In recent years the reach and influence of corporate power in the arts has been steadily growing, and while the super wealthy have always had clout in the art world, we are now looking at a totally different situation. Rather than just providing patronage, corporations are beginning to monopolize and control what was once a public institution… art museums. That…
A series of three bold and brightly colored abstract paintings will go on the auction block at Bonhams, the prestigious London auction house. The three emotive tempera on paper artworks are energetic pieces that many say epitomize the school of abstract action painting. “It’s a painting, not a picture” is an expression often used by circles of modern painters who…
This past April I received an invite to attend an art opening at the Transport Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. The show, titled Mark of the Beast, was scheduled for one night only on April 23rd, 2005, at the small gallery space located in the Factory Place art colony. Graphic artist Brandy Flower curated the show, which consisted of recognizable…
Here’s a novel idea… let’s scrape all of the nuclear weapons in the world and turn them into works of art. Artist Tony Price (1937-2000) at least showed us this possibility by starting such an undertaking on a small scale. Price settled in New Mexico in the late 1960’s and discovered the Zia Salvage Yard at the Los Alamos National Laboratory….
April 30th, 2005, marks the 30th anniversary of the US defeat in Vietnam. As a twenty two year old in 1975, I commemorated the end of the war by creating a large oil painting simply titled, Vietnam. The preliminary sketch for that painting is reproduced at left. The Vietnamese peasant woman portrayed in my artwork glances at you with cold…
I did this small oil sketch on canvas after witnessing the Los Angeles Rodney King riots of April 29th, 1992. Titled Lost Angeles, the canvas is part of a series of paintings memorializing the violence that swept across my city. When people heard the LAPD officers who had nearly beat King to death were found “not guilty” the city went…
I’ve long understood the connection between visual art and music. To me the musician and artist are kindred spirits, and music has always fanned the flames of my own creativity. Naturally I’ve always been an avid music fan, and since my childhood I’ve enthusiastically collected music recordings. In fact when I was 7 years old in 1961, the very first…
Los Angeles artist and printmaker John Carr organized the Yo! What Happened To Peace? traveling exhibit 2 years ago. The exhibit is a collection of contemporary anti-war prints “designed to spread the message of non-violence.” The exhibit was shown in Boston and New York during the Democratic and Republican conventions, and is now traveling overseas. What makes the exhibit unusual…
