Art Talk

These have been heady days. And I'm not even talking about politics. Only a few weeks ago the art market reached a seemingly insane high with the sale by David Geffen of two post-World War II paintin…

Right now, there are two exhibitions in Southern California--one in San Diego and the other in Los Angeles--both speaking volumes about the ways savvy museum directors and curators develop relationsh…

Being an art critic means being open to an endless stream of visual information.  I guess it's a professional hazard to respond to every picture, to every image -- the good, the great, and the ugly -…

By my nature I'm not a pessimist but last week, reading about the sale of mid-century paintings--one by Jasper Johns and the other by Willem de Kooning--for $143.5 million made me rather sad; not for…

Since World War II the number of new museums in the United States and Europe has multiplied and it seems that no museum--either old or new--is safe from the seemingly never-ending expansion with the …

After an unprecedented fourteen month investigation by the California Attorney General's office, here comes the conclusion that surprises no one: the trustees of the J. Paul Getty Trust, one of the r…

Little did I know what might happen when I agreed to participate in a special event at the Getty Museum last spring, introducing the screening of the Russian Ark, a whimsical movie shot entirely insi…

There are some situations when it's difficult to decide whether the news is good or bad. A month ago, I read in the LA Times that the sixty-five foot tall sculpture by Claes Oldenburg and, his wife a…

Many years ago, a great American performance artist, Laurie Anderson, famously said that talking about art is like dancing about architecture.  The way I interpret her witty words is that unless one …

Last week, I was invited to spend a couple of days in San Diego as a guest of the Museum of Contemporary Art and that turned into a big adventure. The Museum has two facilities, one in La Jolla and t…

I wonder, what is your way of keeping cool during the crazy, heat wave that has kept us prisoners these past couple of weeks. Movie theaters? Shopping malls? My secret is museum galleries. On Sunday…

One of the lingering memories of my recent trip to Israel is of walls; famous ones, like the Wailing Wall, and miles upon miles of inescapable eyesores that make up the Separation Wall. What I didn'…

Last week, I got high: not once, not twice but more or less all week long. Traveling to Israel with a delegation of art patrons organized by the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles turned out to be the …