Painting

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens and LACMA are both about to come into a little bit of an inheritance.  The private collection of Sidney and Frances Lasker Brody, which is filled to the brim with enviable works, will go up for auction at Christie’s in May.  According to the LA Times’ Culture Monster, The Huntington is set to get a share of the upcoming sale, while LACMA will be the lucky recipient of a 12-by-11-foot mural that the Brody’s commissioned from Matisse.  Go back. Read that again.  They commissioned a mural, called “La Garde,” from Matisse.

The Brody’s served on both museum boards and their collection and their house are both points of pride for art and architecture lovers in Los Angeles.  Christie’s has estimated that the sale will garner $150 million especially considering that they’ll be auctioning off works by Picasso, Giacometti, Braque, and Degas.

Click here, or here, to read more about it.  Wonder if we can afford anything up for auction!

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.

Pablo Uribe, Atardecer, 2008 (Dusk) - video still

This year, the Los Angeles Art Show made its home at Los Angeles Convention Center.  This venue change provided more space for gallery booths that ranged from contemporary works such as the Wall Project’s Shepard Fairey and Thierry Noir painted walls to landscapes galore — and even more space for project-based installations. The Vox Humana on-site art performance presented street artists Mear One, Kofie, Retna, and El Mac who showed off their talents over the length of the fair on large-scale canvases.  And speaking of more room, I wondered how Sidestreet Projects got one of their woodworking workshop buses into the fair.  These school buses are outfitted with project stations for elementary school children so they can make a nuts and bolts washer sandwich and one FUNdred dollar bills, which I am sure we all could use more of these days.

One of my favorite pieces of the art fair was Pablo Uribe’s video, Atardecer (2008), which screened in a makeshift dark room in the Guest Country program booth’s rear.  While looking at the other works from the 34° 53’ 0” S – 56° 10’ 0” W show, I heard animals sounds curiously mix with the ambient art fair noise.  Upon stepping into the screening area, there was a video of an older man standing before a black background looking as if he were about to perform a gorgeous aria.  Instead of sweet notes pouring out of his mouth, the sound of a dog’s bark came out.  And then the cooing of a bird!  The actor was imitating the sounds of native rain forest animals.

Willy Rojas, Egg

Willy Rojas’ photographs at Barcelona’s Villa del Arte booth depicted miniature figurines interacting with their food-based environment.  Tiny people ski down slopes of salt or a wedge of hard cheese.  A man broke the shell of an egg with his sledgehammer while a couple ice skates on an orange hued soup.

Speaking of food, the Timothy Yarger Gallery presented Jean Wells’ The Giant Kiss quite literally.  The huge chocolate-scented foil wrapped sculpture demanded a tongue-in-cheek presence while paying homage to Claes Oldenburg’s shop.

The Rebecca Hossack Gallery held quite a few treats, including a gorgeous papel picado-esque paper cutting in the shape of a peacock (Ian Penney), a piece of toast with an image of Shakespeare burnt onto it à la the Virgen de Guadalupe (Maria Morrow), and also Phil Shaw’s photographs of brightly colored bookshelves, which was a voyeur’s delight to snoop the book titles.

And on my way out, I spotted three Jeff Koon’s puppy vases filled with fresh flowers guarding Jean Dubuffet’s Tapis at the Jane Kahan Gallery.  In my mind, they were the guardians of the LA Art Show — a much friendlier and kitsch version of Cerberus.

What does pop culture mean to you? The first thing anyone might think is Andy Warhol – largely considered the father of pop art – and his Marilyn Monroe, Campbell’s soup, and Mickey Mouse prints.  On now through February 20 at the William Turner Gallery at Bergamot Station is your chance to redefine pop art for our generation.  Large-scale, colorful prints by two artists, Mikel Alatza and Kadir Lopez are full of color, texture, and familiar faces and things.

Mikel Alatza’s works range from a skull with the Mastercard logo to a clowned, vibrant, contorted painting of Julia Roberts.  Angelina Jolie has been given fire engine red hair and a bright red clown nose next to Paris Hilton whose tan looks even more fiercely dangerous than usual.

Kadir Lopez takes a more muted and almost vintage approach to the pop art world.  His Shell print features a river and skyline fitted within a Shell gasoline sign while his Wrigley’s piece has a distinctly political, textural feel.

Andy Warhol had his finger on the pulse of popular culture in the 70s (we still use the phrase he coined “fifteen minutes of fame” with great frequency) and perhaps its time we find an artist who knows how to transform our current pop culture icons into wild, vivacious prints that speak to us today.  Are you team Alatza, team Lopez, or both?

Mikel Alatza and Kadir Lopez’ exhibits will be up at William Turner Gallery through February 20.  Please call (310) 453-0909 or click here.

We imagine that a great many of you, dear readers, have guests in town for the holidays.  If you’re lucky enough to have them staying at your house, you’ll appreciate this little listing of places to send them so that they can experience all the art and culture that LA has to offer. (Remind them that Woody Allen was wrong when he said it was only frozen yogurt and right turns on red…)

Bergamot Station

A healthy sized collection of art galleries in Santa Monica, Bergamot Station does actually have something for every walk of life.  Your sister-in-law prefers installations while your uncle is a photography nut? Send them west of the 405 to this once dilapidated train station for a day filled with some of LA’s most innovative galleries.  They’ve even got a café, salon, and vintage clothing shop on site, so let them know they could be occupied for hours!

Bergamot Station is located at 2525 Michigan Ave in Santa Monica.  Please call (310) 828-4001 or click here for more information.

Annenberg Space for Photography

Your guests will surely appreciate a jaunt to Annenberg Space for Photography’s latest exhibit: SPORT: Iooss and Leifer.  Read our take on it here.  It’s a spectacular collection that chronicles the recent history of sports including inspiring snaps of Serena Williams and Mohammad Ali.  They have no excuse to come back before grabbing a bite at the little café downstairs and then maybe catching a movie across the street at the Century City shopping center – drop a hint about your favorite shops in the mall.

The Annenberg Space for Photography is located at 2000 Avenue of the Stars #10 in Century City.  Call (213) 403-3000 for more information or click here.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

If you’ve got guests over New Year’s Eve, grab a couple seats to see Big Bad Voodoo Daddy take advantage of the unparalleled acoustics at Disney Hall.  There’s a show at 7:00pm and one at 10:30pm – we’d recommend a quick bite either before or after the performance at Kendall’s Brasserie across the street at the Dorothy Chandler to help ring in the New Year!

Walt Disney Concert Hall is located at 111 South Grand Ave. in Downtown LA.  Please call (323) 850-2000 or click here for more information.

Getty Villa in Malibu

There is no better place to remind your guests that you live in paradise than the Getty Villa in Malibu.  It’s free to view the ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiques and objets d’art, you’ve just got to make a reservation beforehand for parking.  On view now at the Villa is an exhibition called “Reconstructing Identity: A Statue of a God from Dresden.” Once you’ve gotten your fill of the gorgeous views and Roman-inspired architecture, head a bit farther down PCH to Cross Creek Road, where you’ll find Taverna Tony’s (delicious Greek food) and some dangerous shopping.

The Getty Villa is located at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.  Please call (310) 440-7300 or click here for more information.

We all dream in our own style – some of us have dreams of grandiose places, some have anxiety dreams about some upcoming event, and the lucky ones have kinky dreams.  It often takes more than just looking at someone to work out what their dreams might look like.  But, and I’m really generalizing here, I have a feeling that the two artists currently on view at LeBasse Projects in Culver City have got the wonderfully indie dreams of film favorites like, say, Ellen Page or Michael Cera down.

On one hand, Scott Belcastro’s exhibit, called “Chasing the Last Glimpse of Light,” is full of paintings (somewhat big, acrylic paintings) that show a sort of Where The Wild Things Are existence with fuzzy mountains, a red menacing sky, and a lone reindeer beneath the stars.  He has a simplistic painting style with colors that are more muted than vibrant – the paintings are ultimately a delicate view of the wild and twisted world we live in.

Then, there’s Linda Kim and her exhibit, “A Light Within.”  The two painters easily complement each other – her style has a similarly minimalist, yet dreamlike quality with animals making their way through the mist or sleeping beneath an intensely blue sky.  The immediate difference between those two is actually their use of color.  Where Kim employs color blocking techniques and a more diverse and concentrated use of hues, Belcastro seems to want you to wander through his world with a more fragile touch.  Kim also presents her work on little wood “houses” – which really make you wish you could crawl inside and lay down.  You’d probably have some pretty crazy dreams in there.

Scott Belcastro and Linda Kim’s works will be on display at LeBasse Projects through January 2010.  For more information, please call (310) 558-0200 or click here.

It’s hard trying to keep up on what’s what.  Here is round-up of art news that came our way:

• More than just a hobby — There are some people making serious cash with arts and crafts.  No macaroni sculptures or macramé to be found.  And it will make you want to consider taking up knitting.  [New York Times]

• Don’t just dress like an artist –  Read like one, too.  Inspired by Jerry Saltz’s book, An Ideal Syllabus, Tyler Green asks artists their favorite or most-valued books.  Your Amazon wishlist will be growing.  [Modern Art Notes]

• The Power List – There aren’t too many power suits to be found in the art world.  Well, maybe a few.  Here is Art + Auction’s list of power players for the year.  [Art + Auction]

• ‘Tis the season for top tens — Here we go: fascinating museum exhibitions, architecture moments, classical music moments, and theatre productions.  [LA Times]

• Lost, then found — A Leonardo da Vinci painting stolen in 2003 has been recovered and is now exhibited at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.  Whew!  Close one…  [BBC]

• Not just regular ol’ archaeology — It’s artist archaeology?  Teams of scientists are looking into where’s the final remains of Caravaggio. [Telegraph]

• Yes or no? — What is contemporary art and what isn’t contemporary art.  You decide.  [e-flux]

• The course load — It isn’t Drawing 101 anymore.  Here’s a few art classes across the country that weren’t offered when you were in school.  Times are a-changin’.  [Art Net]

• New year, new leadership – The Downtown Art Walk announces a new executive director: Jay Lopez, the force behind Beyond Eden, East Hollywood Day of the Dead, and the Silver Lake Gallery Alliance. [LA Magazine]

• In the knick of time – The Centre Pompidou reopens after a 24 day strike just in time for your Christmas in Paris.  That is, if you are getting sick of your 80 degree weather in LA.  [Art Info]

With Art Basel Miami Beach securely behind us now, the remaining weeks before we kick off the new year should be spent reflecting and looking forward.

The undercurrent of 2008’s string of art fairs, festivals, and biennials was the sting of the recession – sales were down across the board, works were priced significantly lower at auction houses, and the number of artists and galleries showing had decreased from years before.  If that was 2008’s unspoken theme, 2009’s theme was surely a wait-and-see attitude.  The recession has shown signs of lifting, depending on how optimistic you are, and the art world is treading lightly and with baited breath.

This year, Art Basel Miami saw more than 250 galleries participate with exhibits featuring over 2,000 artists including Hannah Wilke, Marilyn Minter, James Rosenquist, and Dana Schutz.  Galleries that represented the City of Angels include Blum & Poe, Cherry and Martin, Mixografia, and Roberts & Tilton.  What was most important to the art world at this year’s Miami show, however, was whether or not we’d all feel the market had stabilized.  Mission accomplished.  It’s largely agreed upon that this years Art Basel Miami was a stronger show than last year’s with a host of veteran collectors and up-and-coming arts aficionados at every turn.

And just like that, 2010 will be here in the blink of an eye bringing with it a confidence in the market that was largely absent in 2008.  Fairs, festivals, and shows may be scaled down and galleries may still be closing, but now there’s an air of resurgence and renaissance as opposed to a feeling of chaos, uncertainty, and failure.

Take the Whitney Biennial 2010, for example.  While the show will be toned down this year – exhibiting 55 artists as opposed to 100 in 2006 and utilizing only the Whitney Museum as opposed to multiple locations – it will be no less an examination of the American art world at large.  First, its relatively small size reflects the art market in a tough economic climate.  Second, and more thrilling, is how many LA-based artists will be represented in the show, proving again that LA’s art scene is nothing to shake a stick at.  Twelve out of 55 is a pretty good percentage from a city whose art scene can be often overlooked.  Pasadena-born artist Pae White and her colorful installations will be there, Martin Kersels, too, and British import Thomas Houseago will present his new sense of self as an Angeleno and his wild man/beast sculptures.  Alongside recognizable names and heavyweights, in true American fashion, the Whitney Biennial will show a number of emerging artists like LA-based Hannah Greely and Lesley Vance.

All in all, how much a work sells for is only as important as the reaction it triggers – when the market is on its upward climb, that’s when innovation and creativity are valued most.