Ansel Adams was famous for his signature series of landscapes, spindling trees, ominous clouds and cliffs, but he also had bills to pay. He had clients. He had assignments. In the ’40s, Fortune Magazine sent him to document Los Angeles’ aviation industry. He shot workers at a steel plant, but also dawdled around LA a bit, snapping oil rigs and boulevards and friends at bowling tournaments, friends at bars, friends staring off at the Santa Monica coastline. He ultimately decided that “none of the pictures were very good,” and donated the photos to the Los Angeles Public Library. Are they? Ansel Adams Los Angeles exhibit goes on view at LA’s drkrm Gallery on February 18th, but you can take a look at the loot right here, in our gallery, and judge for yourself. From dusty Burbank to bustling Downtown LA… let’s go!
Graffiti may have been around for decades, but thanks to artists like Banksy and Swoon, street art has achieved new cultural significance — which means that, for many of us, some of the most stunning works of modern art are just around the corner. Of course, the city is a big place, so unless you spend your days wandering the back-roads and alleys, it’s easy to miss some of your local street-art masterpieces. That’s why we’ve teamed with Havaianas to create an extremely handy guide to a selection of the amazing artwork in NYC, LA, and Miami that doesn’t need a museum to shine — inspired by the brand’s new limited-edition Graffiti sandals. Check out a gallery of images from the guide here, then click through for the whole thing, including printable maps.
Though it proved to be a non-issue, moments like LA’s recent Carmageddon leave us feeling pretty smug about our own reliance on public transportation. But there’s one thing we miss out on while riding the subway — the more discrete people watching opportunities that driving around town affords you. It’s definitely much easier to stare at a total stranger from behind a steel and glass barrier. Photographer Andrew Bush, whose work we discovered on Brain Pickings, would understand how we feel; his series Vector Portraits, which was shot in the ’80s and ’90s, documents people from all walks of life driving cars in and around Los Angeles — complete with incredibly detailed captions. From a guy engrossed in his book while flying down Interstate 5 at 64 mph to a couple caught mid-kiss at the intersection of Cahuenga and Hollywood boulevards, join us in a little automotive voyeurism after the jump.
Ross Ching’s newly refurbished ‘Running on Empty’ video, a time-lapse fabrication of an LA with no cars, has gotten a lot of hype in the past few days in conjunction with the whole ’Carmageddon’ fiasco in LA. Even though Carmageddon turned out to be a dud, Ching’s video is a beautiful ode to Los Angeles, worth watching no matter where you live. To our minds, the time-lapse video is something akin to watching a city fly by in a cab — it can feel removed and relaxing, touching and surprising, and is a pretty, easy way to experience something huge. To that end, ‘Running on Empty’ inspired us to gather a collection of other lovely time-lapse-based odes to the world’s most fascinating cities, from Berlin to Seoul to Abu Dhabi to New York. Sit back, relax and immerse yourself in somewhere else.
With their debut album, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, LA soul purveyors Fitz and the Tantrums reinvigorated classic Motown tropes with a modern pop twist. Eschewing the use of guitars, the band builds its retro booty-shakers around horn blasts, keyboard runs, and even flute solos. Frontman and founder Michael “Fitz” Fitzpatrick found his perfect counterpart in co-singer Noelle Scaggs; and in our latest interactive video interview, they talk about being compared to Ike and Tina, covering the Eurythmics and the Raconteurs, dodging Spongebob underpants, and the clever pun behind their band’s name.
The images in the gallery below aren’t stills from a Prince Rama video; they’re photos taken in Los Angeles’ Bronson Caves by Brice Bischoff. And rather than relying on Photoshop, Bischoff achieved his otherworldly effect by using long exposures to capture the motion of colored paper. “If a visitor to the caves were to accidently stumble upon my performance they would only see a mass of crumbled colored paper draped awkwardly over a man moving/dancing to a camera positioned on a tripod,” Bischoff writes on his blog. Eventually, he set the paper on fire. Of course, this explanation still leaves many questions — but we’re happy to have Bischoff’s project remain somewhat mysterious. Click through after the jump for a gallery of his Bronson Caves photos.
Thomas Houseago readily admits to the echoes of early Cubist-style Africanism in his sculptural work for floor, wall, and lawn. Looking at African art through Western-tinted glasses, he shares the Cubist’s appreciation for the psychological symbolism of masks and imposing nudes. The visceral impact of bulbous plaster, choppy wood, and hefty metal readily serves his sophisticated update of a Primitivist aesthetic. But he’s a modern LA artist, after all, who is very aware of all this embedded historical content, and his work is full of winks and nods to its pop culture filter. His new show at L&M Arts in Los Angeles, All Together Now, includes a juggernaut of roughly hewn, totemic figures and abstract landscapes for the contemporary tribalist.
Art Los Angeles Contemporary, which opens tomorrow and runs through January 30, wraps up a month-long, city-wide pageant of international art shows that included photo l.a, artLA projects, and the Los Angeles Art Show, along with a handful of smaller niche projects. Staging its first annual return with a move from the Pacific Design Center to Santa Monica Airport’s Bark Hangar, ALAC features more than 70 galleries representing 11 countries, a jam-packed roster of tours, performances, panels, and special events throughout the weekend.
Berkeley-based photographer Katy Grannan is known for portraits that reveal intimacies about her subjects, even as they skirt conventions of portraiture. Her earlier work used models and other people known to her, at specific times and places, often in evocative poses borrowed from art history. But for the last few years, Grannan has taken her practice to the streets and replaced her complicit subjects with anonymous passersby. Her current show, Boulevard, at San Francisco’s Fraenkel Gallery assembles an eclectic array of ordinary folks of outlandish appearance — interesting strangers, unaware of their role.
For those of us in the US who’ve always dreamed of a Sanrio theme park, the Japanese toy company has finally heard our plea. Small Gift is a traveling art exhibit, playground, marketplace, and big-top, all in one, celebrating Sanrio’s 50-year legacy as the connoisseur of kawaii. The purveyor of pop culture has been home to such characters as Hello Kitty, Chococat, Badtz-maru, My Melody, and dozens of others. Now, the childhood (and adulthood) icons are coming to life at full-scale, carnival-style extravaganzas in Los Angeles and Miami, with Sanrio shops surfacing between. The only negative is that the pop-up fun-fair isn’t sticking around.
