Art Talk

The enthusiastic response to last week's program about the daring art installation "Stations of the Cross" at San Gabriel's Church of Our Saviour made me think about how much of contemporary art is experienced by us outside of museum and gallery walls.  The problem is that most of the art we may encounter in restaurants, in hotels, in theatre lobbies or in doctors' offices is rather mediocre, to put it mildly.  I wonder how all these places would be perceived if the quality of art there was improved.  Everyone knows what happens to your body when you eat nothing but junk food.  Now think about all the bad art that is ingested through our eyes while we're in these public places.  Imagine the damage it does to our collective psyche...

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine called to let me know about a rather unusual exhibition I shouldn't miss.  It is a little bit off the beaten path, she warned, but you're an adventurous man, aren't you Edward?  It was a challenge I simply had to take.  Driving to the San Gabriel Valley turned out to be not such a big deal -– actually it's not far from Pasadena and San Marino.  The unusual thing about this conceptual art exhibition was that it was mounted neither in a museum nor a commercial gallery, but in an Episcopal church, of all places...

Like a monster out of a low-budget Japanese horror movie, it's huge and more than a bit scary.  Its translucent tentacles are a hundred feet long, and it feels as if they're still growing, ready to ensnare anyone within reach.  The creature doesn't even have an easily identifiable main body.  Instead, there are a few gigantic kidney-shaped blobs: translucent, flimsy, icky - like the tentacles that grow out of them.  I saw it last night with my very own eyes, and I swear I was stone cold sober...

It takes chutzpah to roll into LA just a few days before the Oscars and still hope to get some attention for a project not connected to Hollywood -- at least not directly.  To win this game, ambition is not enough; one needs to be a superstar, propelled by a superagent.  Damien Hirst, the most famous of the so-called Young British Artists, and Robert Wilson, the much celebrated American avant-garde theater director, stage designer and sculptor, flew in last week to supervise the final preparations for the openings of their high-profile exhibitions at the two most glamorous galleries in town...

If you've ever been invited to an elegant dinner where every bite is a delight and each new course makes you hungry all over again, then you want to treat yourself to what amounts to a sumptuous feast for your eyes -- an exhibition of Chuck Close prints at the Orange County Museum of Art...

One cannot blame British artists for their cutthroat politics in fighting for a place in the sun.  To be noticed by the public and written about by art critics, these chaps would go to remarkable lengths.  At the end of the day, the Royal Academy and admission into its famous annual Salon was all they dreamed about.  Even the lucky ones, whose paintings were accepted, were prone to anxiety attacks, wondering: Will their painting be shown in the prestigious Main Gallery or be banished into the adjacent rooms?...

The end of the year has its own inevitable rhythm; the busy holiday

One of the most intriguing art events of this season took place last

Last week was good for gallery hopping, with a number of interesting new shows popping up all over town.  Given the art world propensity for the discovery and promotion of fresh young talent, it was especially satisfying to find an exhibition celebrating the sophisticated art of one of LA's most renowned sculptors, John Mason, who turns eighty years old next year...

At the turn of the 20th century, collecting contemporary art used to be serious business for a relatively small group of people.  It was an exclusive gentlemen's club with only a few ladies, such as Gertrude Stein in Paris and the Cone sisters in Baltimore, allowed to join in.  An annual trip to Paris, a visit with the preeminent dealer Ambroise Vollard and, maybe, knocking on the door of Matisse or Picasso's studio would be enough for an adventurous collector with an eye on contemporary art...