Newsletter: Essential Arts & Culture: Monumental sculpture, ‘Finding Dory’s’ fluid music and lessons from the Tonys
I’m Laurie Ochoa, Arts & Entertainment editor of the Los Angeles Times and your guide this week to the essential arts stories from Southern California and beyond on this hot summer weekend.
Alison Saar’s must-see new gallery show
Art critic Christopher Knight says the new show at L.A. Louver Gallery featuring the work of sculptor Alison Saar is nothing short of magnificent. The show’s centerpiece is the 12-foot-tall “Breach (large figure on raft)” in which a powerful nude figure balances her belongings on her head. Displacement, Knight says, drives the monumental sculpture and many of the show’s other pieces. Saar also creates a stark lament for the lead-poisoned citizens of Flint, Mich., in “Hades D.W.P.” Los Angeles Times
The race to reimagine the L.A. River
Will a listening tour and new website put out by the nonprofit group River LA help ease anxiety over the still-evolving vision for the L.A. River by architect Frank Gehry’s office? Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne has been checking out the public sessions and new LA River Index website and finds hints about the Gehry vision in a climate of distrust from longtime river advocates. Gehry, though, tells Hawthorne he’s eager to get to the action phase of his plan: “I’m 87. I want things to happen quickly.” Los Angeles Times
The neon glows again in Havana
Adolfo Nodal, longtime general manager of Los Angeles’ Department of Cultural Affairs, helped restore more than 150 neon signs in and around Los Angeles. Now he’s teamed up with Cuban contemporary artist Kadir López Nieves to restore vintage neon signs that went dark in Havana soon after Fidel Castro came to power. Their Havana Light project is also creating new signs along with the restored ones, as public art sculptures all over the city. “It’s been a long season of darkness,” López Nieves told reporter Deborah Vankin. “But Cuba is finally open socially, open to the world. And the world is just opening to Cuba.” Los Angeles Times.
Lessons from the Tonys
Broadway came together for the Tony Awards only hours after the early Sunday mass shooting at Orlando, Fla.’s, Pulse nightclub, a tragedy that, as TV critic Robert Lloyd wrote in his review of the awards show, “targeted a community central to and inextricable from the life of the theater.” The show went on and as TV critic Mary McNamara wrote, it provided at least a temporary bridge back to sanity. In winning 11 Tonys, “Hamilton” didn’t break the record set by “The Producers,” but it did help the show earn its biggest ratings in 15 years. And with its multicultural cast, wrote theater critic Charles McNulty, “‘Hamilton’ was the right recipient of adulation on this somber night.” Don’t expect “Hamilton: The Movie” anytime soon, though. Steven Zeitchik explains that Broadway producers are usually reluctant to let go of a hit show when ticket sales are still strong. As one rival producer said, “‘Hamilton’ is a show that will make more than ‘Star Wars.’ Why do they have any incentive to try to be like ‘Star Wars’?” Los Angeles Times
Composer Thomas Newman back under the sea for ‘Finding Dory’
Director Andrew Stanton tells Tim Greiving that composer Thomas Newman was so important to the success of 1999’s “Finding Nemo,” “I felt like I was getting an essential cast member.” It’s no surprise then that the two are back together for the long-awaited sequel, “Finding Dory.” “He’s the De Niro to my Scorsese,’ says Stanton of Newman, whose music, Greiving writes, is often characterized by “fluid, wispy woodwind solos and liquid strings.” Los Angeles Times
Dudamel turns boos into cheers
L.A. Phil’s Gustavo Dudamel was booed in Vienna when he made his debut recently with the Vienna State Opera. But when he returned to Los Angeles, he walked across the street from his Disney Hall home and made another debut, this one with L.A. Opera to frenzied cheers. It was his first time performing at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. More notable, says music critic Mark Swed, he revitalized the company’s repeat production of “La Bohème”: “the reliable L.A. Opera orchestra became a band reborn.” Los Angeles Times
The underappreciated Claire Falkenstein
“In the 1960s,” writes art critic Christopher Knight, “Claire Falkenstein was the go-to artist for monumental abstract sculpture commissions in Los Angeles.” But nearly 20 years after her death, Falkenstein is largely forgotten. The Pasadena Museum of California Art is trying to right this wrong with an exhibition of 57 works that show why Falkenstein is a sculptor art lovers need to know about. Los Angeles Times
More art notes: Christopher Knight admires the historical face-off at the heart of Andrea Bowers’ exhibition of recent work at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects and finds new dimensions in the geometric abstraction paintings of Helen Lundeberg and other Abstract Classicists at Louis Stern Fine Arts.
‘anatomy theater’ and the nature of evil
At REDCAT, a new chamber opera that Mark Swed calls “a complete triumph” made its world premiere as part of Los Angeles Opera’s experimental “Off Grand” series. David Lang’s “anatomy theater” centers on an 18th century prostitute’s hanging in a public square for murdering her abusive husband and two children. Her body is dissected before a gawking, paying audience in search of the anatomical source of evil. Los Angles Times
‘Big Sky’s’ big drama in an Aspen condo
Put an out-of-work alpha male, a distracted wife and a teenager with secrets inside a deluxe Aspen condo with the added pressure of a possible big job offer and you have the makings of “Big Sky’s” drama. Onstage at the Geffen Playhouse, the play, says theater critic Charles McNulty, is sharp and very funny, but “a little too shallow to do more than intermittently divert.” Los Angeles Times
Philip Glass’ Walt Disney opera
David Ng kept us up to date on arts happenings from all over, including the news that the controversial Philip Glass opera “The Perfect American,” about the final days of Walt Disney, will get its U.S. premiere in March 2017, “not by a major institution like the Metropolitan Opera or Los Angeles Opera,” Ng writes, “but by the Long Beach Opera, a small company with a reputation for taking artistic risks.” Los Angeles Times
More arts news: Ng also reports that Danny Feldman will succeed Sheldon Epps as leader of the Pasadena Playhouse this fall. Feldman is currently director of New York’s Labyrinth Theater but was in Southern California before that as head of L.A.’s Reprise Theatre Company…..And L.A. Dance Project, the collective co-founded by Benjamin Millepied, has been given a three-year residency in Arles, France, starting in July.
Gronk’s ‘Giant Claw’ obsession
Carolina A. Miranda is still on vacation, but in the archives we found a cool story that augments her interview from last week with the artist Gronk (whose set design work is on display at the Craft & Folk Art Museum). It’s all about his extreme love for the B movie “The Giant Claw.” Los Angeles Times
Finally … we leave you with a bit of verse. The news that “Hamilton’s” charismatic creator will be leaving the production July 9 inspired Steven Zeitchik to write a rap for Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Follow me on Twitter: @Laurie_Ochoa
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