Posted inArt

Walk into a Painting’s Colorscape

DALLAS — It was a normal day in downtown Dallas in June. The heat and humidity were bearing down on me with intense aggression, the traffic on Harry Hines Boulevard was jammed as usual, and glare beaming off of Museum Tower almost blinded me as I made my way to the arts district. Destination? The Nasher Sculpture Center, to see the installation by Berlin-based artist Katharina Grosse. WUNDERBLOCK, which opened June 1 and runs until September, features site-specific works by the artist that blur the lines between painting, sculpture, and installation.

Posted inArt

What Is James Turrell Doing in a Las Vegas Louis Vuitton Store?

SAN FRANCISCO — On a hot desert afternoon nothing sounds better than the arctic blast of a shopping center. Yes, it is a “dry heat,” but at 110 degrees, the relevance of humidity levels dissipates. So what store should you go to? If it were me, I’d call Louis Vuitton at City Center and make an appointment to see the new James Turrell! Number one: yes, you read that right — there is a permanent installation by Turrell at Louis Vuitton City Center. Number two: yes, you read that right — you will have to make an appointment to see the work.

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An Imperfect Exhibition of a Near-Perfect Director, Stanley Kubrick

LOS ANGELES — Often, I find museum exhibitions that have to do with celebrity or Hollywood culture to be a shameless attempt to generate a blockbuster-sized crowd who, flocking to the museum in droves, boost attendance numbers for the year. That being said, the massive installation Stanley Kubrick at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art transcends the sticky landscape of vapid popular culture and embraces a filmmaker that many would term artist. The exhibition, which was originally curated by the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt was brought to LACMA in collaboration with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

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Awesome Art in a Mall? Really?

DALLAS — Dallas. It’s a city, it’s a vintage television soap opera, and it’s the home of Bush 43. But it’s also a hub of contemporary art? Though this Texas-sized city has a reputation for big hair, football, barbecue, and twang, it also has a long history of support for the visual arts. From the Dallas Museum of Art to the Nasher Sculpture Centre, the Dallas Contemporary, and their rival Fort Worth (which boasts the Amon Carter Museum, the Fort Worth Modern and the internationally renowned Kimbell Museum), the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex has it all. The area’s artistic holdings feature ancient Greco-Roman antiquities, Michelangelo’s first painting, and major exhibitions by contemporary artists like Olafur Eliasson and Kara Walker. Yet as great as these institutions are, one of the most interesting places to view art in Dallas is in a shopping mall.