I cannot recommend highly enough, Pressed in Time: American Prints 1905-1950, the current exhibit at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Made up of 163 prints created by 82 artists during the first half of the 20th century, the show encapsulates American art as it was before the ascendancy of abstraction; an epoch when realism, meaning, compassion and technical…
The shipyard with its giant construction cranes and warehouses, still waters and slate gray skies, makes for quite a beautiful oil painting. The artist applied a heavy impasto of vibrant colors using large bristle brushes, and also used a palette knife to trowel on the hot and cool hues of gray that make up the leaden clouds. But aside from…
At London’s Sotheby’s auction house on Oct. 12, 2007, just as Execution, a painting by contemporary Chinese artist Yue Minjun was about to go on the auction block, a man seated in the auction hall leapt to his feet and began shouting; “Shame on all of you! You’re spending millions of pounds on art and the world is falling apart!…
In March of this year I wrote an exposé that uncovered the relationship between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the multinational oil company, BP (British Petroleum). LACMA is expanding and renovating its facilities, and it has taken $25 million dollars from BP as a “gift” towards the projected cost of the reconstruction, which is $191 million….
The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles will be exhibiting, Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas, running Oct. 21st, 2007 through Jan. 20th, 2008. The exhibit takes place at the MOCA annex located at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California. Approximately 150 works created by Douglas while he was the Minister of Culture for…
Life long social realist painter, printmaker and activist, Pele deLappe (pronounced: “Peelee Dahlap”), died from a stroke on Monday, October 1st, 2007, at the age of 91. Ms. deLappe’s art captured the life and times of her native San Francisco during the depression years and beyond, but the universal themes addressed in her artworks also gave them an eternal quality….
Fifty years after the death of Diego Rivera, the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) in Mexico City has launched a major exhibition to celebrate the famed Mexican Muralist. Having opened on September 28th, 2007, the important exhibit titled, Diego Rivera: Epopeya Mural (Diego Rivera: Epic Mural), presents 170 works of art by the radical Mexican artist, including…
The following account of a community being gentrified, is now so commonplace a story across America as to hardly merit attention. While this chronicle concerns a district in the City of Los Angeles, the dynamics apply to cities everywhere. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and North Hollywood is a district in the north-western section of L.A. known…
