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Israel's Holden Caulfield: On Yair Assulin's "The Drive"
YAIR ASSULIN"S The Drive, an award-winning Israeli novel first published in Hebrew in 2011, has just been released in the United States by New Vessel Press, in a translation by Jessica Cohen. It is a slim book that speaks volumes about the current state of Israel.The Drive represents a new landmark in Israeli fiction. Israel has always had a strong national literature with many respected novelists, from S. Y. Agnon, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1966, to such… -
Grammys 2021 Get Fresh
This week's Grammy Awards Ceremony, the second during the pandemic, made the best of a bad situation bringing a much needed freshness to the awards show.In recent times, the Grammys show have found a successful formula and run it into the ground. The show had pared down the more than 100 awards given as part of the Grammys into around nine for the program and constructed the evening around what came to be called "Grammy moments"-these were the odd mashups… -
Reviewing 2020: My Top Ten Books Of 2020
In the beginning of the pandemic I was scattered and couldn"t really concentrate on any sustained reading. However, as the year went on and I reached saturation in my viewing capacity, I turned to books, aided by the discovery that I could easily borrow books online from the Public library, via Overdrive (Los Angeles Public Library) or Libby (Santa Monica Public Library). Since then, I"ve been reading up a storm. Here are my favorites from the year (not all were… -
Tobi Kahn's Visual Seder
"To think visually is a capacity not just for artists; it is essential for everyone." With these words the visual artist Tobi Kahn concludes the artist statement that accompanies the just published "Mishkan Haseder," a new Passover Haggadah published by the Central Conference of Rabbis (CCR).This new edition comes replete with new translations, new Rabbinical commentaries, all enhanced by an awe-compelling selection of poems by Yehuda Amichai, Maxine Kumin, Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, Ma... View Original Article -
A Pleasing Pandemic In Normandy: David Hockney's Creative French Country Prints
LA Louver gallery in Venice, California which is celebrating its 45th year, has a new exhibition that you can actually go see by appointment, "David Hockney: My Normandy." I could say that seeing an exhibition of art in person, and seeing the joy with which Hockney in his 80s creates his work, was for me a shot in the arm â or, perhaps more accurately, that two shots in the arm makes it a delight to see the exhibition.In March… -
Herb Alpert Awards Double Down During Pandemic: Ten Award Winners Announced In Online Event
The Artist is often imagined as a solitary figure creating works of the imagination that stand on their own when shared with a public that they remain separate from.That is a fiction. The last year of isolation has made me keenly aware of how much Art in all its forms â Visual, theater, film, music, dance â are collaborative mediums. Even the solo artist needs the support of friends, colleagues, family as well as an audience to affirm and interact… -
Traces Of Ai Weiwei's Politics At Skirball Cultural Center.
"Ai Weiwei: Trace" at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles presents three of the six floor panels Ai Weiwei created in 2014 for a site-specific exhibition in San Francisco on Alcatraz Island concerning prisoners of conscience, political prisoners, and those subject to unlawful detention and, in some cases, torture. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Washington D.C. subsequently acquired the panels and then, in turn, made the exhibition available to the Skirball. The exhibiti... View Original Article -
An Evening Of Qatari Culture Under The Stars At The "Desert Drive-In"
Picture this: A evening under the stars, sitting on couches and deck chairs in a large open field, with ottomans on which a Middle Eastern feast was set, to watch a series of short films on a giant outdoor screen. Dubbed a "Desert Drive-In" the evening was organized by the Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture, an annual international cultural exchange and the Doha Film Institute (DFI), an independent, not-for-profit cultural organization that supports the growth of the local Qatari and… -
Bernard-Henri Lévy: The Will to See, The Ability to Act, The Drive to Inspire
Bernard-Henri Lévy has a new book, The Will to See: Dispatches from a World of Misery and Hope (Yale University Press) and a documentary of the same name, both of which combine autobiography with documentary journalism and humanitarian activism. In many ways, it is a summation of Lévy's efforts over the last 50 years to give voice to the forgotten victims of genocides and to make a difference in the lives of the survivors.The book is composed of two parts:… -
Seven Paintings: Tobi Kahn At The Phillips Collection
In 1985, The Guggenheim Museum in New York mounted an exhibition of contemporary young artists, called "New Horizons in American Art" that included the work of Tobi Kahn. Kahn's featured paintings were abstractions of landscapes, the images anchored in black artist-made frames, the palette dark, the paint applied thickly and worked strenuously, the effect serious and, at times, somber. In many ways, that exhibition established Kahn as an artist worth watching and following.Now, a whole caree... View Original Article -
Three Art Exhibits To See Right Now In New York
On a recent visit to New York, I saw three art exhibitions I highly recommend: Faith Ringgold: American People, on view at the New Museum through June 5, 2022; The Hare with the Amber Eyes at the Jewish Museum, on view through May 15, 2022; and Hilary Pecis: Warmly at the Rachel Uffner Gallery through May 14.Faith Ringgold: American People is a must-see show. Ringgold is a 91-year-old Black artist known popularly for her children's books such as Tar Beach… -
Seeing A Forest for the Trees
"A Forest for the Trees" is a multi-media installation that, like much of artist Glenn Kaino's work, is conceptual, collaborative, has a moral and ethical dimension, and is a political call to action. The exhibition also brings together a novel marriage of sponsors: Presented by The Atlantic magazine and Superblue (a showcase for experiential art), the exhibition is sponsored by Mastercard.Set in a 28,000 square foot warehouse in LA's Boyle Heights neighborhood, "A Forest for the Trees," is ... View…