Painter Gary Langhas enjoyed a celebrated career worthy of his keen talent. Free of the burden of conceptual angst that plagues most artists of our era, he penetrates optical space in his large circular paintings that defy the nihilism of both Duchamp's mechanical spinning wheels and Jasper Johns'...

The big story out of the Los Angeles art world is that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has proposed acquiring the financially troubled Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. According to a Jori Finkel-penned report in the LA Times labeled an "exclusive", LACMA was approached by...

On Saturday, March 2, 2013, artist Robert Williams turns 70 years old. His significant contribution to fine art was rediscovering classical figurative painting techniques and reintroducing them to an American audience with a revolutionary twist - it came to be called "Low-Brow," but in his earliest major paintings in the...

The 20th century's paper of record, The New York Times, recently published a long-winded piece imploring (or if you subscribe to the myth that the Grey Lady has clout, "nudging" might be a better word) the state legislature to more heavily regulate various aspects of the commercial art world.

If...

An art gallery functions much the same way that a labor union functions. Both of them seek the best price and conditions for labor. One negotiates with management for a group of workers, the other negotiates with collectors for a select group of artists. There are Teamsters Locals nationwide and...

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has quietly taken the lead in this city as the most interesting art museum. The Norton Simon still has, picture for picture, by far the best collection. The Getty still has the most money. MOCA and the Hammer are in a tussle for...

In January I wrote a piece suggesting twelve bad habits the art world should break in the coming year. September ushers in a new art season, so what better time to examine whether these bad art habits are still holding you back from making great art?

Of course,...

The Los Angeles art world is populated by a large number of rigorous intellectual rationalists whose reason for existence is to kill any notion of romanticism or sentimentality in art, be it through irony, deconstruction or outright mockery.

But mention the current coup at the Museum of Contemporary...

The art world discriminates based on age. I would advise every artist reading this to immediately remove your birth year from your website, from your Facebook page, from your CV/Resume. Oh sure, you strident few might squeal, "but I'm proud of my age." Well, power to you, Gramps. Art collectors...

Suddenly the essays decrying art fairs appeared out of nowhere, a tsunami of scolding. Every time the term "art fair" was mentioned in an online or print essay, some embittered art critic was picking apart the art fair establishment in mock horror. Art critics reflexively hate art fairs. Art critics...

When artist Chris Silva got an invite to participate in an art show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), he wanted to make sure he brought his best work. The "Transmission LA" show carried the outsider street credibility of its curator,...

I made the leap from critic to curator, but not from writer to non-writer. My decision to open a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles was as much a case of cabin fever as it was a love of putting art shows together. There is plenty to write about on...

The Art World has a long tradition of holding juried art shows to fund independent, alternative and non-profit galleries. Juried shows are the gateway to many an art career, but carry the stigma of leaving many artists high and dry, paying for the privilege of being rejected.

I was invited...

By now Los Angeles is awakening to a Pacific Standard Time hangover and if we never see another black and white photo of a wannabe beatnik sucking up to Walter Hopps we might make it through the decade ahead in one piece. It took me a while but I finally...

I went out with a camera and avoided any copyright infractions by running outside onto public property to discuss the work of artists and art on display at Los Angeles area galleries. This was all recorded on the brisk but sunny Southern California afternoon of March 15, 2012.

All of...

Every once in a while there is an art exhibit that is so perfect it serves as a litmus of each viewer who takes it in. Years later you can bring up such a show and gage many things about a person based on their response. Someone who loved it...

Los Angeles Artist Gronk appeared on the Coagula Webisode released Tuesday. He discussed painting the sets for the Peter Sellers opera Griselda with Coagula's Mat Gleason.

Fresh off the Pacific Standard Time survey of ASCO (the Chicano artist collective he co-founded in the early 1970s) at the Los Angeles County...

Happy Birthday, Jackson Pollock. The most controversial artist of the 20th century was born one hundred years ago on January 28 in Cody, Wyoming.

Pollock remains a polarizing figure in art and culture, for all the right reasons.

He is roundly derided on each plateau of society for his poured...

It is 2012, but in the art world it is often still 1966. Some of the "traditions" underlying the business side of the gallery and museum world date back decades. Don't let 'em fool you that they are hip. The art world is a bunch of stubborn ninnies who learn...

As December wound down... an arsonist or plural set over 40 fires in a hellish night of "street art" vandalism in and around Hollywood -- starting many of the fires by igniting cars.

Weird... on December 18 I was out in my front yard shooting moonrise pictures, an eerie red...