Less than two short months ago, January was declared Los Angeles Art Month by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Celebrating that with its grand finale, the Fine Art Dealers Association brought this city one of most phenomenal spectacles of beauty ever to behold, with the Los Angeles Art Show, that featured countless mind blowing masterpieces of priceless art from the planets top gallerists from China, Japan, Europe, the United States, and beyond. It is with these acts and more, thanks to support from Mayor Villaraigosa, F.A.D.A., and many patrons and supporters in the community, that Los Angeles emerges in the U.S., next to New York City, as a growing giant in the art world.
Begun this 2009, January now ushers in each New Year with a month-long celebration of the City’s burgeoning art and cultural scene. With more than 200 museums and art galleries in the City, Los Angeles is truly an exploding destination for art. The festivities culminate at the Los Angeles Convention Center with the Los Angeles Art Show next in January 2010.
Long considered a Mecca for artists and creative expression, the Los Angeles art scene includes world class museums and cultural institutions, gallery rows, public art complexes, and renowned art and design schools. The city has long been a hothouse of culture and creativity where the cutting edge is juxtaposed with the historic.
In this painting that was on display for patrons at the L.A. Art Show this year, Andy Warhol captures the essence of legendary film director Vincent Minnelli, father of Liza Minnelli, and husband of Judy Garland. Vincent Minnelli, who influenced French New Wave film auteur Jean Luc Godard among more, was also held with a certain charm by Warhol, who, despite his love for money, was still somewhat selective about subjects he would do commission pieces for. Mr. Minnelli, like his portraitist Warhol, held high regard for beauty in his work, elevating, according to some critics, aesthetic beauty and form above reality in many regards.
Andy Warhol, born Andy Warhola, began his living as an artist doing commercial work for the fashion industry in New York City. While he loved the money this work brought, in stark contrast to his childhood poverty, the work generally bored him, yet he took his formalized approach and technique, to develop, along with a few of his contemporaries, a movement that came to be both loathed and later equally revered in the art world, the POP movement.
Taking ordinary objects found in mass consumer culture, often repeating them in assembly line homage, and manipulating their tonality to create a dimension of often bright and other worldly existence, Warhol was one of the true pioneers who found and exemplified art in every aspect of simple daily life. His vision and philosophy extended not only to painting, sketching, and printmaking, but to photography, film, music, and life itself, making his very appearance an aesthetic moment of the deviant, the famous, and the NOW.
- Bruce Edwin.
© 2009,
The Hollywood Sentinel.