The power of photography, in its infancy, was often associated with magic. To capture the likeness of animate or inanimate objects with chemicals is of course a sort of alchemy. But along with democratic availability of the technology came not only a ubiquity but also a disillusion of magic. Rinko Kawauchi is one of the [...]
As senior curator of modern art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Stephanie Barron catalyzed the Nasher Sculpture Center’s current exhibition, Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective. Originating at LACMA and moving next to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the show was organized by Barron and Price himself up until his death [...]
1988 was a rotten time to be a teenager. During the Reagan-Bush era, you had to put in a lot of work to hear something other than Bon Jovi. There was no internet, and the indie revolution in film and music and fashion and new media was still years away. A girl interested in [...]
(For an introduction to Laura Lark’s advice column, click here.) Dear Laura, I think I’m ready to approach a gallery about showing my work, and maybe even ask them to represent me as an artist. I’ve heard from older artists that it’s sort of like dating. Is that true? And if it is [...]
Los Angeles is the most misunderstood city in the United States. LA stereotypes abound, most of them quite negative, and everyone somehow thinks they know all about this place—even the ones who have never visited. This can be blamed at least in part on the Hollywood phenomenon—images of LA get beamed into theaters and living [...]
My former landlord in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a sphinx-like Teutonic manchild who sublet me one of the ad-hoc drywall sleeping lofts in the colossal warehouse he leased near the Bedford Avenue subway stop—still owes me $1200. It was my security deposit from 2008 and I don’t expect to get it back. I don’t mean this story as revenge [...]
