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A Musical Portrait of LA
“Elvis Whispers Softly,” 1956, from “Who Shot Rock & Roll?” Photograph © Alfred Wertheimer, The Wertheimer Collection The recent regional extravaganza known as Pacific Standard Time (PST), a six-month, far-ranging agglomeration of Southern California exhibitions, installations and performances, began with a series of shows that made a very convincing argument for the importance of art created in Los Angeles from 1945 to 1980. The role Los Angeles has played in shaping American culture (and, conversely, the role culture has played… -
Culture with a Side of Popcorn
James Corden and Suzie Toase in “One Man, Two Guvnors,” at the National Theatre in London, and onscreen at a theater near you. Photo by Johan Persson When the hit comedy “One Man, Two Guvnors” comes to Broadway this spring, I’ll be able to say I saw the London production. I also saw the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Don Giovanni” with the Polish tenor Mariusz Kwiecien. As for bragging rights, it’s hard to match having seen David Hallberg’s debut… -
Jonathan Foer’s ‘New American Haggadah’: Extremely Similar and Incredibly the Same
The haggadah, the user's manual to the Passover seder, might be the world's oldest annually practiced ritual, and the story of the Jews' freedom from slavery in Egypt is, Jonathan Safran Foer said recently, "the best-known greatest continuously read story" in book form. And yet, just like there isn't a singer who doesn't think he can cover a Bob Dylan song better than Dylan himself, the haggadah remains the book that everyone thinks they can improve on. The "Maxwell House… -
Demjanjuk's Just Epitaph
The recent death of John Demjanjuk, 91, in a nursing home in Germany, brings to a close one of the most extensive and most contested Nazi war crimes prosecution in history, a process that began in the United States in the mid 1970’s and was ongoing at the time of his death as Demjanjuk awaited the appeal of his conviction in Germany as an accessory to the more than 28,000 murders of Jewish men, women and children committed during the… -
Looking at Clouds from Both Sides Now
I listen to music all day, in my car, in my office, at the gym, while walking the dog or taking a hike. Most of what I listen to I don't have to pay for; some of it I do. There are so many ways to discover new music or find old favorites that I thought it might be useful to create a guide to the various offerings - on the cloud, the Net or on the air - these… -
Art + Fashion = Life by Design for L.A. Couple
Artist Moshé Elimelech and his wife, fashion designer Shelli Segal, at their Burbank home and studio. Photos by John Hough Cubes of color intersected by bands, which the viewer can manipulate into arrangements within a grid framing the work; watercolors of narrow striations, punctuated by colors and shapes, transform abstraction from cool cerebral to emotional landscapes. Clothing made in Los Angeles but destined for the world, an ongoing narrative about fabric and color draped over the human form. Such is… -
Have a Fantastic Klezmatic Hanukkah!
Share5 From left: Frank London, Matt Darriau, Lisa Gutkin, Lorin Sklamberg, Paul Morrissett. Photo by Joshua Kessler On Dec. 19, as part of their 25th anniversary tour, the Klezmatics will perform at Walt Disney Concert Hall for a Chanukah concert featuring both their well-known and new repertoire. On the program are songs by the legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie — or, as he’s known in klezmer circles, American-Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt’s son-in-law. The band has just released a double CD, “Live… -
A Danielewski Halloween
[caption id="attachment_365" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Photo by Ricardo Miranda "][/caption] On Halloween this year, instead of being the best sugar pusher in the neighborhood, or following your inappropriately costumed progeny as they amass their candy fortunes, or abandoning your own hard-earned dignity for a night of brew-fueled revelry, let me steer the adults amongst you to REDCAT, the CalArts downtown theater at Walt Disney Concert Hall, where for one night only, Mark Z. Danielewski will conduct a staged reading with shadow… -
Lost & Found: What Wasserstein Hid, New Bio Reveals
When the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein - beloved for her plays "The Heidi Chronicles," "The Sisters Rosensweig" and "Isn't it Romantic?" - died in 2006 at age 55, Broadway dimmed its lights in her honor. Five years later, Julie Salamon's page-turning biography "Wendy and the Lost Boys" (The Penguin Press: $29.95) sheds light on the public and private selves of this author, whose own family dramas were no less gripping than those she wrote for the stage.… -
How LA Grew its Art
From left: Edward Kienholz, “Walter Hopps Hopps Hopps,†1959; photo by Susan Einstein. Wallace Berman, “Untitled (Faceless Faces with Kabala),†1963-70; photo by Ellen Labenski. Larry Bell, “Untitled,†1969. For those of us who are not native to Los Angeles yet live here (some for more of our lives than anywhere else), there is a compulsion to define Los Angeles, to get control in some manner of this ever-changing city that is distinguished as much by its sprawl as its… -
Every Picture Tells a Story
[caption id="attachment_354" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Galerie Michael owner Michael Schwartz with clients"][/caption] For 30 years, Michael Schwartz has owned and operated Galerie Michael, an art gallery on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, building, in his own words, “museum-quality collections, one work at a time.†Works by Picasso, Dali, Goya and Miró adorn the walls for the current exhibition on Spanish masters. With a staff of 24, many of whom hold fine-arts degrees and are called curators, Schwartz would be happy to… -
'Beauty' is Skin Deep
“Tooker Lips,†New York, 1965, by Melvin Sokolsky, © 2011. On the afternoon I attended the Annenberg Space for Photography’s latest exhibition, “Beauty Culture,†I was standing in the dark watching a series of fashion images projected in the digital gallery, when I was distracted by a woman who entered the room. I did a double take, as I recognized her as one of the iconic women featured in the exhibition, a former fashion model. My eyes darted between looking…