Christopher Knight, Art Critic

May 25, 2008

ART

A renovated Huntington Art Gallery

THE PAVED terrace behind the Huntington Art Gallery is 80 paces wide. By my stride, that's more than 165 feet. Stand at the center and look south, with the imposing Beaux-Arts mansion and its striped green awnings at your back, and infinity rolls out before you.

May 16, 2008

AROUND THE GALLERIES

Dike Blair at Mary Goldman Gallery

A dozen gouaches and a matched pair of installation sculptures by Dike Blair continue the New York artist's eccentric dialogue between perception and objects. His second show at Mary Goldman Gallery nicely elaborates long-standing concerns rather than breaking new ground.

May 14, 2008

Artist mixed paint, sculpture, cast-offs

Robert Rauschenberg, the protean artist from small-town Texas whose imaginative commitment to hybrid forms of painting and sculpture changed the course of American and European art between 1950 and the early 1970s, died Monday night, according to New York's PaceWildenstein Gallery, which represents his work. He was 82.

April 8, 2008

ART REVIEW

'Masterpieces of San Diego Painting: Fifty Works From Fifty Years, 1900-1950'

OCEANSIDE, Calif. -- The exhibition celebrating a building expansion at Oceanside Museum of Art is titled "Masterpieces of San Diego Painting: Fifty Works From Fifty Years, 1900-1950." If that doesn't stop you dead in your tracks, nothing will.

April 4, 2006

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK

Portrait of a cultural battle

As a celebrated Modern painting goes on temporary view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art today, the masterpiece becomes the latest work looted by the Nazis during World War II to have been returned to its rightful owner. Ninety-year-old Cheviot Hills resident Maria Altmann successfully sued the Austrian government for return of the treasure, seized from her uncle's home after he fled Vienna in 1938.

May 2, 2007

ART REVIEW

With new space, Seattle Art Museum expands its vision

SEATTLE — When the Seattle Art Museum turns 75 next year, it intends to be not only the most important general art museum in the Pacific Northwest but to be nationally prominent too. It might just get its wish.

June 21, 2006

CARS / 125 YEARS / COMMEMORATIVE EDITION / GALLERY

Classic paint jobs

Set out the flares: It's important to approach the subject of cars and art in L.A. with considerable caution. The road is dotted with potholes. We learned that the hard way. In 1984, the Museum of Contemporary Art opened a high-profile exhibition titled "Automobile and Culture" that chronicled the interplay between cars and art in Europe and the U.S. throughout the 20th century. To the surprise of many, masterpieces were few and far between. Minor works by minor artists filled the show, together with minor works by major artists, and the exhibition demonstrated just how incidental the car has been as an image for Modern artists.

July 24, 2005

CRITIC'S CHOICE | BERLIN

A portal to the new Berlin

For Westerners, the center of Berlin suddenly shifted east when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The geographic heart of the metropolis still lies in the bohemian neighborhood of Kreuzberg, with its big, loft-like apartments and sometimes raucous night life. But reunification of East and West has meant that the city's spiritual core has returned to Museumsinsel — Museum Island — a spot of land in the Spree River that is home to an array of seminal art museums stuffed with astounding collections. Nearby, the once drab East Berlin neighborhood around Auguststrasse, just a short walk across the river, has metamorphosed into the liveliest contemporary gallery scene in Europe.