The art that came out of World War 1 was both ahead of its time and unhappily of its time—like Otto Dix’ harrowing Shock Troops Advance Under Gas, or Max Ernst’s prescient 1937 painting L’Ange du Foyer, in which a monster thrashes across the fields of Europe yet again. And to mark the 100th anniversary […]
Pablo Picasso
Richard Jackson at OCMA Yields Satisfaction
Curated with clarity and vision by Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) director Dennis Szakacs, “Richard Jackson: Ain't Painting a Pain” is the first retrospective of the artist's long, anarchic career, and this is its only stop in the United States before traveling to Europe. Brilliant in myriad ways—as the historical documentation of an underground […]
Focus on Art
You gotta admire Alejandro Otero who tried his hand at revising a movement as seminal as Cubism. This week, head over to MOLAA where you can learn about the Venezuelan man behind the art. The South American visionary came of age in the era of Picasso, and though a skilled painter, in the 1960s, he […]
'Spanish Masters' Premiere Reception
Before Muzeo's newest exhibit opens to the public on Sunday, treat yourself to a premiere opening reception complete with cocktails, live music, hors d'oeuvres, general swankiness, and most importantly, an exclusive first look at the works of three great Spanish print artists. The anticipated collection “Spanish Masters” features Francisco Goya’s complete set of the controversial […]
America Martin Accepts No Substitutes
In a world that rewards derivative creation, it's rare to walk into a gallery and encounter work influenced enough by past masters and movements to indicate the artist actually knows something about her predecessors, but also stands so uniquely stamped with the artist's personality that pinpointing from where she derived this influence is befuddling. You […]
An Evening With Steve Martin
Back when Steve Martin was just another screwball trying to figure out what comedy was about and how he fit in, he decided a way out of anonymity might be playing the banjo after hearing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” made famous in the movie Bonnie and Clyde. “At age 18, I had absolutely no gifts,” he […]
Scott Valenzuela Goes Town and Country
Tucked away in a modest unit of Huntington Beach's Old World Village, a spot best known for its Oktoberfest stein-chugging and Dachshund derbies, sits the prestigiously named OMC Gallery for Contemporary Art. It's a pretty fancy name, and the odd combination of fancy and the location might initially make viewers think they've been had. But […]
Gronk-o-Rama at Fullerton College!
Walking through “Gronk Un-Secret,” the artist's mini-retrospective at Fullerton College's Art Gallery, is like taking a tour through the abstract personal imaginings of a friend generous enough to let you see the world from his point of view. Rarely are the photographs (hidden by the gallery's reception desk), etchings, paintings, linocuts, drawings and mixed-media pieces […]
Picasso At the Lapin Agile
We all know Steve Martin—actor, comedian and third amigo. But there’s a lot about Martin that people may not know. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t a regular on Saturday Night Live; he just appeared a bunch of times. Also, while attending Cal State Long Beach, he didn’t major in theater, but rather philosophy. Perhaps […]
Jonathan Richman
Attention, all fans of 1970s proto-punk band the Modern Lovers: former member/guitarist/singer Jonathan Richman will be gracing the stage at Detroit Bar. Yes, the Jonathan Richman—eccentric man-child, talented musician and writer of such gems as “Pablo Picasso” and “Egyptian Reggae.” Oh, who are we kidding? He’s the guy from the 1998 hair-gel-infused comedy There’s Something […]
Ron English's Telegrinnies, POPaganda, Camo Clownboy and More!
When culture-jammer and street artist Ron English climbed up a ladder to a billboard and re-worked it so that a toe-tagged corpse lay next to the corporate logo of Kool cigarettes, he secured my admiration. When I saw his billboard of Picasso’s Guernica with a bright-orange NEW WORLD ORDER plastered over it, I felt like […]
The Maverick Theater's Production of 'Picasso at the Lapin Agile' Is Not So Pretty
Let's Do the Time Warp . . .Back to when Steve Martin was actually funny I've always been a fan of Steve Martin'sself-penned early films—The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Man With Two Brains, L.A. Story— and even spun his Comedy Is Not Pretty LP ad nauseam. Martin was zany, over-the-top and often […]
Engrave Circumstances
Casa Romantica is celebrating five centuries of wine depiction in art by exhibiting over fifty prints that feature this wonderful libation. The collection of wine-centered art is from the Sterling Vineyards Portfolio of Wine Art and History in Calistoga, California, in the heart of wine country. The artwork dates from as early as the fifteenth […]
Abstract Workshop
Some things, by all reasons of logic and rationality, just shouldn't work. Our eyes tell us it doesn't make sense (chile on mangos? Delicious!), but everything somehow ends up for the better. Like a Lynchian film, Mary Zarbano's pieces depict things as they shouldn't be-and actually aren't in real life. Her works are satisfying to […]
Wall-to-wall Shag
I love a lot of the same things that Shag loves. I love that kooky, flat graphic style that was so popular in the late '50s and early '60s, the kind of stuff you used to see in the opening titles for sitcoms with theme songs by Henry Mancini. I love girls with big hair, […]
No Deal
If you want to be a total, joyless hard-ass about it, you could say all art is pointless, really. What is Mona Lisa La Gioconda, after all, but a whole bunch of oil paint blops, arranged on a sheet of poplar to resemble some weird, long-dead lady who had no eyebrows? What is Duchamp's Fountain […]
Don't Worry, Be Arty
You're just not a summer person. You're an art geek, and you hate the heat, you hate the beach and you hate, hate, hate that freaking song about Sum-sum-summertime. You're already pining for the sweet release of autumn . . . or better yet, winter, the Season of the Mind. Oh, for those long, frigid nights […]
A Whore for the Ages
Long before Don Quixote, there was another famous literary Spaniard: Celestina, an old whore who used cunning and sorcery to attain power and bring couples together in the 1499 Fernando de Rojas book Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea (Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea). Celestina is the Man of La Mancha's opposite: worldly, cynical, a woman […]
Hey, You, Comrade!
We began running our popular “Hey You!” series back in 1998, and over the years, the missives we've received from anonymous readers have most often dealt with three common experiences—driving, love and work (a surprising number deal with inappropriate farting and vomiting). We've already run a retrospective of driving “Hey You!”s—which garnered us a Pulitzer […]
Goose Flesh
The sexiest girl I've seen in a solid year was the impossibly Maria Shriver-skinny rail/giraffe in a teeny, weensy white bikini at last year's Action Sports Retailer show. She was a blonde with big, blue eyes, slender-limbed—seemingly jointless—flat-chested and possessing the flat-tummied, narrow-hipped lower torso that made me wonder if she'd ever be able to […]
Hominess With a Brownie
Photo by Amy TheligIn 1994, husband-and-wife catering team Carmen and Carmela Cella began renting the kitchen at Beverly's Best Bakery in Fullerton for their nights of labor. Then, in the fall of 1995, Beverly's went up for sale. The couple faced a difficult choice. “We didn't know what to do,” Carmela now says, her petite […]