Foot Tunnels
Pedestrian tunnels are public space at its most problematic: lifesavers, nightmares. With tunnels fear is a given, and the standard solutions for addressing the issue — the security esthetic of gates, intercoms, and billboard-intensity signage; or the distraction esthetic of applied public art — only seem to increase the anxiety. For these reasons tunnels...
Michael Maas
Michael Maas is a Fallbrook-based painter. Over the past 15 years he’s shown extensively in Southern California, most recently at L2Kontemporary in Chinatown. He has another show this month at Bunny Gunner in Pomona. Maas is best known for his Alhambra series, over 200 paintings which deploy a common abstract motif — a...
agitPOP: Protest Becomes Graphic Reception 10/11
San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery presents political posters and graphics by artists from the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Dealing with current topics such as the Occupy movement, women’s rights, dream activism, and environmental issues, the exhibit will be an example of the ways that art can be used as a...
Wall
Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day. – Exodus 16:29 The wall encloses an area south of UCSD, roughly two miles long and one mile wide. On the north it borders La Jolla Village Drive, on the south La Jolla Parkway, on the west Torrey Pines Road, and...
San Diego Public Art
A standard lament in the visual arts community is that San Diego is fated to be a perpetual Jersey-on-the-Pacific, with art remaining the odd duck out in a region known for its theatre and physical culture. The artists tend to blame this on the weather, without considering that the problem may be their art. San...
Prole Drift: Jean Lowe and the Great Recession
1. In 1983 the historian Paul Fussell penned a minor classic of social satire titled Class: A Guide Through the American Status System. In it he dissects a myriad of class signifiers – housing, decor, transportation, diet, dress, posture, physiognomy, demeanor, vocabulary, religion, career, education, recreation – and from this deduces the following: –...
scott b. davis
scott b. davis has earned a national reputation for his night photography. The San Diego Museum of Art is currently exhibiting a survey of his work from the past decade. And a show of recent work opens in March at jdc Fine Art. A recent profile of davis in the Summerset Review offers a wonderfully...
Is Robert Pincus a real person?
On Saturday the U-T San Diego editorialized on the impending removal of a public artwork from the San Diego waterfront. The editorial begins with a full paragraph quoting former U-T art critic Robert Pincus on his response to the artwork in question. It then states the following: “These criticisms discount the undeniable reality that, from...
A Painting by Anita Storck
John Baldessari, Commissioned Painting: A Painting by Anita Storck (1969) If a sign painter could paint my texts, why not ask somebody to paint a picture according to my indications? Every year my father and I used to visit county fairs. Despite the fact that he loved looking at tractors and farm equipment and I...
Épater La Jeunesse
Like other art museums The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles hosts an annual gala event, with the goal of extracting surplus wealth from donors. The time-honored quid pro quo in this transaction is entertainment, and MOCA’s newly-acquired director Jeffrey Deitch has proven himself a master of pushing the notion toward the poles of art...
The Designated Voyeur
The following images are commercial advertisements from mainstream publications (both print and online). The three exceptions — a 16th-century painting, vintage comic strip panel, and contemporary pornograph — are from art/performance web sites and John Berger’s classic Ways of Seeing. The images share a common image schema, and the schema itself begs several questions...
8/6-7/2011 ArtLawn 2011
Experience art in a glorious setting this weekend—with lush green grass beneath your toes, the La Jolla sky overhead, and a stunning view of the ocean as the backdrop. It’s ArtLawn 2011.
Artists’ Drugs
A good hearty meal, all in one pill that can be carried in a vest pocket, is the dream of scientists of today, according to Hugh S. Cummings, surgeon general of the public health service. (Rock Valley Bee, August 17, 1923) Whereas the visual arts of the past were strictly material (stone, canvas, paper, pigment),...