It's not too late to catch many Pacific Standard Time shows

Last Saturday, several local museums offered free admission as a way to mark the end of the sprawling six-month-long exhibition festival Pacific Standard Time. But don't throw away your little red guide to the PST shows quite yet.

As could be expected from such an unwieldy event involving many different institutional schedules, several exhibitions are spilling beyond the official six-month mark, giving people a little more time to fill in gaps in their knowledge of Southern California art history.

Here's a list of shows that run beyond this week: 

Art review: 'Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912'

The close and competitive working-relationship between Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in the radical, game-changing development of Cubist painting is a standard story in the history of Modern art. Braque, conjuring a bit of mountaineer melodrama, said, "We were like climbing partners roped together." Picasso, employing more than a hint of sexist condescension, said that during the most intense period of give-and-take growth, Braque worked as if he were Picasso's "wife."

The last time the story was told in a museum exhibition was more than 20 years ago. New York's Museum of Modern Art pulled out all the stops for "Picasso and Braque: Pioneering Cubism," brilliantly untangling a knotty artistic revolution that opened the door wide for work ranging from total abstraction to anti-art Dada. Nearly 400 paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and prints began with the run-up to 1907's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," the Spaniard's manifesto in reaction to Matisse, which blew away Braque when he saw it. The show then went on to survey in exhaustive detail the dialog between them until 1914, when the French painter went off to war and suffered grievous wounds that nearly killed him.

We're unlikely to see anything like that definitive MOMA presentation again anytime soon. But now the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, have joined forces to offer a centennial look centered on the year 1911 -- the most intensive in the two artists' working relationship. "Picasso and Braque: The Cubist Experiment, 1910-1912," seen already in Texas and now in California, shines light on the movement's analytical phase. Call it Cubism 101, a primer on the start of something big.

The show is very small -- just nine canvases by Picasso and five by Braque. The inevitable gaps are partly filled by almost all the etchings and drypoint prints they made at the time. Ten prints are by Picasso, exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime, while eight are by the more deliberate Braque.

Among this modest selection, however, are some of the finest Cubist paintings either artist made. They  start with Picasso's fresh -- and decidedly strange -- "Man With a Clarinet," loaned from Madrid's Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and prominently installed on the center wall.

Dance review: New York City Ballet Moves in Santa Barbara

This post has been corrected. See note below for details.

Can an appetizer-size portion of New York City Ballet be as gratifying as the entire multi-course company?

That was the question Wednesday, as New York City Ballet Moves made its Southern California debut at the historic Grenada Theatre (with an annoyingly creaking stage), presented by UC Santa Barbara’s Arts & Lectures. With no more than 20 principals, soloists and corps de ballet members, this ensemble is nimble, created to tour. Even better, it brings along its own musicians.

The downside is Moves’ restricted repertory; on this occasion, no works by co-founder George Balanchine, the artistic foundation of City Ballet. That was a disappointment. 

PHOTOS: New York City Ballet

Some masterpieces do fit Moves, and quite nicely. “Dances at a Gathering” (1969), Jerome Robbins' work for five couples, celebrates love, playfulness and Chopin’s piano pieces. Pianist Susan Walters began, and Gonzalo Garcia ambled on, dreamily applying gentle assurance to a slow mazurka.

Just that fast, we were reminded that certain dance qualities remain sacrosanct at NYCB. It is embedded in its genetic code that in any size of ensemble the dancers will fully shape and make physical a score’s tonal colors and pulse. Most everyone revealed themselves through exquisite timing and clarity.

Music review: Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Phil rock Disney Hall

In the long run, Gustavo Dudamel’s greatest strength may turn out to be his yen for programming, for he came up with a lineup Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall that leaped beyond the mere printed page into autobiography.  

Normally Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 would be an invitation to routine, but in this case, it was a return to the piece with which Dudamel made his debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Hollywood Bowl back in 2005.  It was also -– probably coincidentally -– a bold challenge to Valery Gergiev and his hard-working Russians, who were scheduled to play Tchaikovsky 5 down the freeway in Costa Mesa on this same evening.

There would have been even more autobiographical significance had Yefim Bronfman –- who was the soloist for Dudamel’s Disney Hall debut in 2007 -–  performed the Bartók Piano Concerto No. 3 as planned, but unfortunately the pianist broke a finger and had to cancel at the last minute. So the resourceful Venezuelan quickly slipped Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe” Suite No. 2 -– which he conducts from memory -– into the breach and pulled off a wonderfully sensuous performance loaded with daringly slow, sustained passages and sudden bursts of his trademark razzmatazz.

Dudamel also kept in gear his vigorous agenda of promoting contemporary music with the first Philharmonic performance of “Orion” (1979) by the French Canadian spectral-music-influenced composer Claude Vivier -– who happened to be working on an opera about the death of Tchaikovsky when, at age 34, he was stabbed to death by a male prostitute in Paris.  

A YouTube listener used the words “ascetic opulence” to describe another of Vivier’s works –- and it’s hard to think of a better way to sum up the 13 1/2-minute “Orion,” with its thick, plushly colorful textures, the Balinese influence in the pinging tuned gongs, and the ghostly male voice singing “Ay – Oh!” in two isolated spots.  Dudamel heightened and brightened the colors, gave the swellings more dynamic oomph, and made one want to hear more of Vivier’s music in this hall someday.

There is a recording of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth by Dudamel and the kids of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra from 2008, but in retrospect, it sounds like a rough-hewn blueprint for what Dudamel’s Tchaikovsky Fifth has become in 2011. The overall conception is about the same -– on the slow side, revving up into overdrive in the finale. Yet now there is more graceful flexibility and freedom when Dudamel pulls the phrases about; the rhythms are stronger; there is real drama, not sentimentality, in the second movement; and the Philharmonic brought everything to life with dazzling clarity. 

Hang on to your seats when Dudamel takes off on the Presto coda of the finale; it rocked the house Thursday.

RELATED:

Music review: Gergiev & Mariinsky play Tchaikovsky at Segerstrom

Yefim Bronfman injures finger, withdraws from L.A. Phil concerts

Tchaikovsky's Fifth, here there and everywhere

 -– Richard S. Ginell

Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel; Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A.; 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; $85.25 to $185; (323) 850-2000 or www.laphil.com.  Also: Granada Theatre, 1214 State St., Santa Barbara; 4 p.m. Sunday; sold out; (805) 899-2222.

Photo: Dudamel on Oct 6 conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Credit: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times

Opera review: 'Barber of Seville' in Santa Barbara

Rossini is hot in the international opera world. Imaginative musicians, directors and scholars are rediscovering the striking originality and inventiveness of his operas. There are dozens, most unjustly ignored, that are being freshly reinterpreted, which typically means scandalously provocative productions.

For its annual opera production at the Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara's Music Academy of the West stuck with the Rossini chestnut "The Barber of Seville." Sunday afternoon, at the second of two performances, the academy, which includes a famed vocal program run by the great mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, played it very, very safe.

This proved a “Barber” with an aesthetic that would have ruffled no feathers during the Eisenhower years. A parochial production enticed bright young talent into making opera hopelessly irrelevant to its generation, to anything whatsoever related to real life or what is going on in any of the opera houses that matter. Still, the Granada was full and the audience appeared to be enjoying itself very much.

Art review: 'Home Show, Revisited' at Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum

 
The Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum is revisiting its "Home Show," an ambitious and logistically complicated project in which artists are commissioned to create new works in private homes around the city, and the public is invited to drop in for a look.

Its first "Home Show" was held in 1988, the second in 1996. Now as then, participation obviously requires a somewhat intrepid and adventurous resident, although the benefits of such patronage are equally clear: How often does one get to engage an artist in a commission?

"Home Show, Revisited" continues with two more three-day weekend showings through July 17. Ten L.A.-based artists were invited to consider social and cultural meanings of home, a directive they interpreted quite loosely. Their works are installed in and around nine houses located from the northern suburbs of Santa Barbara to the south, through Montecito and Carpinteria. The neighborhoods range from modest to grand.

On a recent afternoon I was able to visit about half the projects, plus the video installation by artist Michele O'Marah, co-curator of "Home Show, Revisited," at the CAF's gallery space upstairs in downtown's Paseo Nuevo shopping mall. (CAF Director Miki Garcia was the other curator.) A stop at CAF is required first, so that home visitors can register, sign a liability release and pick up the necessary map and project summary, plus get a wristband that lets volunteers at the home sites know you haven't just wandered in off the street.

My advice: Unless you know Santa Barbara well, bring a GPS unit if you have one, especially if you don't have a navigator in your vehicle's  passenger seat. The printed directions are OK, but they're also basic. The map can't account for unexpected street closures and will leave an out-of-towner to pull over often to check progress. A useful feature is small photographs of the home facades.

Artists mess with domestic space in Santa Barbara's 'Home Show, Revisited'

Will the new Home Show be worth the wait? Or, for L.A. art fans, the drive to Santa Barbara?

It’s been 15 years since Santa Barbara’s Contemporary Arts Forum did a version of this popular exhibition, which involves commissioning artists to make work for local homes and then opening those homes to the public for self-guided tours on weekends. The last time had major figures like Vito Acconci and Dan Graham.

This time the list of participating artists is promising: Piero Golia, Bettina Hubby, Evan Holloway, Florian Morlant, Kori Newkirk, Jennifer Rochlin, Ry Rocklen, Kirsten Stoltmann, Stephanie Taylor and Jennifer West.

Culture Monster got advance word from CAF on the various site-specific installations in "Home Show, Revisited." Look for:

• A psychedelic surfing film by Jennifer West that, according to the artist, consists of “edits made by the surf and a seal while film floated in waves,” playing in a surfer’s pad in Carpinteria.
• A copper, brass and enamel sculpture by Evan Holloway that looks like an architectural model but is made to sit on a stove top, where its walls will steam up if sprayed with water, in a house in the San Roque neighborhood of Santa Barbara.
• A neon-sign sculpture by Kori Newkirk about secrets that reads “No visible neuroses,” mounted on a ceiling beam of an artist's loft in Carpinteria.
• Kirsten Stoltmann’s version of a “living room gone a little awry when a child decides to do some home decorating” (shown above) installed in a house in Noleta, the area between Santa Barbara and Goleta.

The "show" opens to the public Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., with houses remaining open Friday through Sunday afternoons through July 17. The CAF website has specific exhibition hours, but to pick up a map you must visit the gallery itself.

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James Franco is James Dean in next art-world project

--Jori Finkel
twitter.com/jorifinkel

Photo: Kirsten Stoltmann installation in David Court and Christi Westerhouse's home as part of "Home Show, Revisited," 2011. Glitter, noodles, beads, stuffed animals, stickers, clay, wax, and more; dimensions variable. Photo by Lady E Photography, Courtesy Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum.

SoCal nature, science and history museums reap $30 million in state bond money

Southern California museums this week received a $30-million blast from the past –- those long-gone though not so distant pre-recession days of 2006, when Golden State voters thought their now-pauperized state was still golden enough to afford a $5.4-billion bond issue.

The Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006, which appeared on that November's ballot as Proposition 84, included $93 million for a Nature Education Facilities Program, and the Department of Parks and Recreation announced this week who’ll get the money. Nonprofit organizations and municipalities were eligible; parks department spokesman Roy Stearns said that 44 of the 370 applicants were successful. In all, more than $41 million was awarded for projects in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

The winners include:

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which will get $7 million for the North Campus Learning Gardens and Nature Lab that’s part of its overall renovation project. The 150,000 square-foot area will harbor gardens, a bridge, pond and stream, a 500-seat outdoor amphitheater and, perhaps best of all for the average elementary-school-age museum-goer (although perhaps not for his or her parents), a “Get Dirty Zone.”

Also receiving $7 million each are the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, toward construction of a 21,000 square-foot wing for exhibits on air quality, solar energy, California natural resources and sustainable design, and the San Diego Natural History Museum, to renovate and install an 8,000-square-foot gallery tracing the path of the San Diego River through mountain, desert and coastal habitats.

The Autry National Center of the American West gets $6.6 million for renovations that will carve out a Native American section on the first floor of the museum in Griffith Park. The project includes two galleries labeled “First Californians” and “Dreamers, Doctors, Basketweavers,” and an outdoor teaching garden with native plants.

Carpinteria State Beach will get $3 million for parkwide environmental education facilities; the Ocean Institute in Dana Point will receive $2.3 million for a floating (but fixed) teaching platform, renovations for its lobby and courtyard, and new exhibits; and California Science Center in Exposition Park will get $1 million for seven interactive exhibits in its Ecosystems galleries.

L.A. County’s parks department will get $1 million for indoor and outdoor exhibits at the Placerita Canyon Nature Center; the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers and Native Plants in Sun Valley will get $930,000 for gardens, an amphitheater and trailside exhibits and signage; $780,000 goes to the City of Riverside for a nature center in Sycamore Canyon; $714,000 to the City of Torrance for a viewing platform and nature and cultural exhibits at the Madrona Marsh Preserve; $648,000 for Ventura County for marine education exhibits in Oxnard; and the Orange County Coastkeeper environmental group will get $597,000 for a native plant botanical garden at Santiago Canyon College in Orange.

The City of San Juan Capistrano will get $498,000 to restore the Blas Aguilar Adobe historic site and add interpretive information on Native American culture; the City of Whittier gets $500,000 for a garden and exhibits on the Greenway Trail; Heal the Bay gets $440,000 for a new exhibit at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium; and $337,000 goes to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History for exhibits on local marine life.

RELATED:

Natural History Museum to build $13-million whale of an entrance

Autry to remodel, creating Native American galleries in Griffith Park

Exploring the world's ecosystems in the California Science Center's new wing

-- Mike Boehm

Photo: Artist's rendition of new north campus at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Credit: Natural History Museum and CO Architects.

'Carmen in 3D' to premiere at Santa Barbara Film Festival, with March 5 theatrical opening

"Carmen in 3D" -- which is believed to be the first opera to be shot in 3-D for movie theaters -- will premiere as the closing selection of the Santa Barbara FIlm Festival on Feb. 6 and is scheduled to open in cinemas around the world on March 5, organizers said Thursday.

The movie version uses a 2006 staging of the Georges Bizet opera directed by Francesca Zambello at the Royal Opera House in London. The movie was shot over two performances in 2010, and stars Christine Rice in the title role, Bryan Hymel as Don Jose, Aris Argiris as Escamillo and Maija Kovalevska as Micaëla. Conductor Constantinos Carydis leads the Royal Opera House Orchestra.

The movie's running time is estimated at two hours and 50 minutes, with one 20-minute intermission. It is performed in French with subtitles.

"Carmen" is a co-production with the Royal Opera House and RealD, the Beverly Hills cinema company whose proprietary 3-D technology is among the widest used around the world. Organizers said that "Carmen" will play exclusively in RealD 3-D-equipped theaters at more than 1,500 locations worldwide.

Performance review: Laurie Anderson's 'Delusion'

Two years ago in Campbell Hall at UCSB, Laurie Anderson, distressed over an America at war in Iraq, wondered whether we might just start over. But “oh, my brothers,” she intoned in “Homeland,” “oh, my sisters. How do we begin again?” 

Back in Santa Barbara on Tuesday night, she repeated those lines in her latest work, “Delusion,” which Anderson will present again Thursday in Royce Hall at  UCLA. “Homeland” (recently released on a Nonesuch CD) was Anderson unplugged, at least as far as multimedia was concerned. Puzzling over our state of affairs, she had come to see images, and our dependence on screens, as a distraction. She turned to narrative and music alone, sharing the stage with three backup musicians.

In “Delusion,” the screens were back. But as Anderson’s mood has turned darker and she has gone deeper and more inward, the beautiful, enveloping video helped keep us in touch with the outside world. Behind her was a cinema-sized backdrop, and three other surfaces of different shapes and materials –- including a sheet-draped settee -– were also used as screens. Anderson appeared alone, dressed in tight white shirt and loose skinny tie, looking both hip and vulnerable. She too, when she covered herself with a sheet, could become a video screen.

Over the years, Anderson has looked in corners, under the sofa so to speak, and at the broad countryside to reveal how we often fool ourselves. She has relied on razzle-dazzle media, Buddhist detachment, lush chordal music, polished stories and precisely modulated narration to remain an extraordinary outsider. Had she been a 19th century novelist in Russia or China, we’d be reading her offbeat tales to know how life then and there was lived.

But in Delusion,” Anderson turns inward. She can’t begin again without confronting endings. The delusions are the ones about dying and she poses questions. How are we to face up to the fact that we all fight a losing battle? Or, as Anderson asks about last words, “What are the things you say before you turn into dirt?”