[contextly_auto_sidebar id="JXp6XOeglaoCeQ8tXG7WjOAVz5fmoupq"] ARCHITECTURE is a funny field: Much of its most important, most talked-about work is done for a tiny number of clients -- we'll call them rich people -- but the profession has a lingering (and in some cases sincere) social conscience and concern for the broader built environment the rest of us live in. That blend of ambitions has … [Read more...]
CultureCrash at LA Central Library
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Se057gZ16VIuVDe1Pyi79u2wvvTjBc6g"] ON the night of my book's publication -- January 13 -- I will be part of the ALOUD series in downtown Los Angeles. This is one of the best literary series I know -- I've interviewed authors for it and watched from the audience -- so it's a real honor to launch my book there. With me will be the Silver Lake architect Barbara … [Read more...]
Happy Birthday, J.S. Bach, You Scary Bastard
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="fCuLD2IqdN12lY1YuMoXVQLgOFYy7oc1"] Since the exact date is ambiguous -- he was born sometime in late March of 1685 -- I've decided to declare today Bach's birthday. That gives me great pleasure; Bach was the first composer to hit me hard, and is still my favorite. It also frightens me, because of the way Bach's music is typically used in films to signify something … [Read more...]
Week in Review: The Life and Death of Cities, More on NEA
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="PafOG3MPyZj6bmDJpEFc7L4n3rZYgP8V"] ONE of the topics that's fascinated me for decades, as I've moved from Baltimore to New London, Conn., to Los Angeles -- and in visits to Mexico City, Berkeley, Manchester, and Rome -- is how cities work, and how they stop working. No one has the entire answer to this, but one thing we can all pretty well conclude by now is that … [Read more...]
Disappearing Into "Invisible Cities"
THERE’s a phrase of John Cage’s I think about once in a while, despite having radically mixed feelings about the man and his work. “Theater exists all around us,” he once wrote, “and it is the purpose of formal theaterto remind us this is so.” This notion came alive for me the other night as I caught one of the last performances of Invisible Cities, the wild-ass, Calvino-inspired opera that … [Read more...]
Modern Architecture in LA
WHEN people think about LA urbanism, they still invoke the same old cliches -- Woody Allen's line about the only "cultural advantage" being a right turn on red, the notorious "sprawl," and so on. They recite Getrude Stein's line about "no there there" (applied originally to another California city) as if the early town fathers just sort of forgot that part.So it was refreshing to hear from two … [Read more...]
Frenchman at Neutra’s House
RECENTLY I was invited to architect Richard Neutra's old house in Silver Lake to check out the "intervention" by the French artist Xavier Veilhan, who created a number of sculptures to refer to the pioneering modernist's life and work.The press events and opening were quite groovy -- movie stars, French people, music by a member of the French band Air.Los Angeles' Silver Lake, of course, is … [Read more...]
Hollywood Novelist Bruce Wagner
A FEW years back I spent some time at the Beverly Hills Hotel's Polo Lounge with Bruce Wagner, who was much more at home there than I was. (He grew up nearby and has spent his career as a writer skewering Hollywood.)Wagner has a new novel, Dead Stars, out, and returns to his main subject, the excesses of the movie world and its network of agents, moneymen, wannabes and so on.When he and I spoke, … [Read more...]
The Creative Class: Idle Dreamers
THE latest of my series for Salon on the damage the recession, digital technology and the Internet have exerted on the creative class runs today. I'm consumed with the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend but will try to post on it more extensively later.This piece looked at the crisis and said, Why aren't we hearing about it? Why has it not entered the cultural conversation? And why … [Read more...]
Architecture and the Creative Class
THINGS seemed to be going so well: The architect was a figure tailor-made for the heyday of bourgeois bohemia, and Frank Gehry was palling around with Brad Pitt.But things changed, badly, and it's not clear now when, or how, they'll change back. Corporate firms are in some cases doing fine, and architects who design for the 1% are doing better than those who depend on civic projects, but many … [Read more...]