Kristine McKenna

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Altered Chords

Kristine McKenna
You probably didn‘t know it, but Artie Shaw is alive and well and living in Southern California. He’s been here for 23 years, writing books in a modest tract house at the far end of the San Fernando Valley. I went there recently to talk with him about his amazing......
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Visual Poetry

Kristine McKenna
This is a big season for photography in Los Angeles. LACMA recently unveiled “Ghost in the Shell,” a hugely ambitious exhibition of portraiture that is the culmination of 33 years of work on the part of curator Robert Sobieszek. Across town at the Getty, and at the Gallery of Contemporary......
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The World Festival of Sacred Music — the Americas

Kristine McKenna
Courtesy World Festival of Sacred Music"THIS FESTIVAL INTRIGUED ME BECAUSE IT BROUGHT BACK MEMORIES OF THE L.A. FESTIVAL PETER Sellars put together in 1990," says Esa-Pekka Salonen in explaining why he volunteered the services of the L.A. Philharmonic to the World Festival of Sacred Music -- the Americas, which kicks......
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Art Attack

Kristine McKenna
THE ART WORLD NODS OFF IN THE SUMMER, then springs back to life with a roar in September. Publishers of art books live by the same calendar, and their fall line is upon us. The best of the new books thus far is a catalog from the exhibition "Drawn From......
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Show and Tell

Kristine McKenna
MOCA'S Julie Lazar and Robert Irwin's Central Garden (1997) at the Getty LIVING WITH AN ARTWORK IS DIFFERENT FROM visiting one in a museum. The formality of the gallery setting prohibits intimacy: You can't sit down with the object of interest, you usually can't be alone with it, and you......
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Shadows and Fights

Kristine McKenna
Anonymous press photoTHERE'S SOMETHING INHERENTLY DRAMATIC ABOUT two men facing each other in the heat of a fight, in a small, defined space lit from above. The simplicity of those elements throws a fundamental human drive -- the desire for physical domination and power -- into high relief. "Boxing," a......
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MOCA's Two Heads

Kristine McKenna
Photo by Larry HirshowitzWHEN RICHARD KOSHALEK LEFT New York's Hudson River Museum in 1980 to become deputy director at MOCA, the museum had $50,000, was without a permanent facility, and was still in the process of inventing itself. Two years later, Koshalek was made director of MOCA when its original......

Los Cubanos

Kristine McKenna
Photo by Donata Wenders"IF WE'D KNOWN IN ADVANCE WHAT WAS GOING to happen," says Ry Cooder, "we might've had reservations about catapulting these people into the limelight. But you can't see something like this coming." He's talking about Buena Vista Social Club, the Cooder-produced 1996 recording of obscure Cuban musicians......
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Horse Sense

Kristine McKenna
ONCE UPON A TIME, WHEN THEY WERE AN INTEGRAL part of people's lives, horses were a mainstay of visual art -- but they've been absent from art for decades. Other than Alfred Stieglitz's landmark photograph of 1923, Spiritual America, and the paintings of Susan Rothenberg, one is hard-pressed to think......
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Cabin Fever

Kristine McKenna
Courtesy Craig Krull GalleryEVERYBODY KNOWS BY NOW THAT TED KACZYNSKI was in the grip of a very bad idea. A high-strung nature lover who believed random killing of innocent people would benefit the environment, Kaczynski created the weapons of destruction for his grisly project in an isolated backwoods cabin he......