latimes.com - Arts&Culture

Kandinsky retrospective is natural for Guggenheim

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

An exhibition of oil paintings by the abstract artist celebrates the museum's 50th anniversary.

"Kandinsky," the big exhibition of 95 oil paintings made between 1902 and 1942 by the visionary pioneer of abstraction, Vasily Kandinsky, is a show that looks like it was made expressly for the spiral ramp of the Guggenheim Museum. That's because in a sense it was.

Simon Rattle wins over the Berlin Phil and its fans

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

After becoming the orchestra's principal conductor in 2002, the Englishman has endured a rocky interlude but wins a contract extension through 2018.

In April 1989, the glamorously autocratic Herbert von Karajan resigned from his post as music director of the Berlin Philharmonic, the West German ensemble he had led for 35 years and made into the most brilliant orchestra the world had ever known. In July, he died. On Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall came down.

Domestic drama: Lee Strasberg's family continues the legacy of instruction, despite some friction

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Although his widow and sons disagree on Method acting's techniques, the craft's principles are the same, they say.

The Method is dead. Long live the Method. ¶ Spend an afternoon with David Lee Strasberg, the ambitious 38-year-old son of legendary acting guru Lee Strasberg, and you just might walk away with the idea that something revolutionary is going on at the Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute . That would be overstating matters. This family-run school with flagships in West Hollywood and New York still finds its raison d'être in what Strasberg himself identified as the training of the actor's internal skills. But the vision of the Method being articulated at the institute, observing its 40th anniversary this year, seems to have little to do with the stereotype of sweaty, mumbling actors wallowing in the muck of unhappy childhoods. ¶ Dressed in preppy clothes that hint at his undergraduate days at Brown , Strasberg fils , the institute's CEO and creative director (whom I'll refer to as DLS), says that the Strasberg approach -- the best known of the American adaptations of the Stanislavsky "system" commonly grouped together as the Method -- is less reliant on psychobabble than most people believe. The words "Oedipal Complex" never pass his lips. But more interesting is the way developments in neuroscience keep cropping up in his conversation. Don't bother telling him about the toy your parents didn't buy you, but do engage him on the subject of conditioned reflexes and the neuropsychology of smells.

Music review: Gustavo Dudamel and Gil Shaham play Mozart and Berg

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:05:07 -0800

Youth strikes Viennese flair at L.A. Phil concert

Performa '09 and futurism

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The centennial of the Italian movement, which advocates the art of action and public confrontation, has been the focus of this year's incarnation of Performa in New York.

A decade ago, art historian and impresario RoseLee Goldberg, who literally wrote the book on performance art -- "Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present," first published in 1979 -- found herself being pushed by her publisher for an updated version to write less about history and more about the next big thing. Unfortunately, she felt "the performance scene was just rehashing what had been happening in the '70s and '80s," recalls Goldberg. "If I saw one more monologue, I thought I would scream."

Los Angeles County Museum of Art is hard hit by recession

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Its investment portfolio fell 23% and the museum drew $100 million less in donations in 2008-09.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art saw its investment portfolio lose nearly a quarter of its value during its 2008-09 fiscal year, which coincided with the worst worldwide financial debacle since the Great Depression.

Theater project holds a mirror up to the recession

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

'The Great Recession,' premiering off-off-Broadway, brings together six up-and-coming playwrights and a troupe of unpaid young actors. Waiting in the wings are their own real-life hard times.

Two young actors are rehearsing a pivotal fight scene in a new short play opening tonight at a small theater in Lower Manhattan. They are portraying out-of-work laborers from the Midwest who have been flown to New York to participate in a kill-or-be-killed social experiment that earns the survivor $25,000.

Movie review: 'La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

'La Danse' is balletic in its portrayal of the art.

Frederick Wiseman's new portrait is balletic in its portrayal of the art.

LACMA loses 23% of its investments in meltdown year

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:51:08 -0800

Additionally, the musuem saw donations shrink from $129.7 million to $29 million.

Theater review: 'Equivocation,' where double talk is the thing

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:03:34 -0800

Bill Cain's ambitiously sprawling work of historical fiction starring the Bard himself opens at the Geffen.