Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

Carlos Almaraz, Playing With Fire

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Part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA
at The Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner

Pacific Standard Time/LA/LA (Los Angeles, Latin America) is the second installment of a widespread series of exhibitions sponsored by The Getty. This incarnation involves over 70 institutions (art galleries, museums, and other cultural venues) from all over Southern California, including Palm Springs, to showcase Chicano and Latino art — ancient through contemporary.

As part of PST/LA/LA, The Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art (LACMA) shows a survey of painting from the prolific and prodigiously gifted Carlos Almaraz, who died too young of AIDS in 1989. From 1973-83, Almaraz was part of a Chicano (though that term was new) Collective, called Los Four, which included Frank Romero, Gilbert Magu Lujan, and Roberto de la Rocha. They worked together, painted and sculpted many of the same images (cars, cacti, dogs, chairs, flames) as they developed a Chicano lexicon of imagery. They are all being recognized anew. Frank Romero just had an outstanding retrospective at MOLAA last spring and Gilbert Magu Lujan will have a huge retrospective (over 200 works) at UCI this fall. The fourth member, Roberto de la Rocha, unfortunately destroyed all his works, went into seclusion for 20 years and is just now rejoining the Los Angeles artistic community. [Read more…]

Dubuffet Drawings, 1935-62

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at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner

“The voices of dust, the soul of dust: these things interest me many times more than flowers, trees, or horses because I sense they’re so much stranger.”  — Jean Dubuffet

The Hammer Museum’s exhibit entitled Dubuffet Drawings 1935-62 is, according to their literature, the “first in-depth exhibition of Dubuffet’s drawings.”

I’m not sure if they mean in the United States or perhaps even world -wide. No matter. It is an extraordinary grouping of almost 100 works on paper – many borrowed from France – and the sheer volume is not only a treat for the viewer but provides important insights into Dubuffet’s idiosyncratic technique. His “backstory” – as we say here in California – is quite unusual. Apparently, he showed early artistic talent and had many significant artist friends, but for twenty years was a wine merchant. Not until 1942, at the ripe old age of 41, did he finally commit to being a full time artist. He had his first solo show in Paris two years later. [Read more…]