It's midnight, and I just said goodbye to the newlyweds with whom I shared a water taxi from the airport to the Piazza San Marco.  The square is still crowded with hundreds of people sitting in outdoor cafés, enjoying a balmy night, listening to live bands playing hilariously sugary renditions of the most sentimental tunes from the 50's and 60's.  The apartment I'm renting is only two blocks away, which is great, but it sits above a noisy trattoria that keeps the neighborhood awake well past 1am.  Well, I didn't come to Venice to sleep, did I?  It's Biennale time...

Right now, there are two exhibitions in Los Angeles which have at first glance very little in common: one of the celebrated American sculptor Dan Flavin at LACMA and the other of the much lesser-known artist Richard Tuttle at MOCA.

Let's be honest; we all like to check ourselves out in

She is, to put it mildly, quite obese.  Actually, she is so huge that it's nearly impossible not to stare at her.  She has been a celebrity for so long that at this point, she doesn't mind the gawking crowds.  As befitting a superstar, she is known by her first name only.  Everyone calls her Clara.  Paris Hilton would kill for the secret to the unprecedented longevity of Clara's fame -- two hundred fifty years and counting, to be precise...

Have you ever traveled to Seattle in the month of April, when all the trees sport the freshest shades of green and each blade of grass salutes the spring?  I went there twice, and -- as luck would have it -- both times in April.  It's easy to fall for this city given the picturesque quality of its waterfront and unhurried pace of its sophisticated urban center.  What I find especially attractive about the city is its deep commitment to the visual arts, fully evident last week during the gala opening of the dramatically expanded Seattle Art Museum...

In a very peculiar coincidence, for two days in a row I found, on the front page of American papers, articles dealing with Russian history and culture.  It is no surprise that today's newspapers paid tribute to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who died yesterday in Moscow at the age of 76.  A larger-than-life colorful personality, he broke with the Communist Party when it was still in power and a move like that had a heavy price attached.  Later, he became the first freely elected president of Russia and subsequently, the first leader in Russian history who relinquished his power at the end of his term.  Yeltsin presided over an extremely volatile moment in Russian history during the disintegration of the Soviet empire, with its subsequent rampant corruption...

Following closely the developments of the Los Angeles cultural scene for a almost twenty years, I'm glad to report that artwise, favorable weather conditions prevail in the City of Angels.  The Mayor's office announced yesterday the appointment of a new cultural affairs chief, Olga Garay, whose rather impressive resume bodes well for her new job here in LA...

Have you ever tried to imagine the persona of the artist behind the work?  Their look, their age.  What kind of personality do they have: outgoing or shy, maybe?  I have to admit that most of the time when I tried to do that, I failed.  For example, LA sculptor extraordinaire Tim Hawkinson, whose current exhibition at the Getty Museum is getting rave reviews, almost shocked me when I met him for the first time.  He was so quiet and unassuming, almost ordinary.  With his amazingly inventive sculptures and collages defying traditional logic, I expected a mad scientist type with bulging eyes...

Going to a museum to see a permanent collection or temporary exhibition I expect to see good as well as great artworks inevitably mixed with decidedly lesser ones which are needed to complete the story and illustrate a point of view.  After all, great and good artworks are by definition in limited supply, while mediocre and merely competent works are always plentiful...

It took me no time at all to fall in love with Los Angeles -- just a few intakes of the balmy air upon emerging from the plane shortly after midnight.  Until then, I didn't believe in love at first sight.  Now, almost thirty years later, I know better.  Never mind the wonderful climate and suspiciously gorgeous Hollywood wannabes.  This huge and sprawling metropolis stubbornly refuses to follow the rules of success established by its older rivals, and instead of the storied beauty of Paris or Rome, it offers an exotic and unsettling, but ultimately intoxicating mixture of good, strange, and ugly...