Los Angeles Times - 13.11.2019

LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2019E5

Now–Dec1

Tickets start at $25 | 626-356-PLAY |pasadenaplayhouse.org

“DEEPLY MOVING AND

EMOTIONALLY IMPACTFUL”

—StageScene LA

by Lauren Yee

Directed by

Tony Award winner BD Wong

CRITICS CHOICE!

—Los Angeles Times

BOX OFFICE: 562.436.3203 | LONGBEACHSYMPHONY.ORG

CONCERT SPONSORED BY

DR. MICHAEL A. STUGRIN* AND BRIAN BUCHANAN

LONG BEACH SYMPHONY

French

Fantastique

LONG BEACH PERFORMING ARTS CENTER | NOV 16

DEBUSSY |CLAIR DE LUNE(ARR. CAPLET)

SCHMIDT |INTERMEZZOFROMNOTRE DAME

FRANCK |LE CHASSEUR MAUDIT

SAINT-SAËNS | SYMPHONY NO.3 IN C MINOR, OP. 78, “ORGAN”

“[Elijah]takesuson

ajourneythat

acceleratestoa

shatteringemotional

whirlwind.”

• FKFoley,LA TIMES

“Awonderfulplay,beautifully

performed,brilliant

playwright”– NOHO ARTS

“Drama,Comedy,Mystery

keptmyonedgeofmyseat”

• Stage Scene LA

For tickets call 818.841.5421

TheVictoryTheatreCenter.org

DIRECTED BY

MARIAGOBETTI

STARRING

MOLLYGRAY,JORDANWALL,

JESSEMERRILL,ELLEVERNEE,

KATHLEENBAILEY&

MACKENZIERICKABY

NOWTHRUDEC22

WEST COAST PREMIERE

BYJUDITH LEORA

THEVICTORYTHEATRECENTERPRESENTS

LA TimesCritic’sChoice!

CULTURE MONSTER

All the arts, all the time

latimes.com/culturemonster

To advertise here go to http://www.latimes.com/placead

facebook.com/latimes

Large-format landscape
and seascape photos by
Thomas Joshua Cooper are
luxuriously printed in velvety
black and white. The artist,
72, uses a complex tonal
printing process that lends
richness and depth to the
photographic grays and
blacks.
Visually, however, the im-
agery is dull. If not exactly
interchangeable — a frothy
swirl of churning foam
around a rocky outcropping
in the Strait of Magellan
here, a frosty rim of the Niag-
ara Falls Basin there — the
photos exhibit a repetitive
sameness. In 140 examples
(75 small studies and 65 as
large as 40 by 54 inches) at
the Los Angeles County Mu-
seum of Art, a viewer’s eyes
glaze over pretty fast.
Cooper has been an
American expat working in
Scotland since 1982. The
LACMA show, organized by
Director Michael Govan and
curator Rebecca Morse, is his
first significant museum sur-
vey. Its centerpiece is a selec-
tion from his “Atlas,” some
700 photographs that, ac-
cording to the museum, to-
gether “charts the Atlantic

basin from its most extreme

northern, southern, eastern

and western land points.”

Over three decades, in

other words, Cooper traveled

the Western Hemisphere

and photographed the At-

lantic Ocean’s edges. The

idea might be compelling,

but the art isn’t. This is one of

those Conceptual projects in

which the concept far out-

strips the visual result, the

often-rollicking tales of their

perilous making supplanting

any interest generated by

largely humdrum images.

The work is something

of a cross between the criti-

cally admired, nearly ab-

stract black-and-white pho-

tos of the world’s oceans that

Hiroshi Sugimoto began

around 1980 and Ansel Ad-

ams’ hugely popular, some-

times grandiose pictures of

the American West from the

1940s and after. Cooper is a

true eccentric, as a recent

New Yorker profile attests,

but his pictures couldn’t be

more conventional.

In an eyebrow-raising

addendum, LACMA’s direc-

tor also commissioned19

photographs of the Califor-

nia coast (Cooper was born

in San Francisco) and organ-

ized a concurrent exhibition

of them at Hauser & Wirth

gallery, where the work is for

sale.

The expedition to pro-

duce the suite of coastal pic-

tures was funded by the Lan-

nan Foundation and Ann

Tenenbaum & Thomas H.

Lee. They are also major

donors to artist James Tur-

rell’s “Roden Crater” project

in an extinct volcano in the

Arizona desert, where Go-

van is president of the Sky-

stone Foundation that over-

sees the project and raises

funds for it.

Artistically, the photo-

graphs in “The Capes of

California” are just more of

the same shallow tedium.

A commercial exhibition

conceived and assembled

by a nonprofit museum di-

rector who is the head of a

county department subsi-

dized by taxpayers, on the

other hand, creates an ethi-

cal swamp of considerable

depth. Neither LACMA’s

board of trustees nor the

L.A. County Board of Super-

visors should stand for it.

LACMA’SThomas Joshua Cooper photographic exhibition includes “Fleeing From a Force Eight Gale ...”

Photographs from LACMA

ART REVIEW

Deep dive into the abyss

The tones are rich,

the images bland in

troubling Thomas

Joshua Cooper shows.

CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT
ART CRITIC

Alexis Smith has been a
major artist since her first
mixed-media text-and-im-
age collages of the 1970s. No
one does assemblage better
than she.
A beautifully installed
survey at Parrasch Heijnen
Gallery tracks the arc of
Smith’s career in just 11
smartly selected works.
From 1977, “Labyrinth”
lays out many salient as-
pects of her approach. The
work is simplicity itself — a
printed book-illustration
pasted onto paper and cap-
tioned with a snippet of text,
all set within in a shaped
frame. Frames are impor-
tant to all of Smith’s work,
which itself is dedicated
to reframing established
points of view.
This one is shaped like a
Monopoly house, similar to
Joel Shapiro’s little cast-iron
house sculptures from the
same period. Those set aside
Minimalist art’s obsession
with nonfigurative abstrac-
tion.
Rather different houses
collide within Smith’s hom-
ey frame. Sebastien le
Clerc’s intricate 1677 plan for
an elaborate garden laby-
rinth at the royal Palace of
Versailles outside Paris
meets an 1872 fragment of
Walt Whitman’s democratic

poetry: “The paths to the

house I seek to make / But

leave to those to come to the

house itself.”

In Smith’s image-and-

text pieces, art is proposed

as a playful and meander-

ing refuge, an exclusively

aristocratic European

legacy evolved to a self-di-

rected, inclusive American

model.

Given the domestic focus

on the home, the work also

resonates with a shrewdly

feminist undercurrent. It

turns up repeatedly in the

show, not least in “Medium

Message,” a large wall mural

from 2013.

“Medium Message” in-

serts a lavishly decorated,

heart-shaped candy box,

notably upside-down, and a

child’s battered drum set

into a gray text painted on

the wall. The objects take

the place of words: “The

[candy box] is the [drum

set].”

Our topsy-turvy adult

interactions are given

form that is interchangeable

with long-ago childhood

disturbance. Smith’s po-

etics of unanticipated con-

sequences — a Marshall Mc-

Luhan-like observation

about mediums and mes-

sages — are the fundamen-

tal stuff of art.

ART REVIEW

Concise arc of a long career

“LABYRINTH”is one of 11 Alexis Smith works on display at Parrasch Heijnen.

Parrasch Heijnen Gallery

A small yet expansive

show in Boyle Heights

of Alexis Smith’s work

takes the full measure

of her approach.

CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT
ART CRITIC

‘The World’s

Edge’

Where:LACMA, 5905

Wilshire Blvd.

When: Through Jan. 26;

closed Wednesdays

Cost:$10-$25 (see website

for free periods)

Info:(323) 857-6000,

http://www.lacma.org

‘The Capes

of California’

Where:Hauser & Wirth,

901 E. 3rd St.

When:Through Jan. 19;

closed Mondays

Cost:Free

Info:(213) 943-1620,

http://www.hauserwirth.com

THE REGIONaround Niagara Falls is the subject

of “Along the Frozen Rimtop of Horseshoe Falls...”

‘Alexis Smith:

A Survey,

1973-2016’

Where: Parrasch Heijnen

Gallery, 1326 S. Boyle Ave.,

L.A.

When:Tuesdays to

Saturdays, through Dec. 7

Info:(323) 943-9373,

parraschheijnen.com