Newsletter: Essential Arts & Culture: Dudamel’s birthday, resuscitating composer Julius Eastman, treehouse on the border
A special birthday for the conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A composer who was key to Los Angeles has his works resuscitated. A collective of Japanese artists creates a treehouse on the U.S.-Mexican border. And an artist responds to Donald Trump’s dark view of Chicago. I’m Carolina A. Miranda, staff writer with the Los Angeles Times, with your weekly update on everything culture:
Cause for celebration
Conductor Gustavo Dudamel of the Los Angeles Philharmonic marked his 36th birthday with a cake shaped like Walt Disney Concert Hall (that must have been an adventure to bake) along with a program that featured Mozart and Schoenberg. The latter, according to Times classical music critic Mark Swed, was “one of the greatest and most influential of the Austrian and German 1930s L.A. émigrés.” Dudamel was a little too quick on the pace, notes Swed, “but he kept the rhythmic energy high and knew how to make the big moments explode.” Los Angeles Times
A key composer and a quartet
“The coming to terms with Julius Eastman has just begun,” writes Swed of the provocative composer, baritone and pianist of “blinding talent” who helped usher in the L.A. Phil’s first contemporary music festival, but ultimately died homeless and forgotten in Buffalo, N.Y. The Monday Evening Concerts series at the Colburn School’s Zipper Concert Hall paid tribute to him in a performance that featured the young bass-baritone Davóne Tines performing with “otherworldliness and mesmerizing sanctity.” Los Angeles Times
The Kronos Quartet played an engagement at Chapman University’s new Musco Center for the Arts last weekend and Swed was there for that, too. The program, which didn’t offer a theme, dipped into the eclectic material for which Kronos is known — from new compositions by Nicole Lizée and Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq to works that firmly addressed politics. Los Angeles Times
And because Swed is a really, really busy guy, he also attended a performance of the Long Beach Opera’s performance of “Fairy Queen” (on view through Saturday), which transports Henry Purcell’s 1692 opera to modern-day Las Vegas. The show, he writes, is “revelatory” — a “plunge into inner lives [that] proves as startling as driving into a deep freeway lake that wasn’t there a minute ago.” Los Angeles Times
A border treehouse and Theaster Gates
As Donald Trump spoke about beginning construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, I paid a visit to a whimsical treehouse that stands right over the existing border wall in Tijuana — a work of art made by the Japanese art collective Chim Pom. The piece is a sardonic nod to border politics and the ways in which all walls, no matter how imposing, remain permeable. “Donald Trump can build the highest wall,” says Chim Pom member Ryuta Ushiro, “but it’s useless.” Los Angeles Times
This week I also spoke with Chicago artist Theaster Gates on the occasion of his first solo exhibition at Regen Projects in Hollywood. He is displaying a series of new paintings inspired by the graphs of sociologist W.E.B. DuBois as well as sculptures that draw from his collections of old Jet magazines. Gates also offers his perspective on the president’s dark views of Chicago: “I think that what Trump is indicating is that he’s unwilling to look at the preconditions that created this thing — from segregation to the lack of equity and job opportunities to schooling and healthcare.” Los Angeles Times
Related: Times contributor David Pagel reviews Gates’ “gift” of a show. Los Angeles Times
The Hammer’s expansion plans
Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne got an exclusive look at the Hammer Museum’s new expansion plans, which will boost exhibition space by 60%. Designed by L.A. architect Michael Maltzan, the plan will extend the museum into several floors of Westwood’s Occidental Petroleum Tower and will embrace Wilshire Boulevard in more visible ways. “The re-imagined museum,” he writes, “will have a dramatically stronger presence in the city.” Los Angeles Times
L.A. as public space at the Women’s March
Hawthorne also attended the Women’s March in Los Angeles last weekend and makes the case for “radical flatness” in his evaluation of how downtown L.A. performed as a civic space with the unexpectedly large crowds: Grand Park did well; Metro’s transit system and Pershing Square, not so much. Los Angeles Times
Trump and culture in Los Angeles
Speaking of the Women’s March, the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump marked an important transition point not only for the country, but for artists. I spent last weekend observing how Los Angeles artists and arts institutions were responding to the new presidency — — from a clown performance in Hollywood to the jammed women’s march in downtown Los Angeles, and a performance by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Los Angeles Times
Not hot on Lucas’ museum
Times art critic Christopher Knight weighs in with his view of George Lucas’ Museum of Narrative Art and he is not a fan. There’s the fact that “narrative art” is a made-up category, writes Knight, “as fantastical as the Cloud City run by Han Solo’s scoundrel friend, Lando Calrissian.” Plus, he notes, the Lucas plan “ignores a powerful art museum infrastructure already existing in L.A., one that desperately needs what Lucas could bring to the table.” Los Angeles Times
Plus, Knight has been hitting the L.A. galleries big time — checking out Douglas Tausik Ryder’s “peculiar and eccentric” wood forms at Jason Vass, the color field works of Emily Davis Adams at CB1 Gallery, and the pop-up Peter Saul show hosted by George Adams Gallery at CB1-G. The latter tracks a key moment in the career of the “brash” and “pioneering” Pop artist, writes Knight, “when commercial subject matter was busily kicking pure abstraction in the teeth.”
Painful stories in virtual reality
Producer and filmmaker Rose Troche, best known for dramas such as “Go Fish” and “The L Word,” has been a pioneer in developing stories that can be told in virtual reality. Her new project, “If Not Love,” which just premiered at the New Frontier arts and media exhibition at the Sundance Film Festival, is about a nightclub shooting — like the one at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., last year. “This form allows you a shortness of story, but in a more immersive ways,” she tells The Times’ Jessica Gelt. Los Angeles Times
One-man play for a basketball court
Keith Wallace is bringing his one-man show “The Bitter Game” to the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles this weekend, a work that was first staged on a basketball court as part of the La Jolla Playhouse’s “Without Walls Festival.” Divided into five acts, like the four quarters and overtime of a basketball game, the piece explores profound topics of racial inequity and one man’s complicated relationship with his mother. The Times’ Tre’vell Anderson reports. Los Angeles Times
Saving Salvation Mountain
Artist Leonard Knight spent three decades constructing a massive earth sculpture in the California desert: Salvation Mountain, a multi-colored mirage crafted out of hay bales, covered in stucco and painted with bright colors and religious texts. Times contributor Chris Iovenko writes about the struggle to maintain this delicate work of folk art as it weathers the elements and increasing numbers of visitors. Los Angeles Times
In other news…
— Eloy Torrez’s mural of Anthony Quinn in downtown Los Angeles receives a loving restoration. Los Angeles Times
— Artist Vera Lutter will photograph the LACMA buildings that will be demolished to make way for a new structure by Peter Zumthor. New York Times
— L.A. artist Mark Bradford, who will represent the U.S. at this year’s Venice Biennale, is teaming up with a nonprofit that helps prisoners re-enter Italian society. Artforum
— Cuban artist Tania Bruguera has asked to have her works withdrawn from an exhibition at the Bronx Museum in New York City because of the museum’s ties to the Cuban government. New York Times
— Artist Christo is scrapping a proposed monumental installation for the Arkansas River in protest of Trump, reports Randy Kennedy. But, as Ben Sutton notes, the artist seems perfectly at ease working with controversial patrons. New York Times, Hyperallergic
— Clare Voon analyzes Oval Office decor under Trump. Hyperallergic
— Times reporter Jeffrey Fleishman examines the batch of Oscar-nominated foreign language films and finds themes that reflect our moment of global anxiety. Los Angeles Times
— How L.A.’s Music Center is aiming to make itself and its audiences more diverse. Pacific Standard
— What this year’s Oscar-nominated movies owe to theater. The Stage
— How Mary Tyler Moore earned a Tony Award. Los Angeles Times
— The Los Angeles Opera has announced its 2017-18 season, which will feature main stage classics such as “Carmen,” “Candide” and “Rigoletto,” as well as more experimental fare (Philip Glass and Keeril Makan) for its Off Grand series. Los Angeles Times
— The latest fitness trend? Ballet. Huffington Post
And last but not least…
The video of painting and screaming that is just right for this political moment. (Plus, a short explanation of how that video came to be.) YouTube, Walker Art Center
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