Art Talk

What a difference a week makes... seven times 24 little hours... Santa Ana winds and firestorms once more wrestled to the ground our cherished illusions of our idyllic life in Southern California…

Keeping up with what's happening on the Southern California art scene is not as easy as it used to be. In the last 25 years, existing museums have greatly expanded and new museums have opened, while…

When last year the Pompidou Centre in Paris organized the exhibition celebrating LA art, it was monumental, overwhelming, and slightly tedious in its academic intention to miss nothing, no matter how…

With rare exception, movies about famous painters prove to be a disappointment. The recent film about Gustav Klimt, with the formidable John Malkovich in the title role, was a futile attempt to captu…

September is the month when, after a summer lull, the art world kicks into high gear. And for me, last week turned out to be all art, all the time, virtually a 24/7 art explosion...

My dear listeners, I have no doubt that most of you are upstanding citizens with unimpeachable moral standards.  Therefore, it's with significant trepidation that I must confess to being tempted, and…

Three months have passed since my trip to Holland, but I'm still slightly foggy from – let's be honest – being overdosed. When I tell people that I stayed in Amsterdam, they knowingly smile and then,…

When I met Michael and Gabrielle Boyd for the first time at a museum function a few months ago, I knew immediately who they were, thanks to a recently published article about their collection in the …

Now that the Getty Museum has wisely chosen to undertake the painful but inevitable step of placating the Italian authorities by sending back to Italy forty antiquities from the museum's collection, …

One of the best kept secrets of LA's downtown art scene is REDCAT, a cutting-edge performance and exhibition space run by CalArts. Don't feel guilty if you haven't been there yet; it's not easy to fi…

When it comes to the official monuments decorating city squares in China, Libya, Iraq, and the former Soviet Union, one thing that all these oversized statues of local dictators have in common is the…

On any given day, Los Angeles teems with well-toned, fresh-faced hopefuls waiting for their big break. You can find them on the beach or if you get lucky, bump into one of them at Schwab's Drugstore …

Until I found in my mailbox the eye-catching catalog of Mary Heilmann's exhibition at the Orange County Museum of Art, I had never heard of her. The handsomely printed hardcover book, with its elegan…

Last month, I traveled through about a dozen European cities in just three weeks; it was all art, all the time, but don't feel sorry for me, it was not exactly heavy lifting. The invitation to visit …

Intrigued by an artwork that is new to me, I like to get very close and examine its texture.  It's not unlike having a handshake with a new acquaintance that hopefully confirms a first, favorable imp…

It's midnight, and I just said goodbye to the newlyweds with whom I shared a water taxi from the airport to the Piazza San Marco.  The square is still crowded with hundreds of people sitting in outdo…

Right now, there are two exhibitions in Los Angeles which have at first glance very little in common: one of the celebrated American sculptor Dan Flavin at LACMA and the other of the much lesser-know…

Let's be honest; we all like to check ourselves out in the mirror.  Whether or not we are pleased with what we see there is another matter.  In the last ten years, we Angelinos have had several chanc…

She is, to put it mildly, quite obese.  Actually, she is so huge that it's nearly impossible not to stare at her.  She has been a celebrity for so long that at this point, she doesn't mind the gawkin…