Defining Modern Art

THIS WEEKEND, I had the pleasure of visiting the Grand Avenue location of the Musuem of Contemporary Art downtown, which forced me to reflect on the relation of graffiti to modern art and the way space is used. Many of the paintings and sculptures that line the walls of M.O.C.A. are ones that would probably be thought of to be universally thought-provoking, but there were a few that I found to be strange additions which seemed to focus more on the process of making the art than the art itself, such as a completely black canvass that was untitled. How are these better than graffiti, and why are these things backed financially? As I walked through the museum, I found myself enamored with the descriptions and the way in which artists pitch themselves, specifically, a modern artist named Pierre Alechinsky who wrote, "When I paint, I liberate monsters. One does not chose the content, one submits to it." With each work of art, I found myself more interested in the writing and attitudes that artists hold towards their work than the work itself.

Upon leaving, I noticed a series of chalk drawings that someone had created on the sidewalk near the parking garage that looked like a series of intricate crop circles. How was this not art? It didn't have the artist's instruction manual. Maybe everything is art, but pitching yourself as an artist is half of the battle. The chalk circles didn't get a description about inner demons, and therefore, people weren't going to pay to ruminate over their meaning. This forced me to conclude the hierarchy at play: perhaps the most talented artists (specifically in graffiti) making statements are not recognized simply because they don't get the chance to pitch themselves. All of the artists in the gallery were supported by huge financial donors, but how does one even get a meeting with these donors? Knowing people.

Maybe the real artists are ones like Prime as featured in Ruben Martinez' "Going Up in L.A.," whose vision for art was not selfish, and even actively wanted to involve other people: "I want to have a big lot when I grow older," he said, leaning forward, a small gold crucifix swinging in front of his dark blue sweatshirt. "It'll have big, long, movable walls. I'll put canvasses up, and have kids and artists there, have it be like a big maze of art. Then, with the money I make in one day, I'll buy some more canvas and change the maze." For "contemporary art", few pieces in the musuem actively involved the spectator, and the descriptions definitely catered to crowds with their undergraduate degrees. The purpose of art is that it is supposed to be universal: it can mean something to anyone. Graffiti is easy to see. It is in our faces every day as we drive to school, work, the daily grind. You don't have to pay a price for it, and you definitely have an opinion on it, good or bad, without needing a paragraph written about it. It just breathes a life of its own without explanation.

Although graffiti art is rapidly gaining recognition with an upcoming documentary on British street artist Banksy, graffiti tours, and new styles popping up everywhere, why aren't these artists getting paid big bucks too?

--Thea Green

(photo: banksky, credit: cannon snapper, flickr creative commons)

Method Festival 2010

L.A. IS A town where films are coming out at the same rate McDonald's makes fast food in mass production. About 800 pitches about vampires happen a year. There are fifty versions of guy-gets-girl, each done with a new twist. This is a town with a variety of outlooks on the same old topics, with as many vibrant ideas as there are artists.

This weekend, I attended the 2010 Method Festival in Agoura Hills, California as a plus one to director Brett Carlson of Take My Wife. I was thrilled to attend and was given a V.I.P. pass, which allowed me instant access to all of the afterparties and any film I could ever dream of viewing. Seeing as this is one of the top tier festivals, I went out and bought myself a new cocktail dress and spent hours sprucing, hoping to meet the next Woody Allen looking for a Mia Farrow partner-in-crime.

I arrived in Agoura Hills to the Good Night Inn, where the directors for the festival were housed. This place is less than glamorous. It looks very much like place you see at the beginning of bad slasher films where you just know someone is going to die. Brett takes me from the 'Good Night' to the theater where the films would be screening: it's a completely normal theater, selling gross popcorn. A slew of grandmas outside ask me why I'm so dressed up, and I tell them I'm going to the film festival. "Oh, you're fasting?" "Nope," I say, "I'm going to the Film Festival. FILM. FEST-I-VAL."

Half of the films I saw were less than stellar. They looked like a bunch of NYU kids got together that hadn't actually been going to all of their classes and tried to make some low-budget films. The other half were brilliant and cutting edge, combining different forms of media and clearly products of the new, more technologically saavy generation. Overall, I feel I slept a good two out of four screening hours daydreaming.

Brett and I attended two afterparties. The first was at a Steakhouse called Flemings, and we were the youngest people there by thirty years. The second was at a club called Ch. 8, which looked a bit like a brothel in Chinatown. There were only about five people from the festival there: three out of work actors, Brett, and myself. These parties were less than glamorous. I've had more glamourous nights at Brennan's famous turtle races.

I know that festivals like Sundance and South by Southwest do these parties and do them right. When I asked Brett why the parties were such duds, he said that surprisingly, Los Angeles festival parties are the worst parties. People feel more like they're just going to catch a quick film in blue jeans and then head out to some posh little bar on Hollywood Blvd. like they do every other weekend. It seems odd to me that the city that makes these new films doesn't seem to celebrate them to the degree that places like Boston does. In this beautiful city that combines the natural magic of the beach and the creation of so many different art forms, it saddens me that people fail to take a moment to really celebrate new filmmakers that get this town running. It makes me feel that the L.A. film industry gets so wrapped up in creating a marketable product and getting distribution for things that will sell, that it neglects to acknowledge the underdog to the right capacity. There is definitely a class separation from the people making/financing the movies, the writers and directors of big sellers like Avatar and Clash of the Titans, and the writers and directors of the indie/ultra low-budget. At film festivals outside of Los Angeles, all of these categories are forced to blend together and represent Hollywood as a whole, but in Hollywood itself, these distinctions become more apparent and others seem less likely to go out and support something outside of their direct line of vision or personal income.

-- Thea Green

(photo credit: the shopping sherpa, flickr creative commons)

A New "White Spot"?

LA NOIR, by Jim Buntin, describes the “white spot” as a place where “native, white born Protestants could enjoy the magic of the outdoor inviting always…trees in blossom throughout the year, flowers in bloom as well as mystery, romance, charm, and splendor all safe among others of their kind.” Almost a century later, it seems that many parts of Los Angeles have tried to redefine the “white spot” and uphold some of its main tenants. Where the white spot used to denote a sort of Utopian feel by keeping the land and people beautified, many exclusive Los Angeles bars try to keep a similar aesthetic sense of perfection, perhaps a more modernized version of what the original white spot represented.

This weekend, I ventured out to Bardot in Hollywood for a friend’s going away party and quickly discovered that getting in is about as stressful as going through customs to get into Europe. You have to either know some kind of code that is a word too big and pretentious for most of the people there to even pronounce or know someone that can get you in the door, and they still spend about 20 minutes making you feel like you are not going to fit, even though there are really only 30 people inside. They pride themselves on only letting in the beautiful people, and by beautiful I mean the heavily made up ones, not the ones that have perfect Kate Winslet bone structure. Once you get inside, it looks a lot like a hipster that read half of Siddhartha decorated the place in gaudy old-world cloths and antique lamps. A group of mediocre looking girls in five hundred dollar dresses scowl at my date and I as they catch us pouring cheap booze out of a flask into the Cokes that we ordered, and it seems like everyone is holding a $20 drink just to remind others of their place in society and how easy for them it is to drop that ‘chump change’ on a fancy little drink. A girl to the right tells me that she spent $20 on each drink like it was a complaint, then gives me a little wink and tells me that she believes the drink will make her look better in the morning. The same woman proceeds to light her cigarette in a nearby candle.

These bars are great places to hang out with Hollywood's elite and the people that know them through three degrees of separation. The people inside are the ones creating this fake exclusivity, wanting to be at a place that is difficult to get into. It is all part of an elaborate game, but at the end of the day, the patrons inside of these places are desperate to get in and stay in: the dive bars of today with their three dollar beers are similar to the areas outside of the original white spot, taking over and seeping in, and these clean little pockets of bars with ninety pound shot girls, expensive drinks, and gaudy décor seem to serve as a larger metaphor for those early ideals of the Hollywood white spot….But, ironically, of course.

--Thea Green

(photo credit: Thea Green)

Celebrity Prom

DAVID FINE discusses the rise of 'unreality' in his Imagining Los Angeles. In the 1920s, studio back lots started to seep into daily life and turn the city into a massive theme park that did little to separate fantasy from reality.
Perhaps, the most disturbing part of the Oscars to me was the film clipdiv>

Let's discuss this theme park's favorite holiday: The Oscars. I knew it was going to be an interesting night when a friend arrived at my door with a case of Blue Ribbon and said "I thought I should bring this....since James Cameron is involved." In the style of theme park, the show opened with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin flicking Avatar creatures across the screen, which was less than impressive to George Clooney, whose countenance spoke loudly. It featured a series of break dances to the nominees for best score, which definitely looked like a part of that bad show you try to avoid at Disneyland while eating your twenty dollar hamburger. Steve Carell, a natural funny man, looked like he had been told someone just died. And a poor old man in some obscure category was cut off before he could even begin his speech with the swell of the Oscar music.

that they chose to associate with the film Precious: a very large Gabourey Sidibe steals a bucket of fried chicken and runs down the street with it, fat flowing out everywhere. And the audience laughed. This one clip managed to miss the genius of this monumental film.

Fine talks about "fiction that played , at times obsessively, on themes of unreality, masquerade, and deception." The Oscars, to me, can often be that place of unreality, where the interviewers have to act like Miley Cyrus has a chance in hell at winning an Oscar one day.

We still live in this "fantasy world", and for some odd reason, I don't hate it. I think that we've found a happy medium in that we can appreciate these unrealities for what they are and still fun of them at the same time. Precious was not acknowledged properly, but Mo' Nique still received an Oscar, even after admitting she would ditch the after party to binge eat at El Pollo Loco. Ben Stiller was allowed to go on as an Avatar creature gone wrong. Tyler Perry was allowed to announce onstage that he feels he literally has no place at the Oscars. And Woody Harrelson could be called out openly for being blazed out of his mind. Though in L.A. we still always feel like we're interning on a back lot, we're allowed to make fun of ourselves in the process. Slowly but surely, the industry is starting to become a place where reality meets the early makings of L.A. fiction that Fine describes. The Oscars are that place where we can find a happy medium of making fun of celebrities with friends, learning about striking new fiction, and celebrating genuine talent in the most ostentatious manner imaginable.

-- Thea Green
(photo caption: ferris wheel
photo credit: puttal, flickr creative commons)

Hidden L.A.: Late Night Speakeasies

ONE OF the best things about L.A. is finding the hidden pockets that you only discover by talking to people, the kind of places that people don't necessarily want to let you know about because they want to make sure that only the right people are there. You know when you meet a guy who is trying to pick up girls in a Venice bar by simply using the line "I'm a musician" that A: this guy is shady! and B: he's weird enough to know some really rad hangouts.
This is how I stumbled onto the speakeasy at the Stronghold, which is a clothing store by day, free-for-all by night. I couldn't give you any specific details other than the fact that magic goes down there on most weekend nights, as there doesn't seem to be an established time, cover, or genre. First, you stand downstairs and drop a general name of someone who you clearly don't know (but there's always a Bill, right?) to try to get into the place for free, which we did by yelling at someone who poked his head out from an upstairs window. You make your way upstairs to a sea of locals, real musicians, "musicians", druggies, forty-something soccer moms, and other twenty-two year olds with empty pockets like myself, trying to live on the edge of adventure.

There's a thirty-year-old woman in a vintage wedding dress and glasses heating up the dance floor. The band is good, and they've got the kind of sound you'd probably pay thirty dollars to see on Sunset with a jazzy-country blend that's got people going wild, and the old, blind, bass player with sunglasses on is just jamming out. For good conversation, there are the smokers on the back porch, who seem to either be members of the band or drunk singles trying to figure out where they fit into the scheme of things. I was there until after three A.M., but it seems that at the Stronghold, the party never stops. I highly recommend checking out this hidden nook of Los Angeles, especially with friends that seem to be in the anti-L.A. funk. This place has a twenties feel that brings L.A. back to another decade with less headaches and more fun. Those from small towns will feel right at home, the trendy chic won't feel out of place, and the music lovers will be hit in all the right places.

The Stronghold- 1625 Abbott Kinney Blvd, Venice

-Thea Green