fighters in all their embroidered, detailed, costume-like majesty.  There are the simple parts, like a dusty pair of shoes with a bow, there are images that celebrate the male body, and there are images that show the emotion behind such a dangerous and historically rich sport.

All in all, Afanador’s images, from both exhibits, succeed in so many ways.  They not only enhance the melodramatic and quixotic vision of Latin men and women, but they also seem to show the familiar and human side of these gorgeous specimens.

Ruven Afanador’s “Mil Besos” and “Torero” will be on view at Fahey/Klein Gallery through March 27.  Please click here for more information.

No matter how many times I drag myself to the movie theater to see shows like Avatar in 3D or the latest Batman in I-Max, I always feel like I’m doing just that: dragging.  Throughout the last century, the entertainment industry has undeniably evolved, but whether it’s for better or for worse is strictly a matter of opinion.  Personally, there has never been a morsel of doubt that I extract the greatest amusement from plays, books, movies and performances that are inextricably linked to the past.  Call me old fashioned, old-soul, call me grandma, but there is something about the classics (they’re called classics for a reason) that resonates from the works of Tinseltown’s youth.  Something that I can’t quite put my finger on—something like star quality.

“I don’t know what is, but I’ve got it,” reads the inscription at the entrance to Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward, the current exhibition at the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts & Sciences.  Noel Coward embodied the term “Renaissance man” with the grace, style, and elegance of a true dandy, and the Academy pays homage to him with a compelling installation of photographs, antique personal items, letters, films, sheet music, posters, playbills, set and costume designs, and personal clothing.

Primarily known as a playwright (Hay Fever, Private Lives, Cavalcade, Design for Living and Blithe Sprit to name a few, all later adapted for the cinema), and a celebrated composer (Mad About the Boy, I’ll See You Again), Coward’s immense talent and contribution to the arts encompassed nearly every form.  Star Quality is the first exhibition to shine light on the full breadth of his copious talents as a stage and screen director, actor, cabaret performer, painter, and wartime patriot, all while evoking the world of sawdust, tinsel, and naïve opulence that characterized early 20th Century Hollywood.

The tone of the exhibition is set immediately when you enter the 4th floor gallery of the Academy.  Large black and white photographs radiate Coward’s star quality, presence, and personality where he, in his signature dressing gown with a cigarette, preens as a dapper Hollywood darling.  Mannequins display his trademark loungewear, some flanked by caricatures that capture the flamboyant and distinctive personality that earned him a reputation his peers regarded as frivolous.

One cannot help but be impressed by the array of artifacts on display from Coward’s career.  A fascinating collection of cigarette holders (many gifts from Hollywood starlets), embroidered slippers, and letters provide a glimpse into Coward’s personal and private life. Photos taken on the set of The Untamed Lady show the close and affectionate relationship between Coward and Mary Pickford, one of his first and dearest friends in Los Angeles.  A sapphire blue dressing gown, worn by Moira Lister in the production of Present Laughter, comes to life against an array of photographs from the film.  It is a thrill to wander through this collection and see the evolution of the creative process, from a nascent thought into a polished end product.

Great genius in any form can be met with skepticism and rejection.  Coward’s star shined the brightest late in his life, and full recognition of his brilliance was awarded posthumously. One photograph in particular had a lasting effect—an image of Julie Andrews (playing Gertrude Lawrence) and Daniel Massey (playing Noel Coward) from the 1968 movie Star!. It served as a reminder of Coward’s increasing public popularity towards the end of his life (the film was released just 5 years before his death).

Drawing on public and private collections, and with unparalleled access to the Coward Archives, Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward showcases a remarkably robust, multifaceted and marvelous career, and recalls an era of Los Angeles history known for its lavishness, luxury, and innovation.  Coward’s is a legacy that even through the glamour of Hollywood remains deeply human.  Having what it takes in this town is not enough to achieve your dreams, but if you have star quality, you just might be able to do it all.

-By Brittany Krasner

Star Quality: The World of Noel Coward is on view through April 18th at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences on Wilshire Blvd.  Please visit their website for public viewing hours and more information. Admission is free!

It was only a little earlier today that the Los Angeles City Council voted down the proposition to eliminate the Transient Occupancy Tax (the TOT), the sole source of governmental funding behind of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA).  This action, had it been carried through, would have effectively shut down 18 cultural centers—including the Barnsdall Arts Center in Hollywood and the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock, host to the Sony Pictures Media Arts Program for middle school youth—as well as five professional theatre facilities, and an array of classes, programs, and cultural events.

Such a worthwhile institution as the DCA might seem like an easy stronghold in such a creatively centered city as Los Angeles, but it was largely due to incredible advocacy organizations like Arts for LA that the proposition was shot down.  They, along with other activist groups and privately-funded museums such as the Hammer, urged their supporters to write letters to their councilmen, and voice their opinions at the City Council public hearing this Wednesday.  Some handed out stickers with the phrase “Arts Fuel LA,” others toted hand-made signs, and one woman addressed the council in a full-on angel costume.

Lo and behold, these efforts proved successful, and as a website strictly devoted toward promoting the arts, artists, and cultural community of Los Angeles, FineArtsLA would like to sincerely thank both the City Council members, and the hard-working advocacy organizations for their aid and congratulate them on their accomplishment today.

Of course the fight for the arts is never through—the council issue still undecided is whether the current cultural grants will be honored—but in celebration of this week’s victory, may I suggest checking out the DCA-funded Municipal Arts Gallery in the Barnsdall Arts Park.  From January 24th through April 18th, they are hosting an enormous series of participatory exhibitions entitled “Actions, Conversations, and Intersections,” all aimed at enhancing the artistic community of Los Angeles.  In residency this week is Smart Gals Productions, whose patented “Reading Preserve and Speakeasy Collection” features public readings from some of LA’s best authors, including John Albert, Noel Alumit, and Aimee Bender (my personal favorite).

The Smart Gals will toast off their weeklong program on Sunday, February 7th at 2:00pm with the collaborative “Winter Picnic Performance,” a fun mix of music, theatre, fresh bread courtesy of the Bicycle Bread Company, and hot coffee from Cafécito Organico.  So come along, fuel the arts that fuel LA, and if you get the chance, thank somebody.

Curated by Edith Abeyta and Michael Lewis Miller, “Actions, Conversations, and Intersections” runs until April 18th, 2010 at the Los Angeles Municipal Arts Gallery in the Barnsdall Art Park.  For more information, visit www.actionsconversationsintersections.com

The relationship between people and animals, domesticated and wild, is endlessly fascinating. Some we admire from afar with awe, like the cuddly-looking but ferocious polar bear, while others play ball with us on the front yard or beg us incessantly for a bite of our burrito.  Living closely with an animal reveals just how intelligent, emotional, and unabashedly different they are.  Currently, Louis Stern Fine Arts is hosting an exhibition that through a number of critically acclaimed black and white photographs, captures the physical reality of animals with remarkable emotion. Anima: The Photography of Jean Francois Spricigo explores the relationship between animals and nature, but also provokes the viewer to contemplate our place amongst these wonderful creatures.

Belgian-born Spricigo, winner of the 2008 Laureate of the Prix de Photographie de l’Academie des Beaux-Arts, is one of the art world’s most eloquently outspoken animal advocates.  His admiration and respect for his subjects is evident in his photography.  Many popular animal photographers subject the animal to human confines a la Hallmark (kittens in picnic baskets), but Spricigo’s photographs capture more candid and intimate moments.  It’s easy to forget that he and his camera were present—his photographs evoke such an untouched solitude.

The first images that I experienced on entering the gallery were a combination of animals and natural objects, displayed in a double-triptych form.  This series of six images, some of abstract landscapes, others of animals in motion, immediately set the stage for the exhibition’s narrative. Two ducks swim along their way, utterly oblivious to the camera, while the sweet and vulnerable eyes of a dog stare right at the viewer, beckoning compassion and understanding.  In another photograph, a single dog almost lost in a blanket of night sky, offset by blurred city lights in the distance, serves as a harsh reminder of the divide that separates the manufactured human world from the visceral animal world.

The cats, dogs, birds, leopards, horses and cows represented in Spricigo’s work are captured as if caught off guard.  Spricigo’s photographs reveal a deep, soulful quality in his otherwise “common” subjects.  One piece captures the hearty laugh of a bah-ing billy goat with such depth that you feel as if you’re in on the joke.  Other heartwarming images include a fluffy, tiny, inquisitive square-shaped bird, and a playful, rambunctious dog, equipped with a stick and ready for the chase.  These images call to mind feelings of companionship, and at times lend a “family portrait”-like quality to the exhibition.

The interesting thing about Spricigo’s approach to his subject matter is that while his photography does call to mind the connection we have for animals, it also exposes them in moments of isolation and reflection.  Many of his photographs resemble impressionistic paintings in that they are mildly surrealist, blurred, and depict the animals in their natural, daily, and often private activities.  The third room of the exhibition houses the greatest number of these photographs, where Spricigo’s skill is just as impressive as his subject matter.  A lone horse at pasture is practically absorbed into the mist—something Spricigo depicts as hundreds of softly focused dots, while across the room, a sharply focused shot of a bird’s feet on a fence seamlessly coexists.  It is this diversity and range, not only in the photographs of Anima but also in the natural world, that make the psychological complexity of animals so enthralling.

-by Brittany Krasner

After a two month run at the Palais de l’Institute de France, Anima: The Photography of Jean Francois Spricigo has made quite a splash at its American debut in West Hollywood and is on view at Louis Stern Fine Arts through February 13. For more information, please call (310) 276-0147 or click here.