Power is the issue for Art + Auction

What does the art world love to hate more than the Whitney Biennial? Annual lists of movers, shakers, spenders and makers published by art magazines. So look out for Art + Auction’s 2009 Power Issue, scheduled to hit newsstands Dec. 4.  It will bring 159 names to be debated.

Many are familiar, if not ubiquitous. Philanthropist and collector Eli Broad is cited in the new category of “uberpower” and as one of five “power patrons.” Dealer Larry Gagosian, who made the “uberpower” and “perennial power” lists, also scored as a “risk taker” because of “the expansion of his gallery empire to Athens and his venture into Madison Avenue retail during these precarious times,” the magazine says.

Gagosian is not named as a “power dealer,” but L.A.’s Tim Blum and Jeff Poe are. The team is also among the “risk takers” because they are steaming ahead with pre-recession plans to launch an astonishing new space for their gallery, Blum & Poe, on South La Cienega Boulevard.

Theater review: 'Extinction' at Elephant Space

Sociobiologists could have a field day parsing “Extinction,” Gabe McKinley’s world-premiere play at the Elephant Space.

McKinley traverses territory already well-trod by Neil LaBute and other playwrights who treat the darker side of the masculine psyche, but though his play doesn’t break much new ground, it enters a few unexplored and very murky corners en route to a shattering denouement.

The wrinkle here is that the embattled “couple” is heterosexual and male. For Max (Michael Weston), sex is conquest, and the more women he “scores,” the better. Tension erupts when his best friend and co-womanizer, Finn (James Roday), shifts the familiar paradigm of their relationship during a get-away weekend in Atlantic City.  Finn is newly in love and intent on fidelity, but when Max hires two “pros” for the occasion, Finn slams head-on into his own primordial need -- and it isn’t pretty.

Theater review: 'Sin' at Playhouse West Repertory Theater

 "From the sky, the world is perfect," says Avery (Elena Fabri), the lofty-minded heroine of "Sin," but things on terra firma are the opposite of flawless. Therein hangs Wendy McLeod's edgy 1994 dramedy at Playhouse West Repertory Theater.

First produced in Chicago by the Goodman Studio, "Sin" fuses contemporary character study to medieval mystery play. We're in San Francisco, circa 1989, where traffic reporter "Avery Bly in the Sky" gauges everyone by her ethical standards.

They inevitably disappoint, being modern versions of the Seven Deadly Sins. Michael (Lance Delgado), Avery's estranged husband, is a slothful alcoholic, roommate Helen (Holly Clapham, cast against type) a slovenly glutton. Blind date Jonathon (Bradley Hasemeyer) proves a greedy yuppie, poet Louis (Rocky Benoit) reeks of lust. Co-worker Fred (Vito Viscuso) envies new boss Jason (Jason Fox), a wrathful climber. 

Theater review: 'A Lie of the Mind' by Studio Five Productions

Sam Shepard's three-act, three-hour "A Lie of the Mind" restlessly roams the human condition, mapping out ways in which people function in families, in romantic relationships and in the world. It's an enormously difficult play, all the more so because it is conveyed in a complex mixture of tones: naturalistic, symbolic, poetic and just plain avant-garde.

What sheer audacity, then, for the new Studio Five Productions to launch itself with this piece. But these folks seem pretty savvy. For starters, they secured John Langs, the director of such arresting presentations as Circle X's "Eurydice" and "Battle Hymn," to stage the production -- and it's a knockout.

The set, by Dwayne Burgess, is built of America's old junk -- an evocative context for the West (read: U.S.) that Shepard deconstructs in his 1985 play.

Jake (Lance Kramer, hollow-eyed and zombie-like) is on the run after savagely beating his wife. Brain-damaged Beth (Natalie Avital, in a luminous performance) now speaks in fragments, sometimes using the wrong words, yet every utterance is pure, heartfelt poetry.

Placido Domingo greets his fans in a post-performance marathon

Plácido Domingo has seen all kinds of fan adoration in his 40-plus years in the opera business. But he apparently had not seen anything quite like the crowd waiting to greet him late Wednesday night in downtown Los Angeles.

"Oh my God!" exclaimed the 68-year-old Spanish tenor as he emerged from a stage door and took a glance at the queue that had formed in the lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. The line of fans stretched the equivalent distance from the lobby on Grand Avenue to the Music Center fountain.

The famously tireless Domingo had just finished a 3 1/2-hour performance of Handel's "Tamerlano" and showed no signs of fatigue as he began signing copies of the new DVD release "My Greatest Roles," which features his performances in Puccini's "Tosca," "Manon Lescaut" and "La Fanciulla del West." (The first volume of the multi-disc set is on sale now, as is a DVD documentary featuring new interviews with the tenor.)

When asked whether he's watched the DVDs, Domingo admitted, "No, I haven't yet."

Domingo began autographing at 11:40 p.m. and did not finish until about 1:30 a.m. Some fans came bearing gifts. One person gave him a small chocolate turkey. Alison Kaufman, a music student from Palos Verdes who is studying in Boston, gave him a CD of her vocal performances.

A Los Angeles Opera official said all packages that Domingo received will be checked for security purposes.

Gizem Evcin, an opera fan and film student from Istanbul, asked Domingo to sign an LP cover dating from 1968. When handed the album, Domingo smiled and said, "This was my first recording. I recorded it in 1967 and it came out in 1968." The album features Domingo performing selections from various operas.

Theater review: 'Tent Meeting' at The Banshee

It’s a hard-knock life for Becky Ann (Amanda Deibert) the down-home Madonna of “Tent Meeting,” an evangelical comedy now at the Banshee. Her baby was born without a face or limbs, making it tough to know which end to diaper. But never underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit. The newborn’s granddaddy, Rev. Edward Tarbox (Gary Ballard), receives a sign from above and drags Becky Ann and her dubious brother, Darrell (Travis Hammer), on a road trip to the promised land — a.k.a. Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

Levi Lee, Larry Larson, and Rebecca Wackler’s quirky, meandering satire works more as a character study than a story. As director, Wackler pushes her excellent cast to embrace their respective lunacies, and the evening’s chief diversion is seeing who can out-crazy the others: the reverend, who decides the freakish babe is the Second Coming? Darrell, who imagines his appendix scar is a glorious war wound? Or Becky Ann, who may not be as oblivious as she pretends?

UC Berkeley, Toyo Ito and the architecture of lowered expectations

 

The latest piece of architecture to disappear into the economic abyss? It's Toyo Ito's remarkable design, above, for the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Unveiled last year with some fanfare, Ito's plans for a new home for the museum, known as BAM, suggested a light, airy spin on the idea of the white-cube art gallery -- a series of spaces with their paper-thin walls curling in memorably on themselves, like stickers half-peeled from their backing.

The building was meant to replace BAM's current home along the northeastern edge of the UC Berkeley campus, a notable piece of architecture in its own right, by Mario Ciampi, that opened in 1970 and is plagued by seismic problems. Along with the crisp appeal of the Ito design -- the Tokyo-based architect's first project in the U.S. -- the big news of the plan was that it promised to deliver a university art museum and film center into the heart of downtown Berkeley, outside the campus proper.

Last week, though, the museum announced it was abandoning plans for the Ito building. The problem, not surprisingly, is money: Working toward a goal of $200 million -- a projected $143 million for construction, plus a comfortable cushion for cost overruns -- BAM had raised just $81 million. Instead it will explore more affordable opportunities at the downtown site, including retrofitting the printing plant that now occupies part of the property. It is possible, but unlikely, that Ito will be the architect for the retooled effort.

It's a huge disappointment for architecture fans that the original Ito design won't be built. At the same time, the episode raises questions -- questions now relevant in cities around the county -- about what happens when high-profile building projects are wounded but not killed by the poor economy, surviving to stumble forward without the big-name architects that helped them gain attention and ease their trips through the approvals process in the first place.

Shorn of momentum or their architectural headliners -- or both -- where do these projects go?

Music review: Simon Rattle and Berlin Philharmonic winning again at Disney Hall

The Berlin Brahms Bombers victory tour came to a premature finish Tuesday night. The leader of the Berlin Philharmonic, Simon Rattle, received a hero’s excited welcome. The Second Symphony proved smashing, as had the first night from this inimitable orchestra’s two-evening visit to Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Pity, then, that the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which sponsored the concerts and which was welcoming back a prodigal son who was once its principal guest conductor, had not gone all the way and added a third concert. Not only did Berlin bring the four Brahms symphonies on its U.S. tour, but also two Schoenberg works that were not included in the L.A. concerts.

That, however, didn’t stop Rattle from the remarkable achievement of making news with Brahms' Second. He also made news with Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony, on the first half of the program, and that was an even bigger accomplishment.

Unproduced Tennessee Williams screenplay finally reaching movie theaters

Like many great playwrights, Tennessee Williams did his stint in Hollywood as a screenwriter and even earned two Oscar nominations for his work. But he also had his share of unproduced projects -- one a screenplay titled "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond," which he is said to have written for director Elia Kazan during the 1950s. 

On Dec. 30, a new film that uses his screenplay will open in theaters in L.A. and New York. The movie stars Chris Evans and Bryce Dallas Howard, and is directed by actress Jodie Markell.

The trailer for the film (above) is available online. From what we can tell, the plot seems to be pure essence of Williams, who died in 1983. It features a daffy Southern dame (Howard) who harbors a jealous lust for a hunky piece of rough trade (Evans). The period setting and the humid atmosphere are sure to get Williams completists all hot and bothered.

Early reviews, however, have been lukewarm. When the film debuted in 2008 at the Toronto Film Festival, a critic for the Hollywood Reporter wrote, "The story is a sketchy, dramatically muddled rumination on familiar Williams themes about the Old South and its brave, beautiful, rebellion women always on the brink of love, suicide or madness."

A reviewer for Screen Daily wrote that Howard "probes the vulnerability that lies beneath" her character but added that Evans is "oddly stiff."

-- David Ng

New version of 'Louis & Keely' musical to open at El Portal Theatre

 People are starting to call it the musical that keeps on giving.

The team behind the popular "Louis & Keely: Live at the Sahara" is mounting a revised version of the stage show at the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood. The production,  retitled "A Vegas Holiday! Songs from 'Live at the Sahara,'" will play for a limited run from Dec. 19-31.

The El Portal said that the new version of the musical will be different from the Taylor Hackford-directed production that recently closed at the Geffen Playhouse following an eight-month run. But it will feature the same two lead actors, Jake Broder and Vanessa Claire Smith -- who are currently rewriting the book in preparation for a planned national tour -- as well as the same band members.

Hackford is not participating in the new version of the show.

Jay Irwin, a co-manager at the El Portal, told Culture Monster that he received a message from Smith in which the actress outlined details for the new production. According to the message, the actors will be performing all of the songs in character from the original show plus some of the onstage banter. 

However, the musical will contain none of the offstage scenes that audiences saw in the Geffen production, including scenes in the characters' apartment.

Broder and Smith "are planning a couple of surprises but I don't know more about that yet," Irwin said. "The show is also open to special guests and we're working on that right now."

Monster Mash: Kelsey Grammer looks Broadway bound; Olympic artists debate free speech; Warhol's 'Heinz 57'

 -- Star turn: Actor Kelsey Grammer appears set to return to Broadway in the revival of "La Cage aux Folles." (New York Post)

-- Creative liberty: A free-speech debate has arisen among artists who will be involved with the arts-festival portion of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. (Globe and Mail)

-- Art theft: More details emerge around the recent recovery of Andy Warhol's "Heinz 57" creation. (New York Daily News)

-- Temper, temper: British actor Ian Hart faced police action after he reportedly screamed threats at a theater patron. (Times Online)

-- Vertigo: Officials are exploring the idea of opening off-limits areas of the Golden Gate Bridge to tourists. (San Francisco Chronicle)

-- Toting signs in Paris: Workers at the Centre Pompidou in Paris have decided to prolong their strike over planned job cuts. (Agence France Presse)

-- Will she sing? Julie Andrews is scheduled to return to the London stage for a one-evening performance May 8. (Playbill)

-- Coda: Classical-music scholar H.C. Robbins Landon has died at age 83 in France. (Telegraph)

-- And in the L.A. Times: A photo showing a nude Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate is heading for auction; music critic Mark Swed reviews the Berlin Philharmonic at Disney Hall; a Sam Francis reunion at the Norton Simon Museum.

-- David Ng

Photo: Kelsey Grammer at a recent performance of Cirque du Soleil's "Kooza" in Santa Monica. Credit: Robyn Beck / AFP/Getty Images

L.A. dance group Groovaloos heading to off-Broadway

The Los Angeles-based dance group known as the Groovaloos is moving up in the world.

Producers have announced that the Groovaloos will play off-Broadway at the Union Square Theatre for a limited run set to begin Dec. 8. The show, which is titled "Groovaloo," is said to be a revised version of the production that ran at the Joyce Theater in New York earlier this fall. 

"Groovaloo," which combines street dance, hip-hop and even aspects of poetry, began its life in L.A. around 2003 and has since been performed throughout Southern California in various versions. More recently, the Groovaloo dancers were the winners of NBC's reality competition show "Superstars of Dance." 

In a review of the troupe's stage show at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in 2008, a Times critic wrote: "For street-dance enthusiasts and novices alike, the thrill of 'Groovaloo' comes from seeing what the human body is capable of doing. Each dancer's torso, arms and legs move in so many directions, all at once, that rules of anatomy seem to be broken."

Photo of nude Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate heading for auction

Proving once again that nothing sells like a controversy, Christie's said today that a print of a photo showing a nude Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate is heading for the auction block. The portrait was taken in 1969 in London by art-fashion photographer David Bailey.

The oversize print depicts Polanski and his then-wife Tate from the waist up locked in a nude embrace. (Tate's right breast is visible in the shot.) According to Christie's, the print was created in 1988 for a traveling exhibition called "The Art of Photography: 150 years, 1839-1989," which was shown at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Australian National Gallery, Canberra.

Milena Sales, a spokesperson for Christie's, told The Times that the print belongs to a private collection in London but she declined to reveal the name of the owner. She said that a similar print sold in London in 2006 for a little more than $17,000.

The current print, which will go on sale in New York Dec. 7, is expected to sell for $8,000 to $12,000, according to Christie's. The public can view the print, along with the other items in the auction, from Dec. 3 to 6. News of the print's sale was reported earlier this afternoon by Reuters.

Sam Francis reunion at the Norton Simon Museum

“Basel Mural I,” an abstract celebration of light, color and space painted by Sam Francis, has long been a highlight of the Norton Simon Museum’s contemporary art collection.

Stretching nearly 13 feet high and 20 feet wide, the free-spirited, dripped and splashed canvas commands a full wall at the Pasadena institution. But it’s only one of three panels made in 1956-58 for a stairwell at the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland.

The triptych will never again be whole. But two substantial sections of a panel damaged more than 40 years ago and salvaged by the artist have been reunited with the Simon’s painting. A gift of the Sam Francis Foundation, they will go on view Wednesday on a wall adjacent to “Basel Mural I.”

“That’s where they belong,” said Donna Stein, a foundation board member who has played a leading role in placing artworks from the artist’s estate in museums.

To read the full Wednesday Calendar story about the painting's history and find out what happened to the rest of the mural, click here.

-- Suzanne Muchnic

Photo: Curator Leah Lehmbeck oversees an installation reuniting "Basel Mural I" with two fragments of a damaged companion panel at the Norton Simon Museum. Credit: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times

Music review: Simon Rattle and Berlin Philharmonic triumphant at Disney Hall

It is not easy to create a sensation with the Brahms symphonies. These four sturdy scores are the standard repertory’s comfort food, often served overcooked and under-spiced, meant more to nourish than excite.

Monday night the Berlin Philharmonic played Brahms’ First in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Simon Rattle conducted. As always, the symphony ended in its conventionally feel-good rush to glory on a C-major chord. But this time the crowd began to cheer just as the sound was evaporating, turning Brahms’ chord into a swelling tone cluster as cheers expanded into an exhilarating roar. The performance had been so alive that it seemed the audience needed to extend the symphony long enough to physically absorb Brahms and take him home with them.

The ups and downs of Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic have been avidly followed by the music world. In 2002, the popular British conductor became the orchestra’s chief conductor and artistic director, the most prestigious post in conducting, after having spent 18 years with the provincial City of Birmingham Symphony, which he turned into perhaps England’s most noticed orchestra. Angelenos watched Rattle grow from whiz-kid to master during his 14-year stint as principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which ended in 1994.

But no conductor is prepared for the Berlin fishbowl. Time has been needed for Rattle to adjust to the limelight and for a storied institution with a glorious, if not always sterling, past to adjust. The Berlin Philharmonic that last appeared at Disney with Rattle six years ago is not the same one here Monday and Tuesday nights.

Jeff Koons' 'Train' nowhere near its final destination, or even a start date

When the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced plans in 2007 to build Jeff Koons' massive, multimillion-dollar "Train," the news quickly polarized the art community. Some said it would be a monumental and important work of art for L.A. Others decried it as a potential eyesore and a money pit.

Nearly three years on, "Train" appears to be nowhere near completion -- or even a start date for construction. LACMA told The Times that the project is still somewhere between the feasibility and design phases, and that the public won't see the finished artwork until 2014.

"Train" was initially scheduled to be completed in 2011 or 2012. Designs for the quasi-sculpture call for an approximately 70-foot replica of a 1943 Baldwin 2900-series steam locomotive, suspended vertically from a 161-foot-tall construction crane.

"Train" has a rumored price tag of $25 million, but the museum declined to disclose figures except to say that it is budgeted in the "many millions" of dollars. If the rumored cost is true, "Train" would be among the most expensive pieces of art ever commissioned by a museum.

John Bowsher, the museum's director of special art installations, said the next phases for "Train" involve two mock-ups: one involving a full-scale steam component that will test the size of the steam plume, and another dealing with the nose of the train engine that will use real materials to determine how easy it will be to meet the artist's standards.

Neither mock-up has begun yet, according to Bowsher. He also said that there is no start date for the construction of the project.

'Nixon' in Colorado: Where's Sellars?

“On that summer day of our first meeting in 1983 Peter … wasted little time in proposing that we collaborate on making an opera,” John Adams writes of Peter Sellars in his memoir, “Hallelujah Junction.” “He even knew what to call it: ‘Nixon in China.’”

The poet Alice Goodman recounts in her notes to the original 1987 Nonesuch recording of the opera that Sellars then called her up and asked her write the libretto. It was the first opera for composer and librettist, and Sellars not only served as midwife but also helped shape the work. He was conciliator in the stormy relationship between Adams and Goodman. He directed the first production in Houston, which has since traveled wide and far.
 
After more than two decades, there is a new recording for what is increasingly being understood to be an American classic. Marin Alsop conducted a punchy live performance given last year at Colorado Opera.

But where’s Peter?

No mention of Sellars is anywhere to be found on the Naxos three-CD set, as if Denver were the new China, where an inconvenient artist might be “disappeared” Soviet-style.

Huntington and LACMA go shopping for a chair

Can a chair be a ravishingly beautiful, fascinating and revolutionary object as well as a place to sit?

That’s what art specialists at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art say about a recent joint acquisition. The elaborately carved mahogany chair, unveiled in 1885 at the “Inventions Exhibition” in Liverpool and subsequently known as a precursor to the Art Nouveau movement, is the work of Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo, an English architect, graphic artist and craftsman.

The last of five known chairs in a set to come on the market, it will go on view in December at the Huntington in a suite of galleries devoted to the British Design Reform movement. Two years later, it will move to LACMA and join a new display of international Arts and Crafts furniture.  Acquired in a 50-50 ownership arrangement, the chair is expected to continue traveling across town every two years.

Sharing a desirable object may be a sign of the times, when few museums can buy what they want without passing the hat. But it’s also a way of avoiding local competition.

A “sensible” move, said John Murdoch, director of the Huntington’s art collections, in a statement released by the San Marino institution. “It simply seems the smartest way to build strength in depth when neighboring institutions collect in the same area.” 

Three other Mackmurdo chairs from the same set are in London, one at the Victoria and Albert Museum and two at the William Morris Collection. The fourth belongs to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.

-- Suzanne Muchnic

Photo: Art Nouveau chair by Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. Credit: Huntington and LACMA

Monster Mash: Google partners with Iraq's National Museum; Pompidou strike; nude model exonerated

-- Everything old is new again: Google plans to make thousands of images of ancient artifacts from Iraq's National Museum accessible online. (Reuters)

-- To the barricades: Employees at the Centre Pompidou in Paris go on strike to protest job cuts. (Agence France Presse)

-- Embezzlement?: The London Philharmonic Orchestra's finance director faces the allegation that he stole about $926,000 over a four-year period. (Evening Standard)

-- Officially kaput: The troubled stage production of "A Christmas Carol" that originated in Hollywood last year has canceled all of its planned performances for the season. (Chicago Tribune)

-- Baring it all, Part 1: The model who was arrested earlier this year for posing nude at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is off the hook after prosecutors drop the case. (New York Post)

-- Baring it all, Part 2: Actress Kim Cattrall will pose nude in an effort to save a painting by Titian on display in the U.K. (Zap2It)

-- Recovered: The discovery of Andy Warhol's lost "Heinz 57" crate leads to an arrest in New York. (Bloomberg)

-- No kidding: Artists are taking a beating in the current economic downturn, according to a new study. (Art Info)

-- And in the L.A. Times: The tagger/artist known as REVOK has been arrested; an L.A. photographer documents the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy; Marc Shaiman is set to return as music director for the Academy Awards ceremony.

-- David Ng

Photo: Google chief executive Eric Schmidt tours the National Museum in Baghdad as part of an announcement that the company will be digitizing artifacts from the museum. Credit: Sabah Arar / AFP / Getty Images

The skeleton that the Page Museum doesn't want you to see

You could call it the skeleton in the Page Museum's closet.

For years, the George C. Page Museum in Los Angeles has housed a 9,000-year-old set of bones that is said to be the only human remains recovered from the Rancho La Brea area, which is famous for its prehistorical tar pits. A cast of the skull was on display at the museum for a period but the museum withdrew it from exhibition about five years ago and placed it in storage along with the original bones.

Now, a former volunteer at the museum has published images of a facial reconstruction of the specimen against the museum's wishes. She claims that the museum is scared that her reconstruction, in which the specimen is depicted as having Native American features, will encourage tribes to reclaim the bones for reburial.

"Obviously they're not completely happy about it," said Melissa Cooper, the former volunteer in question, when asked about going public with her work. She said that the museum won't display her images out of fear that the Chumash, a Native American tribe, will attempt to take the bones away.

Officials at the Page Museum denied many of Cooper's claims, saying that the museum only approved Cooper's project provided that the results would not be published or disseminated anywhere.