It’s apparently a big day for items about Los Angeles and food over here at the offices of The New York Observer. This one has both. Tonight at 7:30 p.m. there’s going to be a dramatic reading of Rachel Kushner’s new book The Flamethrowers in Los Angeles at 356 S. Mission Road, the huge warehouse space that artist Laura Owens is using to show her gigantic and beautiful new paintings and host various events. Read More
The Los Angeles Times ran a profile over the weekend of artist Catherine Opie, who has a show of photographs at L.A.’s Regen Projects opening in February. The most interesting bit is her explanation of why she resigned from the artist board at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles last summer along with John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger and Ed Ruscha, amidst the departure of the museum’s curator Paul Schimmel. Read More
Yesterday, the Academy announced its nominations for the Oscars. Exciting news for the world of pop culture, less so perhaps for the art world, which is generally more curious about shows of a different kind—those that will be opening in Los Angeles’s galleries on Oscars weekend. Read More
If, like The Observer, you enjoyed the Getty’s 2011 Pacific Standard Time initiative, and are looking for an excuse to return to Southern California (love visiting, couldn’t live there, as they say!), you are in luck. The Getty announced today that a new project focused on the area’s modern architecture, “Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.,” is in the works. Read More
Los Angeles’s Hammer Museum announced that L.A.–based curators Karin Higa and Michael Ned Holte have been selected to curate the sophomore outing of its biennial, “Made in L.A.” The first edition of the exhibition closed at the beginning of this month. Read More
In a major reversal, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art’s board announced that the institution will hire a chief curator to replace Paul Schimmel, who departed from the museum in June. Previously, the museum had not planned to replace Mr. Schimmel, instead using guest curators to augment its existing curatorial staff when organizing shows. Read More
Los Angeles County Museum of Art has announced today the dates and honorees for its 2012 “Art + Film Gala.” The event will take place Oct. 27 and will honor artist Ed Ruscha and director Stanley Kubrick, with Steven Spielberg paying tribute to the late filmmaker. Read More
Tweens, those young people suffering through the awkward stages of pre-adolescence, have long been an inspiration for artists. In 1858, Lewis Carroll snapped his muse, the Lolita-esque child Alice Lidell, striking a provocative pose in tattered rags. Richard Prince put a fresh lens on this fascination with youth and sexuality for his 1983 work Spiritual America for which he appropriated a sultry image of 10-year-old Brooke Shields, nude and heavily made up, with her lower legs obscured by a thick mist. And that was all before there was such a demographic as the “tween.” Read More
Here is a video, courtesy of Pitchfork, of the Beastie Boys’ Mike D giving a tour of the show he curated at LA MOCA. It seems worthwhile to mention his own cautionary words on the video: “I would say, matter-of-factly, that a Youtube clip does not do this justice.” Still, it all looks pretty Read More
