Christopher Knight
Christopher Knight is art critic for the Los Angeles Times. He is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism (1991, 2001 and 2007). Knight received the 1997 Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism from the College Art Assn., becoming the first journalist to win the award in more than 25 years. He has appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” PBS’ “NewsHour,” NPR's “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” and CNN and was featured in the 2009 documentary movie about the controversial relocation of the Barnes Foundation’s art collection, “The Art of the Steal.”
Recent Articles
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Here's why the Broad museum's generous lending program may not work out
Seven years ago, L.A. super-collectors Eli and Edythe Broad abruptly reversed course and decided not to give their coveted contemporary art collection to one or more museums, as they had long publicly planned. Instead they would build, endow and open their own. The new museum, stalled a bit by...
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'Paintings of Moholy-Nagy' gives only a taste of the artist's eclectic body of work
When it comes to Hungarian-born American artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), the only thing more difficult than pronouncing his name is grasping the significance of his art. Partly that's because his artistic ideas often outstripped his ability to fully manifest them in his work. Theory regularly...
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Getty curator at the center of past looting scandals has been writing a memoir
In the decade-old saga of looted antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, a firestorm that led to a transformation in professional standards for museums that actively collect ancient art, one prominent voice has remained relatively quiet. Now, there seems to be at least a possibility that might...
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A meditation on green -- the color, not the sustainability shorthand
If green is a sacred color, which shade is the holiest? Emerald? Turquoise? Lime? That’s just one peculiar question prompted by “1997/2013,” an installation of light and video by Viennese artists Richard Hoeck and Heimo Zobernig. Fluorescent tubes overhead and in simple fixtures casually leaning...
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Clayton Campbell's beasts of the wild and the cellular come to life at Coagula Curatorial
Two virtual worlds, one analog and the other digital, collide in “Wild Kingdom,” a group of 12 photographic prints from a larger recent suite by Clayton Campbell. Each is mounted on a 17-by-30-inch aluminum panel, as if it were a public notice or sign. In a way, it is. The signal being sent at...
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Jeffrey Vallance has a conversation with Leonardo and other giants at CB1 Gallery
On a fundamental level, art is a conversation among artists. (We’re invited to eavesdrop.) That includes speaking to artists from the past. Jeffrey Vallance put several artist-forerunners on speed-dial in 2010, engaging a group of professional spiritualists and mediums to conduct a séance and make...
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Noah Purifoy's smoldering work of art, 'Watts Riot,' is a powerful reminder on the 50th anniversary
"Watts Riot" is a smoldering work of art, made from materials scavenged from the momentous 1965 uprising in South Los Angeles. Sculptor Noah Purifoy (1917-2004) cobbled together charred fragments of wood, plaster, paint and signage to assemble an exquisite wall relief of murmuring power. At roughly...
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Disrupting the conventional at Joshua Petker's Ashes/Ashes
In Joshua Petker’s flaming crimson painting “Monster & Cop,” a menacing cartoon policeman wielding a fat bludgeon scowls at a tall pile of errant brushstrokes of brightly colored paint. Painting is cast as the title’s wayward monster, seemingly without purpose but in need of official monitoring....