Category: art books
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Popular Collector Event Makes a Comeback in L.A.
Incognito is what happens when the Hunger Games meets a Blind Box Toy pop up- it’s a race toward the unknown. The ICA LA recently resurrected its wildly popular, mysteriously enigmatic fundraising event to mark their one year anniversary in their new DTLA space. Incognito displays over 400 works of art by 350 artists whose…
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Artist a Day: Jamel Shabazz
Before Rap Squats became a meme, any musical artist coming out of the 1980’s had to have a perfect album cover pose, and Jamel Shabazz’s photography captured the look. His portraits not only gave us a contemplative look at Brooklyn in the 1980’s and 1990’s, his ability to connect to his…
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Artist a Day: Purvis Young
In light of the recent Town Halls and discussions taking place between our youth and our anemic leadership on gun control, I am inspired by this particular moment that they have seized. Their work taps into a long legacy of youth advocates selflessly serving as catalysts for change. While we applaud these current efforts to…
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Artist a Day: Hilton Als, Nothing Personal
“We have, it seems to me, a very curious sense of reality-or rather perhaps, I should say, a striking addiction to irreality.” James Baldwin, Nothing Personal, 1964. The book “Nothing Personal”, a collaboration between writer James Baldwin and photographer Richard Avedon, had an instrumental impact on a young Hilton Als growing up in Brooklyn.…
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Poems and Portraits: Revealing and Reclaiming Blackness in Western Art
The cover of Robin Coste Lewis’ book, Voyage of the Sable Venus features a Harlem Renaissance era photo of a slim black woman standing on a sidewalk deep in thought. With one hand resting on her hip and the other cradling her chin, the woman is pondering what lies behind the glass window in front…
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National Pink Day, Through Art
So today is National Pink Day and everyone is busy sharing pictures of their best selves donning pink clothes and drinking frosé (I had no idea frozen rosé was a thing until last week). But for me, the first thing I thought of was James Turrell’s Breathing Light which just wrapped its legendary 5 year…
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Artist of the Day Challenge (26): Henry Taylor
Upon graduating from Cal Arts in the mid 90’s, Los Angeles artist Henry Taylor has cultivated a career as a portrait artist who uses his medium to connect with his subjects. That familiarity shows through in his work as most of his portraits come from impromptu encounters with the people who find themselves in his orbit: family, friends andhomeless people in…
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Artist a Day Challenge (15): James Baldwin
James Baldwin, 1945. Portrait by Richard Avedon. Photo Credit, National Portrait Gallery Yesterday’s post about Dawoud Bey took a close look at his 2013 Birmingham Project, a photographic examination of church bombings and deaths that took place in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. Bey’s work was an attempt to reconcile the present through an examination…
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Artist a Day Challenge (13): Carrie Mae Weems
The other day at Arcana books in Culver City, I was able to thumb through a rare copy of The Sweet Flypaper of Life which featured photography by Roy DeCarava set to the prose of Langston Hughes. This photo caught my attention, not only for the moment of tenderness it captured, but also because it reminded me of…
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Artist a Day Challenge (12): DeCarava and Jazz
“In between that one-fifteenth of a second there is a thickness.” Roy DeCarava Roy DeCarava’s photos of jazz musicians are some of my favorites in his body of work. Photographers who are also musicians in their own right, capture what the rest of us don’t see in the moment. “Jazz I think approaches the visual experience…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 