L.A. Weekly
Rick Schmidlin
“UNLESS THE STUDIO IS STOPPED THEY ARE GOING TO WRECK OUR PICTURE,” Orson Welles wrote Charlton Heston in 1957. “WITHOUT MY HELP,” continued Welles, “THE RESULT WILL BE GENUINELY BAD.” The film was Touch of Evil, and nearly wreck it “they” did. Some four decades later, a team of scholars, technicians and true believers — including Rick Schmidlin, pictured here in Venice, where Welles shot part of the film — joined together to create the “director's cut” of one of American cinema's genuine masterworks. (Manohla Dargis)
photography by DEBRA DiPAOLO
Johanna Went
Went's 1998 exhibition of props and relics at New Image Art documented 20 years of her performances. Before Went, performance art came as conceptual or endurance-oriented gallery events. Flinging sanitary-napkin sandwiches, mutilating sheep heads, endlessly changing shape through costumes and fabric birth-canals, Went ended the perception that performance must be boring, expending unprecedented levels of energy and image density in 20-minute shows, rising to the challenges of both art venues and punk nightclubs. (Ron Athey)
photography by JENAFER GILLINGHAM
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