Arts&Culture - latimes.com

Art Review: James Franco's 'Rebel' has cause but little effect

By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Art Critic — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:29:00 PDT

James Franco's 'Rebel' exhibition at MOCA at JF Chen is inspired by James Dean's 'Rebel Without a Cause' and doesn't overcome the inherent challenges.

James Franco's "Rebel" fills a Hollywood furniture warehouse with movie and TV-style stage sets, sculptural installations and video projections — some made by Franco, many made by other artists.

The Sunday Conversation: Pianist Mona Golabek holds on to the music

By Irene Lacher, Special to the Los Angeles Times — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:26:00 PDT

The creator of the one-woman show 'The Pianist of Willesden Lane,' now at the Geffen Playhouse, reflects on the gift of music.

L.A. concert pianist and radio show host Mona Golabek makes her theatrical debut at the Geffen Playhouse in "The Pianist of Willesden Lane," a one-woman show of music and words based on "The Children of Willesden Lane," the book she co-wrote about her concert pianist mother's journey from 1938 Vienna to England on the storied Kindertransport. The show runs through June 24.

Dealers, auction houses cheer ruling on Calif. Resale Royalty Act

By Jori Finkel, Los Angeles Times — Fri, 25 May 2012 15:13:00 PDT

The dispute over royalties between artists and resellers of their works reaches a new pitch with the recent striking down of the California Resale Royalty Act. An appeal is planned.

For more than 30 years, California gallery owners have complained about the state's resale royalty law, which gives visual artists in certain cases a percentage of repeat sales of their artworks. But few disputes over royalties have ever reached court, and the law has gone virtually untested for decades.

Cultural Exchange: Hong Kong comics industry back in the game

By Joyce Man, Special to the Los Angeles Times — Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 PDT

Comic book publishers in Hong Kong like Jade Dynasty are seeing renewed growth in a once-flourishing business, with the Web and new talent helping lead the way.

Hong Kong — Times were good in the 1970s and '80s for Hong Kong comics — so good that one publisher was listed on the stock exchange and a newspaper dedicated to the genre published daily for two years. They were, in the words of Tony Wong, the creator of the Oriental Heroes action series whom fans, artists and scholars have dubbed the territory's godfather of comics, "the golden years."

That 'Look of Love' between LACMA and Hollywood

By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:44:00 PDT

The L.A. institution has a costarring role in the film, the latest sign of a healing relationship between filmmakers and the museum.

The L.A. institution has a costarring role in the film, the latest sign of a healing relationship between filmmakers and the museum.

Memorial Day 2012: Five things to do this weekend

By Jamie Wetherbe — Fri, 25 May 2012 12:19:00 PDT

Here, we round up five suggestions for a Southern California holiday of art, theater and music.

Here, we round up five suggestions for a Southern California holiday of art, theater and music.

Hammer biennial lends artists a helping hand

By Jori Finkel, Los Angeles Times — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:02:00 PDT

Many art-world biennials feature ambitious new work. This one also helped to fund it.

Until this year, Vishal Jugdeo's videos were dramatically low-budget affairs. The artist had a crew of two, counting himself and a director of photography and not counting actors whom he occasionally asked to hold a boom pole. He used his small studio in Highland Park as a stage set. The bare-bones feel fed some of his central themes, like the wooden language of what passes for emotional intimacy and the artifices of mainstream TV, exposed through absurdly halting dialogue and deliberately mechanical acting.

Political art: 'Presidential Campaign Posters' has election fever

By Liesl Bradner, Special to the Los Angeles Times — Fri, 25 May 2012 11:18:00 PDT

The book pulls from the Library of Congress to show visual politicking dating to the 1828 Andrew Jackson-John Quincy Adams rematch.

Before the era of the 24-hour news cycle and weekly televised debates, the predominant and most creative outlet for presidential candidates to communicate their vision was the campaign poster.

Blank Theatre's young playwrights' festival turns 20

By Karen Wada, Special to the Los Angeles Times — Fri, 25 May 2012 10:57:00 PDT

For two decades, the small, Hollywood-based company has presented plays and musicals by students 19 and younger. A previous participant was just a finalist for a Pulitzer.

Playwright Stephen Karam has made a splash off-Broadway with one play and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize with another. But for memorable moments in his stage career, he says there's nothing quite like his teenage triumphs in the Blank Theatre's annual young playwrights competition and festival.

Michael Heizer's calling is set in stone

By Jori Finkel, Los Angeles Times — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 PDT

The creator of the 'Levitated Mass' sculpture at LACMA, whose centerpiece is a 340-ton boulder, Michael Heizer is no stranger to exploring the complexities of giant stone.

In early 1969, a young artist working in the Nevada desert had an idea for an epic sculpture. Michael Heizer had found a 120-ton boulder in the mountains and wanted to set it above a trench dug in a dry lake bed.