Commission Testimony, Continuing Controversy Surround Library Foundation and ALOUD
On November 8, the Board of Library Commissioners held their first meeting since Steinman and Moore were fired.
November 14, 2018
The Banned Emile Zola Book That Prefigured Black Friday
One day, after my usual coffee shop writing session, I walked around the block and ran into a bookmobile full of banned books. It was Banned Books Week, which happens each year in September, and a local chapter of the Banned Books Week Coalition was handing out free copies of books that have been banned, …
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Daniel McGinn: Three Poems
Phonophobia Have you seen the way children play? They will talk to a stick as if it were a man. The speak life into the air around them. They drag everything out and leave it on the lawn. They tear things into pieces. They dress dolls for dinner parties. They break what needs to be …
Hung Up: On Hauser & Wirth’s Witty Comeback
The Getty hangs Sally Mann’s photographs for her first major international exhibition, Toshio Matsumoto starts a 4 week tenure at Nonaka-Hill, the infamous Invader storms Over The Influence, and Denk proceeds to produce eclecticism at lightning speed with a Tim Ebner, Kasper Kovitz, and Donnie Molls group show… With so much to see, here’s the …
Sprawling Survey of Hip Chinese Art Impresses, Baffles
A gigantic dragon greets visitors to a new exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The dragon, 85 feet long and twisting above the ground-floor atrium of the museum, features a head made of junked bicycle parts and a long tail of twisted rubber inner tubes. It reminds you …
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They Write by Night, Episode 2
Mood Sultry The scholars like to say film noir’s imbued with a sense of menace and dread. Yeah, yeah, we know—sure. But not always. Sometimes it’s imbued with something else. People forget that the most famous line in those movies came out of the mouth of “Slim” to “Steve” in Howard Hawk’s To Have and …
Renaissance Nude at The Getty Center through January 27, 2019
For those of us enamored of the Western European art tradition,The Getty’s current exhibition, Renaissance Nude, is a bonanza. Although non-didactic, it is a thematic presentation utilizing specific works of art to elucidate its thesis that nudity appeared with frequency in works by both Italian and Northern European Renaissance artists. In that sense, it is a curatorial …
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Updating Icons: Mother of the Maid and King Kong
A new play about the mother of an iconic figure (Mother of the Maid) and a musical remake of a Hollywood classic (King Kong) deliver modern feminist perspectives on familiar material from European history and pop culture. The play has some depth and an exquisite lead performance while the tuner is cotton candy. The latter …
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Lights, Camera, Music, Chorus, Dancers…Action!
Argentinean tango in Northridge, contemporary choreography in Long Beach, World dance in Santa Monica, a dance film fest in Hollywood, a preview of the Merce Cunningham’s centennial in Hancock Park, and more SoCal dance this week. 5. Show and tell Combining her South African heritage and degrees in African dance from the University of Cape …
The Surreal Rise of LGBTQ Community in Different Professions
When it comes to expressing oneself, there are hundreds of different ways to do so. Many people take writing as a means to express themselves better, while others prefer to utilize color to express the state of their minds, and millions turn to music for the same purpose. You may have heard the phrase ‘art …
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This Valley Wants a Sterner Heart
There is so much to love, admire and respect about Luis Valdez, the man who brought an upstart Chicano theatre into the world in the 1960s with his El Teatro Campesino (The Peasant Theatre), starting with his actos, those short and defiant pieces first performed in the green fields of central California, then on city …
As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris
Paris without art is inconceivable. The art world permeates the city at all levels. It impacts people’s lifestyle, what they eat and its aesthetics, their fashion, their filmmaking, their architecture. As We Saw It – Part 4: Brushing Art in Paris is a potpourri of art seen during the summer of 2018. The focus was …
Cinema Italian Style
It is really difficult to see current Italian movies in Los Angeles, except for 5 days in November when the American Cinematheque hosts Cinema Italian Style organized by Istituto Luce-Cinecittà. This year is the 14th edition of this exciting cultural event that kicks off at the Egyptian on November 13 with the premiere of Dogman …