Articles by Catherine Wagley

Looking For Ruins

Looking For Ruins

In a postcolonial world, the site of the 1907 Colonial Exhibition has become a source of inspiration for artists working against colonial ideologies and structures that still exist today.

Looking at Los Angeles

The Architect, the Artist, and the House That’s Become a Star

Looking at Los Angeles

The Architect, the Artist, and the House That’s Become a Star

Catherine Wagley visits the famous Sheats-Goldstein House and considers the pop culture present of this fifty-year-old residence by architect John Lautner.

Looking at Los Angeles

Escaping the Corporate Frame

Looking at Los Angeles

Escaping the Corporate Frame

More than 40 years ago James Turrell and Robert Irwin teamed up on a “hair-raising” art and technology initiative. Columnist Catherine Wagely looks back.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Seeing Pink

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Seeing Pink

Columnist Catherine Wagely makes the leap from the Human Rights Campaign’s pink-on-red equal sign to an exhibition of works by Brad Spence.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Being Difficult

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Being Difficult

Llyn Foulkes “has never had nor seemed to want any conceptual smoothness.” Columnist Catherine Wagley on the maverick artist’s retrospective exhibition at the Hammer Museum.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | What Have Bangs Got to Do with It?

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | What Have Bangs Got to Do with It?

All the talk about Michelle Obama’s new haircut inspires Catherine Wagely to look at bangs in art.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Natural Born, Dead on Arrival

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Natural Born, Dead on Arrival

Two exhibitions in Culver City right now do exactly what Showtime’s “Homeland” should have done.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Truth and Illusion, Pigeons and Freeways

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Truth and Illusion, Pigeons and Freeways

Catherine Wagley details an L.A. artist’s Quixotic efforts to hack freeway signs using homing pigeons. But was any of it for real?

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | When Rock Star Fantasies Go Too Far

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | When Rock Star Fantasies Go Too Far

Catherine Wagley looks at several LA shows that occupy the slippery space between truth and reality.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | I Already Know I Exist: Ken Price at LACMA

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | I Already Know I Exist: Ken Price at LACMA

Catherine Wagley considers the role that personal biography plays–or doesn’t–in LACMA’s newly-opened “Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective.”

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Anna Piaggi and the Summer One-Off

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Anna Piaggi and the Summer One-Off

The writer and fashion icon Anna Piaggi, who died this week at 81, serves as a reminder that in art, as life, one-off gestures are often the most memorable ones.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The MOCA Debacle: What Does ‘Visually Stimulating’ Even Mean?

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The MOCA Debacle: What Does ‘Visually Stimulating’ Even Mean?

Catherine Wagley on Paul Schimmel’s controversial departure from the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Anything but the Kitchen Sink

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Anything but the Kitchen Sink

Catherine Wagley muses on family, history, and the relation of both in artworks by Patricia Fernandez and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle in the Los Angeles Biennial.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | And the Money Came Rolling In . . . Or Not

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | And the Money Came Rolling In . . . Or Not

When the display of a luxury car leads Catherine Wagley to mistake a performance festival for a fundraiser, the slippery relations between art and commerce become clear.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The Painter of Light is Radically Not Me

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | The Painter of Light is Radically Not Me

Catherine Wagley reflects on the passing of Thomas Kinkade, the infamously popular “Painter of Light” who pushed the idea of coziness to mind-numbing extremes.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | A Wonderland That Wasn’t Meant to Be

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | A Wonderland That Wasn’t Meant to Be

Catherine Wagley reviews the group show “In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States” on view now at LACMA.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Mike Kelley’s Elegance

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Mike Kelley’s Elegance

Mike Kelley gained renown for his sprawling, mixed-media installations, but Catherine Wagley argues that Kelley’s oeuvre should also be remembered for its elegance.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Dirty Laundry

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Dirty Laundry

Suzanne Lacy’s performance “Three Weeks in January” reminds us that after all these years, sexual violence is still swept under the rug.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Local Dancer Meets Mother of Performance

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Local Dancer Meets Mother of Performance

When it comes to paying artists whose bodies provide the art, when is mere “compensation” not enough?

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Ladies of Old School L.A.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Ladies of Old School L.A.

  Rampart, an “L.A. Noir” set for limited release the day before Thanksgiving, is a relentless film with a hero who’s impossible to love but a narrative thrust that forces …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Boosterism

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Boosterism

  Dave Hickey has called us out. “It’s corny,” the critic told the New York Times, referring to Pacific Standard Time, L.A.’s current, Getty-funded initiative to canonize L.A.’s post-war art …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Five Car Stud

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Five Car Stud

  “All the ghosts are assembling for the party.” That’s what Claire Danes says in the movie The Hours, when her mother, played by Meryl Streep, throws a dinner that …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Lynda Benglis, The Anti-Kitchen Artist

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Lynda Benglis, The Anti-Kitchen Artist

Once, when artists Liam Gillick and Sarah Morris had legendary minimalist Carl Andre over for dinner, Andre drank a bit much and let his tongue loose. To Morris, he said, …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Since When Is Red a Conservative Color?

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Since When Is Red a Conservative Color?

At a meeting on Tuesday, July 12, officials in California’s Riverside County decided seceding from the rest of the state might not be such a good idea after all. The …

Barbara Kruger, The Globe Shrinks, 2010, video installation. Installation Photo: Joshua White/JWPictures.com, Courtesy L&M Gallery.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Barbara Kruger, Shafted and Shining

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Barbara Kruger, Shafted and Shining

In 2008, when Eli Broad opened his big, brazen inaugural BCAM show on the Los Angeles County Museum’s Campus, Barbara Kruger (Season 1) was shafted, stuck accenting an elevator while …

Teresa Margolles, Untitled (2010), October 28, 2010 - August 2011, Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Islands on Land

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Islands on Land

Late last night, a friend and I decided to find a restaurant we’d seen once, over a year ago, when walking through Virgil Village to Silver Lake. We remembered the …

Reyner Banham, the Silurian Lake south of Death Valley in San Bernardino County, California. Photo: Tim Street-Porter. Via archpaper.com.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Architects on Bicycles

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles | Architects on Bicycles

Reyner Banham, the British architectural historian whose blatant enthusiasm for Los Angeles nearly got him blacklisted in an era in which the cultured loved to hate this city, revered crisps, …

William E. Jones, "Killed," 2010, video still.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Killed Posterity

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Killed Posterity

Roy Stryker, the man who ran the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and sent some of the best-known 20th century photographers out on their first assignments, “didn’t …

Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. Courtesy Patti Smith Archive.

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Owning Robert Mapplethorpe

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Owning Robert Mapplethorpe

  “I don’t know why my pictures come out looking so good,” photographer Robert Mapplethorpe once told his brother. “I just don’t get it.” He had that innate knack for …

Flash Points

Flash Points: Friends and Influence

Flash Points

Flash Points: Friends and Influence

Tonight, I am sitting in a red booth at Formosa Café in Hollywood, the Cantonese restaurant Frank Sinatra reportedly frequented when heartsick over Ava Gardner. Lana Turner came here too, …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Big, Broad Bunker Hill

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Big, Broad Bunker Hill

Eli Broad, Los Angeles’s most aggressive philanthropist, nearly always wears solid, primary colored ties. Last Thursday, he wore a red one to unveil the plan for his new museum on …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Senators with No Talent

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Senators with No Talent

I woke up Wednesday morning to news of fracas at the opera. The La Scala opera house in Milan had just hosted its annual gala, the sort of event heads …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Seen and Felt

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Seen and Felt

When I first encountered the warm voluptuousness of Mary Cassatt’s paintings, it annoyed me. Then I realized the artist had never married, living much of her life frequenting Paris salons, …

Flash Points Wrap-Up: When Art Becomes Your Life

Flash Points Wrap-Up: When Art Becomes Your Life

A few weeks ago, when a friend was planning a visit to New York City, he asked me which art to see. I found myself prefacing less-emphatic recommendations with, “it …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Fixed Up

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Fixed Up

A hair was stuck in the main camera when Liza Minnelli first filmed Liza with a “Z” (1972), a supposedly live special for NBC. Minnelli and crew refilmed, using paid …

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Summer Love

Looking at Los Angeles

Looking at Los Angeles: Summer Love

Last weekend, I stopped at a red light and rolled forward into the intersection to turn right. I didn’t see the pedestrian who was about to cross, and came frighteningly …