Judy Chicago: A Retrospective @ the de Young museum
My art muse and not muse this week is Judy Chicago, who has a retrospective of her work up at the De Young in San Francisco until January 9th, 2022. I learned about her site specific performance piece: Womanhouse, initiated by her, but made by a collective of art students in Los Angeles, when I…
Lorna Simpson: Momentum @ Frieze Los Angeles, Paramount Backlot P10
Of all the work I saw at the Frieze Fair LA, the video billboard by Lorna Simpson was by far my favorite. The piece features en pointe ballet dancers of color, sporting afros and golden uniforms, looking slightly bored and more than qualified, on what might be audition or practice floor of a traditional dance…
Megan Whitmarsh: “Arts & Leisure Section” @ Los Angeles Municipal Gallery
There is something so feminine about Megan Whitmarsh’s work – her requirement that all things turn soft – the plant pot, the newspaper, the mirror – objects with their own weight and materials turned equal into quilted puffs, to match the pillows that sit in a circular way, under a small living room like bench.…
Alexander Girard: A Designer’s Universe @ Palm Springs Art Museum
As I walked around the Alexander Girard exhibit, my daughter, Olive, was on a search for images she recognized from a children’s book of his work that she had at home, given to us by a friend who had not consciously remembered we had a screen print of his hanging in our living room. The…
Rebecca Bruno: Deux @ the Sowden House
The Sowden House, designed by Lloyd Wright, impressed me right away: its imposing concrete exterior, huge inner courtyard — designed originally to be a theatre and then turned, somewhat controversially, into a pool and entertainment space – and long corridors, passing by sometimes extravagantly designed rooms, were unlike any other place I’d been invited in…
Ren Hang: What We Do Is Secret @ MAMA Gallery
In my own life my bouts with depression had been lifted with the birth of my daughter – but only because I needed them too. So close to fixating on the many unsettling facts of my pregnancy and her birth, I made a daily effort to turn away from the abyss. The artist’s own a careful…
Sarah Lucas: Au Naturel @ The Hammer Museum
I used to think gender was everything; the lense through which all else must be viewed. Got a problem? Put on your gender inspectors and poof, the solution, once hidden behind culture’s murky gender norms, would be revealed. But since Hilary Clinton’s loss (could we hate anything more than a woman who seeks power?), and…
Allen Ruppersberg: “Lectures and Film Screenings (1994)” @ The Hammer Museum
I had about 20 minutes to get through the entire career of Allen Ruppersberg, but that’s all I needed to fall in love. His capacity to transport you in time and space is so effortless, and his point of view so full of joy and humor, that he redeems the whole of his generation in…
Karen O & Danger Mouse: An Encounter with Lux Prima @ Marciano Art Foundation
Karen O is the only singer I know whose lyrics are secondary; just there to mark the feeling. But you can recognize her voice in an instant; if you hear a Karen O moan, you know it. It’s croaky and wise beyond its years. There’s nothing better than hearing a female artist age well and…
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