Edward Goldman

Summertime used to mean that the galleries and museums would take it easy, presenting lackluster group shows and few, if any, challenging solo exhibitions. Not any more. Economy be damned, the Los Angeles art scene is now sizzling year round.

Every parent knows how important it is to hang bright, colorful mobile toys above the baby's crib to stimulate their child's growing brain. But is there a perfect toy for us, adults, to stimulate our presumably developed brain? My answer to this question is...

There were two stories that made the front-page news last week. One had to do with art and an obscene amount of money. The other was a cringe-inducing story about the shameful treatment by the Chinese authorities of yet another political dissident,...

The first time I heard about the importance of having really good works of art displayed in hospitals, I thought to myself, what a strange idea. With all the drama taking place there, who is going to pay attention to the art...

The way many of us dread the prospect of going to 25-year school reunion is exactly how some artists feel about facing their own retrospective, where they will be confronted with all their artworks they haven't seen for years. It's emotional; it's...

After last week's explosive spectacle staged by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang outside of the Geffen Contemporary, I was worried: Would I find anything equally intriguing and unusual in the museums or galleries in the days to follow?

The answer is sort of...

Over the weekend, marked by celebrations of Easter and Passover, I drove a few hundred miles in search of beauty and the beast. I stumbled upon them both, and the experience was sublime as well as riveting.

For years, I have...

The Greeks knew her as Aphrodite and the Romans called her Venus. For us, today, her name evokes the idea of love, romance and erotic adventures. The new exhibition at the Getty Villa, Aphrodite and the Gods of Love, tells...

Going on a short press trip to Europe is never a walk in the park. It is more like a headfirst plunge into the local art scene: Exploring, tasting, inhaling it 24/7. And that's exactly how it was during my recent visit to Amsterdam.

If you are deeply, passionately in love with art of all ages, then no doubt you know about TEFAF Maastricht, the world famous art fair that takes place annually in the Netherlands. This year it celebrates its 25th anniversary and,...

Like weather and politics, art can be good, bad and ugly. But unlike political commentators, who cannot avoid dealing with the nasty parts of politics, I am searching only for the best, or at least the solidly good art to talk...

With the Oscars just a few hours away, I drove to West Hollywood and then walked through the road barricades set up for Elton John's annual Oscars party at the Pacific Design Center. That accomplished, I entered MOCA's satellite galleries there and...

You read it right, today's headline for my Art Talk is, "Knicks Player's Ball Crosses Over into the Arts?" Please don't worry; yours truly has no plans to expand his art coverage into sports. But this morning, rushing through the Los Angeles Times, I almost spilled my coffee over the...

There are much better exhibitions I have seen in the past and somehow quickly forgot. But here's one, which I saw over the weekend at the Hammer Museum, that I cannot stop thinking about even though some of the artworks there, to put...

Most of the Soviet dissidents of the yesteryear would immediately recognize the song about the phantom haunting Europe, the phantom of Communism. I wonder what their reaction would be to the punchy and provocative exhibition of political posters by Russian artists at the...

Twenty years ago, when a huge, ambitious show at LACMA celebrated the Splendors of Thirty Centuries of Art in Mexico, something strange happened in the very last room of the exhibition, dedicated to the best Mexican painters of the 20th century....

Depending on how you look at it, last week was pure heaven or sheer hell. I've seen a lot of action -- art action, that is, rubbing shoulders with huge, unruly but mostly friendly crowds all over the city. The hell...

More than 20 years ago, I had the good fortune to interview the author of a just-published, generously illustrated book about the amazing life and art of the one-and-only, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963). If you even briefly dip into the glory...

Love it or hate it, this city of ours is known and defined by perpetual driving along the miles and miles of its freeways. You want to have a perfect portrait of the city? Think about pulling, twisting, thrusting together all these roads....

The last day of 2011 ended on a rather dramatic note: something stopped me -- figuratively and literally -- in my tracks. I almost bumped into it. It was big, shiny and made out of stainless steel. And, no, it was...