• Shantell Martin: Where The Line Takes You

    "I always thought being an artist," Shantell Martin told me recently in her Los Angeles studio, "allowed you to do anything you want. It's a freedom to create whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want."That is certainly true for Martin whose life and career has never followed a straight line. Martin has found expression in a multiplicity of mediums, materials, venues, and in artistic collaborations and outlets all over the globe.Martin's work is improvised, a spontaneous black... View…

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  • The Timeless Shimmer Of Beatrice Wood

    Sometimes a gallery show can remind you not just of an artist but of a rare personage.This is the case with Beatrice Wood: Drawings, Prints, Ceramics, which opened on September 21 at L.A. Louver in Venice, CA., and runs through October 29, 2022. I am sorry I didn"t get to this exhibition sooner, but it's worth seeing before it closes.Wood, who was called "the Mama of Dada", was born in 1893 and lived to 1998, when she was 105. She…

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  • R.I.P. Jerry Lee Lewis

    You shake my nerves and you rattle my brainToo much love drives a man insaneYou broke my willBut what a thrillGoodness gracious, great balls of fire!Jerry Lee Lewis, the enfant terrible of Rock "n Roll, one of Sun Records million dollar quarter, the rocker whose career was momentarily cancelled when it was revealed his third wife, Myra, was thirteen years old and was his cousin, has died age 87.Jerry Lee Lewis was, as he would surely have been the first…

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  • The Joys And Oys Of Being A British Jew - One-Woman Show Comes To Santa Monica

    "It's hard to be a Jew" is a Yiddish expression popularized by writer Sholom Aleichem as the title of his comic play that premiered at New York's Yiddish Art Theater on October 1, 1920.It could also be an alternative title for Suzanne Levy's one woman show, Dress British, Think Yiddish, directed by Stacie Chaiken, that is being performed next weekend for three performances only at the Santa Monica Playhouse (Saturday November 12, 2022, at 7:30 PM and Sunday November 13…

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  • Works By Egon Schiele Restituted To The Heirs Of Fritz Grünbaum To Be Auctioned In New York City

    Tonight in New York, Christie's will hold their 20th Century Evening Sale at Rockefeller Center.Among the works being offered for sale are two works on paper by Early 20th Century Austrian Expressionist artist Egon Schiele, from the collection of Viennese film and cabaret star Fitz Grünbaum. Grünbaum was not unlike Joel Grey in Cabaret, famous for his biting comments as a Master of Ceremonies.And although this is not really for me to say, I hope the works sell for a…

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  • Rhapsodizing Khatia Buniatishvili

    Several years ago, in 2017, I found myself at Tsinandali in the Republic of Georgia for the launch of their music festival. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta was performing. They were joined by Khatia Buniatishvili, a dark-haired Georgian pianist who interpreted Schumann with great finesse and other selections dramatically with great gusto. It was a memorable evening, and a memorable performance. Buniatishvili who was born in Batumi in 1987 has been performing since s... View Original Article

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  • Robert Longo's Art of The Now

    There is an Ocean wave gathering strength, filled with ominous portent, set to come crashing before us. It began with Ferguson, but it's always been there, only now it's gained the weight and heft of a Death Star, a collection of all the AR-15 bullets fired in a year of mass shootings. It is Albrecht Durer's "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" come to life during the pandemic, with its resisters at the Women's March, at Gun Control protests, at…

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  • The Art of Lisa Edelstein

    During the pandemic, Lisa Edelstein, the actor best known for her roles as Abby McCarthy in Girlfriends" Guide to Divorce, Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the popular medical drama series House, and as Alan Arkin's wayward adult daughter Phoebe on The Kominsky Method, took to painting. Seriously. Seriously and so well that her paintings are being exhibited at art consultant Lisa Schiff's exhibition space, sfa Projects, at 45 White Street in New York's Tribeca.The paintings in the exhibition, Lisa Edelstei... View…

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  • Lorna Simpson’s Certainty: Art Is ‘Everrrything”

    October 12, 2021 By Tom Teicholz Lorna Simpson, Reocurring, 2021© LORNA SIMPSON, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH, PHOTO BY JAMES WANG Lorna Simpson’s Everrrything at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles presents the wide spectrum of work Simpson produced during the pandemic – paintings, sculptures, collages, assemblages of found photos – and if there is one thing that unites them it is Simpson’s certainty: She is an artist at the top of her game, fully confident in her artistic instincts…

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  • The Appearance Of Günther Förg

    September 30, 2021By Tom Teicholz  ‘Günther Förg. Appearance’, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, 2021. © 2021 COURTESY ESTATE GÜNTHER FÖRG, SUISSE AND HAUSER & WIRTH. PHOTO: ZAK KELLEY In the world of museums, art galleries and exhibitions, the artists we know are often just the visible part of the iceberg. Art historians and art critics, gallery owners and museum staff, collectors and donors participate, consciously and unconsciously, in a self-validating circle that determines both which artists we know of, and which…

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  • Salgado’s ‘Amazonia’ Seeks to Save a World

    March 13, 2013By Tom Teicholz  Sebastião Salgado, the 77 year-old Brazilian-born Paris-based photographer who travels the world and whose work often invokes social activism on behalf of the exploited working poor, indigenous people, the consequences of climate change, ecological devastation, and the disappearing natural world, is exhibiting his latest epic project “Amazonia” about the Brazilian rainforest at Peter Fetterman Gallery in Santa Monica (on view until November 13, 2021) – Salgado’s main world gallery of the last 30 years. Jau…

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  • The Art of Matthew Rolston

    September 17, 2021 T By Tom Teicholz Matthew Rolston, Hittorff, La Fontaine des Mers (Neptune), 2016.© MRPI, (COURTESY FAHEY KLEIN, LOS ANGELES, LAGUNA ART MUSEUM) Matthew Rolston’s exhibition Art People: The Pageant Portraits on view through January 2, 2022, at the Laguna Art Museum is a show as beautiful, as mysterious, as life-affirming, and as much about human creativity and art, as The Pageant of the Mastersitself. And in a sense, it is also a metaphor for the career and work of Matthew Rolston himself.…

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