Hollywood’s Burg e on by Anastasia Goronok
Despite last year’s closing of Couturier, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts and Tobey C. Moss Galleries, proponents of the art scene in Los Angeles for over 40 years, contemporary galleries in Hollywood are thriving. There’s a concentrated art hub on Highland Ave, home to many contemporary art galleries. Upon first glance, with the exceptions of Kohn Gallery and Diane Rosenstein’s Gallery, most of the façades are rather unassuming and project minimal street presence, although the work housed within is some of the most cutting edge. Nearby, on North Orange Ave, Jeffrey Deitch, revered art world polymath and former director of MOCA, has opened his aponymous new gallery, Jeffrey Deitch, this past September. Deitch’s New York gallery is well known for events bringing together youth cul-
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16 DISCOVER HOLLYWOOD / WINTER 2018
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Aside from the immeasurable cultural contributions and rich history of the Hollywood film industry, Los Angeles is also home to numerous contemporary art spaces, including LACMA and MOCA. It also originated the lowbrow art movement, a popular genre of art that began in the 70’s, and mixes influences from punk, tiki culture, underground comix, surrealism and pop. A recent influx of creatives from other cities has further diversified the artistic community here. L.A. audiences are receptive and open to new work in a way the east coast audience may not be, for a variety of reasons—one of which is perhaps exposure, according to Kassandra Voyagis, executive director of the LA Art Show. “On the east coast, buyers go into shows knowing what they want; they’ve been going to the fairs, they know the galleries. L.A. has changed quite a bit in the last three to four years. Buyers who used to travel to the east coast or overseas to buy have started buying here.” Art enhances perception, increases intellectual flexibility, and on some level changes the way we see ourselves. Artists spend a lot of time, energy and money to develop lexicons of imagery, style, and content for their work, but the art world, and market, can be somewhat mercurial. It helps that there’s both receptivity and wealth in L.A., which means lots of homes with empty wall space, although Los Angeles collectors are building more serious art collections of non-decorative work as well. The Annual LA Art Show, which runs through Jan
23rd and Jan 27th, focuses mainly on modern and contemporary art. It’s taken its place among internationally renowned fairs like Art Basel, Frieze, and others, and will be shown in more than 200,000 square feet of space at the Downtown LA Convention Center, which is also home to the Grammys. The show will be organized in specialized sectors like CORE, for wellknown galleries, and Modern + Contemporary, which encompasses illustration, painting, sculpture and more from both local and international venues. Littletopia is a section that will focus on the lowbrow art movement. This section was conceived by Noah Antieau of Red Truck Gallery and Juxtapoz—a popular subculture magazine—co-founder Greg Escalante. The fair will also feature an impressive variety of immersive installations, performances and other exhibitions.
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ver the last decade, Los Angeles has slowly but steadily emerged as America’s second hub for contemporary art, particularly over the last few years. L.A. generally boasts about four times the number of sculptors, fine artists and painters than the national average, exceeding New York’s one-and-a-half times.
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