California Art Museum Calendar: Andy Warhol at SFMOMA through September 2, 2019

Andy Warhol From A to B And Back Again at SFMOMA

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) had a strong connection to California: it was in Los Angeles at La Cienega Boulevard’s Ferus Gallery that Warhol had his first solo show in 1962, the 32 painting series, Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans.

Warhol’s art has returned to California, the major retrospective Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again(organized by New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art) now occupies the fourth floor and several other galleries at the expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).  The exhibition spans Warhol’s lifetime of art making from his humble early roots as an ad illustrator to his now classic pop art phase to repetitive silkscreen portraits of celebrities to his large-scale oil paintings, made close to his untimely death.

Exhibition entrance at SFMOMA

While Warhol’s pop art Brillo boxes and Campbell soup cans may seem ubiquitous and his silk screen style often copied, the exhibition goes beyond his iconic images. Abstractions, skulls, his rarely seen body parts series and a1972 painted wall-sized portrait of Chairman Mao are special revelations. Warhol cannot be understood without his studio, know as the Factory. A short film chronicles Warhol at work with one assistant silk screening Silver Marlon, a portrait of Marlon Brando (taken from The Wild One film publicity still); in later years, he worked with dozens of assistants and few of the pieces presented are signed.

Exit through the Andy Warhol themed gift shop

 Andy Warhol From A to B and Back Again will be at SFMOMA through Sept. 2, 2019. 

Architectones at Neutra's VDL Research House

Architectones by Xavier Veilhan

VDL Research House

Excerpted from the Los Feliz Ledger:

French artist Xavier Veilhan’s site-specific sculptures are now on view at Neutra’s VDL Research House on Silver Lake Boulevard through Sunday Sept. 16th. Veilhan's intention was to trace Neutra’s life and times via abstract and figural sculptures. During the exhibition, water has been returned to the house for the first time in ages as both the front reflecting pool and rooftop pool have been refilled.

Richard Neutra profile on Silver Lake Blvd.

Veilhan’s detailed notes on his monochromatic sculptures inspired by the house and Neutra’s professional and personal life are here. Check out the site for an artist's look at the exhibition. The installation's mobiles and sculptures were conceived as a dialogue between art and architecture displayed in “the most important modern architectural private residence in America,” per Veilhan.

Visiting hours: Thursday/Friday 3-8pm and Saturday/Sunday 11am - 4pm.  Admission is $10. Guided tours of the house are only on Saturdays.

VDL Research House
2300 Silver Lake Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90039

Young Projects at PDC: Video art's home in L.A.

Courtesy of Young Projects

Excerpted from the Los Feliz Ledger:

Immanence: The Videos of Antoine Roegiers and Davide Quayola: Typologies, Strata and Nature at YoungProjects at the Pacific Design Center. Curator Paul Young features the video work of two European video artists. Belgium-born Antoine Roegiers references Gothic, Baroque and Renaissance painting traditions in his complex animated pieces. In his first West Coast show, London-based Davide Quayola presents a large scale environment for complete immersion in the project room.

Now through May 8th at:
YOUNGPROJECTS
@Pacific Design Center #B230 and #B210
8687 Melrose Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90069
 323-377-1102

The Project Room at Pasadena Museum of California Art: Nancy Baker Cahill

Pasadena Museum of California Art

From the March 2012 Los Feliz Ledger:

Nancy Baker Cahill’s artworks address the body and its inherent vulnerability. Fascinomas, her multimedia installation now on view in the Project Room at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA), was inspired, in part, by a look into an electron microscope at specimens kept at the Natural History Museum.

“Medical technology allows you to see things but not necessarily know things,” said Cahill, and that is at the heart of Fascinomas (medical terminology for an unusual case or diagnosis). Using computer animation and sound design, Cahill’s interactive installation flows between six of her paintings, projected through a large opaque scrim.


“I play with scale a little bit, so that your experience as a viewer, you are looking at something referring to something microscopic and yet you are dwarfed by it,” said Cahill. “I really wanted the viewer to be aware of their vulnerability and vulnerability of their own bodies,” she said. To create the paintings, she airbrushed pigment across objects varying from specimens of dried kelp to wire and then removed the debris leaving only telegraphed impressions. The now abstracted images are somewhat unsettling as they transition glacially from one image to the next. Fascinomas is at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, 490 E. Union St., Pasadena, now through May 20th.

Kenny Scharf's Kosmic Krylon Garage at PMCA

Hotel Lautner, Desert Hot Springs, Calif.: Renewed

Hotel Lautner, Desert Hot Springs, Calif.

Excerpted from the February 2012 Los Feliz Ledger:

Always a challenge, restoring a neglected older property is almost always also a labor of love. Furniture designer Ryan Trowbridge of Los Feliz and his partner interior designer Tracy Beckmann recently completed an extraordinary restoration and thoughtful renovation on a hillside street in Desert Hot Springs.

In 2008, the pair purchased the four-room, 1947-built hotel designed by architect John Lautner—of Silver Lake’s Silver Top.  Originally the hotel was to be at the gateway to a 600-acre development. In 1947, Lautner was fresh off his fellowship at Taliesin West under the tutelage of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The hotel’s design echoes Taliesin’s primitive tents where light, the desert sky and the rugged environment are embraced.

Patio view, Hotel Lautner, Desert Hot Springs, Calif.

Constructed of redwood, glass, concrete and steel, the building’s steel framing cantilevers out, creating a wing-shaped overhang that shades each room. Although the rooms are compact in size, there’s an incredible feeling of expansiveness due to the 180-degree view through a glass wall.  Each room opens to a private patio and cactus garden.  Lautner was known for his sympathetic way of incorporating the natural world into his buildings.

Purchasing the property took some time due to its uniqueness and its location in a tract home neighborhood. When Trowbridge and Beckmann first saw it, the entire building—including all the redwood—was painted solid white. There have been some additions: bathrooms have been redone in Heath Ceramic tile, three units have restored kitchenettes, one has a full kitchen and furniture is now of-the-period vintage finds.

Among Beckmann’s projects is the hotel at the LA Athletic Club and Mas Malo restaurant downtown. Trowbridge, in addition to his furniture and light constructions, is a partner at Bar 107 in downtown Los Angeles.

Hotel Lautner is now open for overnight stays. 

Hotel Lautner
67710 San Antonio St.
Desert Hot Springs,  Calif. 92240
760-832-5288

Civic Virtue via the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park

Frank Lloyd Wright's OG drawings for  Hollyhock House

Excerpted from January 2012's Los Feliz Ledger:

Before LACMA and MOCA, there was the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) in Barnsdall Art Park.

Open now through Feb. 12th, the exhibition Civic Virtue: The Impact of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Watts Towers Arts Center is a retrospective of art culled from more than 80 years of exhibitions and outdoor festivals at the park. Funded by the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time initiative, the wide-ranging show chronicles an important aspect of the city’s cultural history and took two years to research and organize.

Pieces range from architectural plans for Hollyhock House from Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio to historical photographs of Olive Hill to work by contemporary artists like Llyn Foulkes and photographer Julius Shulman. Among the curiosities are works from actor Vincent Price’s art collection, an Andy Warhol short and graphics by Sister Mary Corita, who had the first woman’s solo show at the gallery.

Even for someone who has spent much time on the hill, the impressive breadth of past exhibitions and cultural activities that occurred in the park is a revelation. From the mid-1950s until 1969, 140 exhibitions were held in a temporary pavilion designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. That was demolished in 1969 when the current Municipal Art Gallery opened.  The LAMAG has always been city owned and run; it continues to exist in spite of recent funding issues and numerous controversies dating back to Aline Barnsdall’s days. The LAMAG is open Tues. – Sun. from 12- 5 p.m.

Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
4800 Hollywood Blvd., LA 90027
323/644-6269

Los Angeles: Take a local art break

James Franco at Art Platform LA

This holiday season find time to explore art in your neighborhood, as local support is what keeps the visual and performing arts viable.   

        

Galleries: Although numerous art galleries have closed or moved in Silver Lake, Los Feliz and Echo Park—Thinkspace to Culver City for one—many of those that still dot the neighborhood follow a hybrid model of artspace plus commerce. Give them some love this holiday season and give yourself a visual treat.

Sancho in Echo Park at 1549 W. Sunset Blvd.

Two new storefront galleries opened this year. Weekend (at 4634 Hollywood Blvd.) is an artist run gallery. Look for Jay Erker’s multi-media collages at photographs at This is So Much Better, which opens Dec. 2. Sancho, at 1549 W. Sunset in Echo Park, showcases new artists inside and new bands outside at its small backyard performance space.

Celebrating 25 years, a visit to Wacko's La Luz de Jesus Galley in Los Feliz is a step into the wild and imaginative work of talented illustrators, comic book artists and animators and well-known artists such as Shag and Gary Baseman.  Selected by owner/curator Billy Shire, there’s always a twist to every exhibition.

           

Subliminal Projects in Echo Park had a thrilling year of exhibits from Art, Access & Decay: NY 1975-1985 revisiting the highly original 1980s downtown New York art scene to the current show of painter and collagist Billy Al Bengston’s latest work (through Dec. 11).

Alias Books in Atwater features a single artwork show

Bloom at M&A on Silver Lake Blvd.

 

Materials & Applications (M&A): Since 2002, a Silver Lake Boulevard courtyard has been home to an art lab of inspiring architectural and sculptural installations. Bloom is M&A’s current installation—a 20-foot tall metal flower with solar petals that open and close in response to the sun’s heat. 

Stop by and watch the sculpture bloom.