I like gruesome cowboy art like the Frederick Remington canvas at left.  [click on it for detail]

The show, “Scenery, Story, Spirit: American Painting and Sculpture from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art,” is a tour of the museums gems from its vaults –  examples of American art from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Between the 1830s and the end of WWI, American art came into its own, the Museum reminds us·. Sixty pieces spanning majestic Hudson River School paintings of Thomas Cole, John Kensett, and Albert Bierstadt to the gritty urban realism of Robert Henri and John Sloan figure in the show. 

Alas, I’ll just be missing the Pacific Standard Time show, Pasadena to Santa Barbara, A Selected History of Art in Southern California 1951 – 1969, which opens February 11.

Scenery, Story, Spirit: American Painting and Sculpture from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art | opens Feb 4

This dear man, named Andreas Fussel, comes to us courtesy of our good friends on Facebook, Richard Slaughter and Marcus Galante.

He’s all dolled up to play the role of Golfo in Bournonville’s “Napoli,” from its premiere in 1842 until 1863.

Golfo is a sea demon ruling the Blue Grotto. Kindly do not mess with him.

_{Photo: 1862, Royal Theatre Archives and Library, Royal Danish Ballet}

Like this? More on Richard Slaughter:

• Swan Lake for a discerning audience
• How ballet moves between generations

We don’t have airs, we don’t have pretenses. We’re not Europe, we’re not New York. It’s the Wild West, and we like it like that. What we do have, in spades, is space.

Yes, space. Room to move, grow, think, and innovate. And in our big barn of a Shrine Auditorium, with its hefty square footage, 6,300 seats, and decades of Los Angeles cultural history (here Rudi and Margot pirouetted and pranced, then panted), on Saturday night, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Pasadena Children’s Choir, and a passel of community choirs team up for a massive classical-music stampede. 

And in the ultimate cowboy showdown, Gustavo [Dudamel] meets Gustav [Mahler]. May the best wrangler rope that huge herd of cattle.

Enjoy!
The photo above, courtesy Los Angeles Philharmonic, is clickable.
Cast list here:

Symphony of a Thousand, Gustav Mahler Eighth | Shrine Auditorium | Saturday, Feb 4

_{Twinkling Coppers (from “Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile”), 1986
Acrylic on canvas with penny and string of multi-colored flashing electrical Christmas lights
60 x 60 x 3 3/8 inches (152.4 x 152.4 x 8.6 cm)}

Artist Mike Kelley died today. Story here.

Peter Frank, Associate Editor of Fabrik magazine and art critic for The Huffington Post, eulogized Kelley:

Mike Kelley was one of the less predictable, more original, and most committed talents of his — my — generation. His punk-driven suburban surrealism hit home, inspiring a distinctive discourse within, and helping to substantiate, the post-modernist trajectory. He was also notably devoted to and supportive of the community of artists. What a shame that the pain and isolation his art alternately bespeaks and thinly veils ultimately engulfed him.

Gallerist Jack Rutberg said:

Mike Kelley’s [death] is tragic. I met the fellow when he visited the gallery, and was impressed by him. He was hugely impressed with the work of Hans [Burkhardt], and brought one of his fans in a few years ago to introduce her to great painting. I’m always appreciative of breadth of appreciation and consideration — especially when it falls outside one’s own aesthetic engagement. 

_{Photo © Douglas M. Parker Studio
Courtesy Gagosian Gallery}

Pollock, who died violently in a car crash at age 44, would have turned 100 on Jan 28.  I love his work, too.

Like this? Read more:

• Mat Gleason sorts out the ABCs of art for Eli Broad
• Mat Gleason’s birthday letter to Jackson Pollock (The Huffington Post)

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Sofia Coppola, Thomas Mars

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Michael Smith, Peter Schlesinger

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Peter Schlesinger, Eric Boman

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Cecilia Peck Voll, Veronique Peck

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Sophie Winkleman, Michael Smith

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Sofia Coppola, Peter Schlesinger

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Peter Schlesinger, Billy Al Bengston

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Eric Boman, Firooz Zahedi

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Peter Schlesinger, Billy Al Bengston

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Peter Schlesinger, Joan Quinn

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Sofia Coppola, Thomas Mars

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Luke G-Jones

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Gelila Puck

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  China Chow

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Charles Windisch-Graetz, Sophie Winkleman

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Michael Smith

• 

  Peter Schlesinger exhibition opening night

  Artist Peter Schlesinger

Peter Schlesinger | Duke & Duke Gallery | 8527 Melrose Avenue | thru March 16

I chatted on the phone with Schlesinger hours before his opening: “I grew up in the San Fernando Valley,” he said as an opener. “I attended Toluca Lake elementary school, and then my family moved to Encino. That was the late ’50s, and it was all pretty rural. I always did art, I started with private art lessons at ten. I was always doing extracurricular classes.

“My parents liked art. They took me to shows. They encouraged it. My Dad used to drive me to Saturday art courses [over the hill] when I was in junior high school.

“I attended UC Santa Cruz the year they opened it. I transferred to UCLA and studied with Diebenkorn, Llyn Folkes, Bill Brice and Ruba (?). There was an atmosphere to being in the L.A. art circle. I used to go to the La Cienega galleries.

“But I only wanted to get away. The Valley was so isolated. I always wanted to be a romantic expatriate artist. So I attended the Slade School [of Art in London]. I was in London for a decade, 1968-78, then I came back to New York where I’ve been ever since.”

The show features 25 ceramic sculpture works, awesome, weighty things that look lugged from ancient Greece, but were made in Schlesinger’s Brooklyn studio. Amidst the vessels and urns, a set of Schlesinger’s clear-eyed photographs of his European adventures. Now hanging on Melrose Avenue, they normally live in the artist’s 2003 memoir, “Checkered Past: A Visual Diary of the 60′s and 70′s.”

_{arts·meme is honored to feature photography by alex berliner.}

Peter Schlesinger | Duke & Duke Gallery | 8527 Melrose Avenue | thru March 16

Tom Mossbrucker, at left, memorable in the Joffrey’s production of Billy the Kid, choreography by Eugene Loring, was with the Joffrey organization from 1977 to 1998. He’s not seen in “Mavericks”; the interviewees include Christian Holder, Ann Marie deAngelo, the great Gary Chryst, Ashley Wheater (the company’s current artistic director), and Trinette Singleton, among other first-generation Joffrey dancers.

No mention in the docu about the Joffrey’s long association with the city of Los Angeles, what a pity. But to compensate, there is the presence of local arts & journalism guru, Sasha Anawalt, who is a key talking head in the film as the author of  the go-to book on Joffrey history.

Last summer, interviewing Mossbrucker along with his co-director of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Jean-Philippe Malaty, at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, I asked Mossbrucker to reflect on the influence of his former boss, Robert Joffrey, on his current career.

Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance, screenings
World Premiere, Dance on Camera Festival, New York | Jan 27, 28
Nationwide viewing in movie theaters | Jan 28
Los Angeles screening | Colburn School of Music | Feb 1 | $20 ticket

_{tom mossbrucker potrait by herb migdoll,  courtesy new york public library collection}

Like this? Read more:

• Mark Morris loves the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
• Aspen Santa Fe Ballet glowing in Jorma Elo’s, “Overglow”