L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley In one of the snapshots Miranda Grosvenor sent to her famous beaus, she appears blurry and blond, sitting in a convertible parked with its front end in the street and back end on the grass of somebody’s manicured lawn. In this and other photos, she is always alone, and always suspiciously attractive,[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley The Christmas arsonist began setting fires under cars in L.A. the day after his German mother’s extradition proceedings due to fraud allegations, including the charge she falsified the down payment for her breast implants. In a courtroom, he purportedly went on an “anti-American” tirade, then went out on a particularly anti-L.A. crime[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley “I basically did two things with my class,” said artist and teacher Michael Asher. “We took the clock out of the room and forgot about time.” That quote is pinned to the wall at RedCat gallery, along with a host of other quotes from students and instructors working at California Institute of[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley I wrote the below in 2008, for a design blog, D/visible, that has since gone into hibernation. But I’ve been thinking about the same ideas this week — essence and monumentality — and wanted to revisit. “It may have escaped your attention,” says Elizabeth Costello, the title character in a 2003 novel[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley Understandably, I have always associated Constantin Brancusi with pure lines and modernism of an overly spiritual kind, the kind someone who wants to “fill the vault of the sky,” as Brancusi once said he did, would gravitate toward. However, I saw his drawings for the first time last week. Two hang in[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley My favorite photograph in MOCA Los Angeles’ newly opened Weegee show is the one of the crime photographer turned expert ogler with Marlene Dietrich’s legs. It’s a riff off another Weegee image, “Self-portrait with Marlene Dietrich,” in which the photographer leans in, smiling in a pandering sort of way at the actress,[…..]
L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley That week Pacific Standard Time, SoCal’s Getty-funded, 60-plus institution push to excavate its own post-WWII art history, officially opened, I popped into a gallery showing a great selection of new work by an older artist. Is this an official Pacific Standard Time show, I wanted to know. “I don’t really know what[…..]
