Kristine McKenna

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Stop the World

Kristine McKenna
Photo by Rankin If you were paying attention to popular culture during the ’70s, you don’t need an introduction to Joe Strummer. Front man for the Clash, Strummer was one of the heroes of punk rock’s first generation and served as a spokesman for the more enlightened faction of that......

Clowes’ World

Kristine McKenna
If the first Dan Clowes comic you stumbled across was ”Needledick the Bug-Fucker,“ ”Hippypants and Peace Bear,“ ”Zubrick and Pogeybait“ or ”Dickie: Disgusting Old Acne Fetishist,“ you‘d probably figure there was no way the guy could write a movie. ”Needledick“ introduces the reader to a wicked little boy with precisely......
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Random Acts of Satire

Kristine McKenna
In 1953, Harry Shearer played a crippled boy in the Richard Burton vehicle The Robe. That same year he landed a small part in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, and he was off and running. ”That’s range,“ says Shearer, of his show-biz debut. ”I‘ve spent the rest of my......
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Junkman’s Journey

Kristine McKenna
Photo by Charlie Gross It’s just a few blocks from the Greek Theater to the former site of the Onyx, the underground petri dish and artists’ hangout that flourished in Los Feliz in the early ’90s. It’s funny, though, what a long trip those few blocks can be. Beck Hansen......
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Declaration of Independence

Kristine McKenna
To call Patti Smith the high priestess of punk is to oversimplify her. A poet, musician, mother, composer, widow, visual artist, political activist, androgynous style queen and occasional recluse, Smith has always cast a very wide net. She cites Maria Callas, Jackson Pollock, Johnny Carson, John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix and......
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Biennial Man

Kristine McKenna
this week, artist Doug Aitken boarded a plane to Manhattan, where he’ll oversee the assembly of a work called electric earth at the Whitney Museum. An installation composed of multiple-screen film and video projections, the piece has its U.S. premiere at this year’s Whitney Biennial, which opens March 23. It’s......
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Spinning Beds, Giant Table, Brancusi's beard

Kristine McKenna
Photo courtesy LACMA ONE COULD CALL ROBERT THERRIEN AN "international artist" -- his work is seen regularly at museums and festivals around the world; but rarely is it exhibited in his hometown. Represented by the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York since 1986 and more recently by Larry Gagosian in......
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Gary Gilmore, Meet Harry Houdini

Kristine McKenna
To create images that have never been imagined before, much less seen, is no small thing. Matthew Barney, who burst onto the art scene in 1991 at the tender age of 24, has made hundreds of them, and for the past decade he’s kept those with a taste for adventurous......
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The Grand Guignol

Kristine McKenna
R. CRUMB HAS DESCRIBED JOE COLEMAN'S WORK as having "the edge of someone engaged in an urgent effort to preserve their sanity," and Coleman, a cult hero lionized for his mastery of the Grand Guignol, does not disagree. What threatened his sanity? A violent, abusive father, a mother with boundary......
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Flash Back

Kristine McKenna
photo by Debra DiPaoloIT'S FITTING THAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER DESIGNER Rudi Gernreich as the century winds to a close. The subject of "Claxton/Gernreich/Moffitt," an exhibition of fashion photography opening Saturday at Craig Krull Gallery, Gernreich is known for unleashing the topless bathing suit onto the world in 1964, but his......