Exhibition Essays Archives

Masters of California Impressionism

Considered one of the most popular artistic styles even today, impressionism evolved throughout the late 19th century in France. At the time, Paris was the center of the western art world and was driven by the French Academy of Fine Arts’ prestigious Salon exhibitions. At the time, a group of artists with now-familiar names including Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, and others, were experimenting with a radically different style of painting characterized by quick, spontaneous brushwork, brighter colors and thick, textured paint strokes. Painting quickly, they emphasized capturing the effect of light on their subjects and creating a visceral sense of the immediacy of the moment.

Silent Teachers

In 1919, Gardena High School Principal, John H. Whitley, embarked on a program for students in the senior class that was devised to lend crucial support to their cultural foundation. He encouraged the students to acquire works of art for the walls of the high school as their senior gifts, describing them as “silent teachers”. The students’ first selection, made as a result of a visit to the artist’s studio, was Valley of the Santa Clara, by Ralph Davison Miller. The moody painting of storm clouds hanging over a rocky outcropping is of the lush agricultural river valley in Ventura County, running from the San Gabriel Mountains west to the Pacific Ocean. The students likely selected Miller’s painting both for its aesthetic properties and because it was a landscape of a rural farming area not unlike the Gardena Valley.

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

When thinking of beauty in traditional Western art, one’s mind may quickly jump to the lush portraits of John Singer Sargent’s elite ladies of society. These often- attractive wives of affluent patrons were composed in rich interior settings and featured lustrous fabrics as well as opulent clothing that conveyed a sense of style and wealth.

Car Culture: Then, Now and Future

Opening in 2021, Jonathan Michael Castillo: Car Culture, is the first solo museum exhibition of the artist’s work and features his arresting, candid photographs that capture Los Angeles’s driving culture.

Sign of the Times

Over his 30-plus year career, Graval has moved from the impulse to make himself known to an artistic practice that seeks to make American culture known to itself. In one of my first meetings with him, he recounted a story from his childhood wherein his uncle climbed a railroad bridge that yawned over the main road into town and painted the town’s name on the side in big block letters. A forgotten fishing village in the bayous near New Orleans, this act of place-making served to unite an impoverished community even if the act was illicit. It made an impression on Graval.

Graffiti Glossary: The More You Know

hit: To tag or bomb a surface

bomb:To apply graffiti intensively to a location. Bombers often choose to paint throw-ups or tags instead of complex pieces, as they can be executed more quickly.

Subway Art: a collaborative book by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, which documents the early history of New York City’s graffiti movement. Originally published in 1984, it is known by many as ‘the bible’ of graffiti. Subway Art quickly acquired the dubious accolade of becoming one of the most stolen books in the United Kingdom.

Style Wars: an American 1983 documentary film on hip hop culture and its American roots, directed by Tony Silver and produced in collaboration with Henry Chalfant. The film has an emphasis on graffiti, although bboying and rapping are covered to a lesser extent.

To Bomb and Beautify: How RISK Got Up

Beautifully Destroyed, the name given by Kelly “RISK” Graval to his color field painting series, is an apt way to describe the paradoxical relationship between graffiti and walls. The element of destruction is embedded in the vocabulary—to hit, to bomb—as well as the ethos of graffiti, which stands in contrast to the undeniable beauty of the results—brilliant, saturated colors adorning previously blank walls with the soft diffusion and sharp lines of spray paint.

No Moonrise: The Birth Date of Moonrise

The lore of the great Himself, Ansel Adams, is often at the heart of many fond, usually exaggerated, personal recollections of the jolly old elf. One of the great kafuffles spins around the precise “birthday” of Ansel Adam’s seminal work, “Moonrise, Hernandez”, arguably the one of the most significant photographs in photographic history.

The Lay of the Land

The subject of Ansel Adams’ best known photography is, of course, the drama of America’s western landscape. Yet in his old age, Adams himself became an even bigger subject. He turned into a mythic figure whose fame almost eclipsed the work on which it was based.

Poetry Inspired by Collection of Rarities

Poetry written by local poets in response to Kevin Sloan’s work. The poets include Steve Braff, Jennifer Kelley, Marsha de la O, Friday Gretchen, Fernando Albert Salinas and Nancy-Jean Pément.