Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

One of San Diego's most unique voices in art and film criticism died on Monday. Manny Farber was 91 and one of the 20th century's greatest film critics, an influential artist, and a professor at UCSD. Franklin Bruno wrote a great piece about him in The Believer a few years ago.   Here are the thoughts of Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman.  I admire Hoberman's writing a great deal so it makes sense now knowing that Farber was so influential for him.  We'll be doing a remembrance on These Days tomorrow.  I'll post the interview right after the show. (here it is)  So sad....

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

San Diego has been the home to world renown artist Eleanor Antin for many years and now it's become a backdrop for her latest body of work.  A solo exhibtion at the San Diego Museum of Art titled Eleanor Antin:  Historical Takes, features over 50 large-scale tableaux photographs in which Antin reimagines and stages scenes from Roman and Greek history and mythology using contemporary actors and models.  Many of the photographs were shot in and around San Diego.  They are lavish, decadent scenes with Antin's wit and extensive research at play.  Take, for example, The Tourists (see below), a photograph in her Helen's Odyssey series.  On a rocky hillside (a recognizable southern California topography as a great stand-in), bloodied Trojan warriors lay scattered in the aftermath of battle. But amidst the savagry, a blonde and a brunette dressed in brightly colored dresses laugh and casually dismiss their surroundings. They carry straw handbags and wear modern sunglasses, perhaps headed to an afternoon of shopping after touring the carnage. In this work, as in many others in Historical Takes, Antin illustrates a corrupt society and the decline of civilization.  The slideshow below has more images from the exhibition.

Antin is a celebrated performance and installation artist, a filmmaker and a photographer.  Her extensive body of work has explored history, identity, gender, and her own Yiddish heritage.  Antin has often cast herself in various roles and narratives to explore her ideas.  She famously became Eleanora Antinova, a black ballerina in Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, writing a fictional memoir for her ballerina persona and making numerous films starring Antinova.

Eleanor Antin:  Historical Takes will be on view at the San Diego Museum of Art through November 2nd.  Make sure to watch the multiple videos at the exhibit documenting the production of these photographs.  It's fascinating to watch what went into this body of work, with the shoots operating like a film set complete with Antin yelling "action" only to have her actors freeze in a tableaux.   

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

Best.Headline.Ever.  I wish it were mine but, alas, The Guardian gets all the fun.  An outdoor sculpture by American artist Paul McCarthy depicting house-size dog doo came loose from its moorings outside the Paul Klee Centre in Berne and proceeded to knock down power lines and break a window of a children's home.  Any child who happened to be in the room and saw giant inflatable dog poo crash through their window is likely traumatized and will either need years of therapy or become a provocative contemporary artist (or let's face it, both).  The work is titled "Complex Shit."

There is actually a San Diego connection here.  McCarthy is a sculptor and performance artist who lives in L.A., but in 1976 he performed a transgressive piece called Class Fool at UCSD.  He is also sometimes associated with Allen Kaprow, the late Happenings founder and Professor Emeritus in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD.  

The media is having fun with this story.  Another headline:  Paul McCarthy's Art is Complex Shit on the Runs. 

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

Shanghai. Photo by Dan Eckstein

I've got my sights set on China right now as I watch the Olympics every night.  I can't help but marvel at the venues, especially the aquatic center, otherwise known as the water cube.  This building is incredible, costing over $200 mil to build.   I've been searching around looking for more of a visual context to the Olympic venues and the images on television.  Documentary and fine arts photographer Dan Eckstein has a photographic essay on contemporary China that really fleshes things out.  Eckstein spent eight weeks there in 2006 documenting the changes happening throughout the vast country, from the cities to the rural villages.  His site is easy to navigate, allowing you to follow his journey by region, timeline, or topics.  In addition to his pictures, Eckstein writes short descriptions about many of photo sections, like this excerpt about bang bang workers:

Many of these migrant workers end up as part of what locals call the “Bang Bang Army”. This 100,000 plus army of laborers are identified by the bamboo poles (or bang bang in Chinese) that they use to carry heavy loads around the city. Due to the hilly topography of Chongqing, the bicycles used to transport goods in other Chinese cities have been abandoned and manual labor used instead. Bang bang workers are hired by everyone from business owners to tourists to move all sorts of goods from ships at the port into town or around the city. For their efforts a bang bang man will make an average of 20 Yuan ($2.50) for working a 12 hour day.

Bang Bang worker in Chongqing, Western China. Photo by Dan Eckstein

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

On Sunday, I spent the day at the grand opening of The New Children's Museum.  Culture Lust has decided it's the coolest new digs in San Diego.    The concrete and steel "green" building designed by local architect Rob Quigley finally came to life this weekend after much anticipation.  The place was packed all day Sunday - honestly, I didn't detect a lull in the three hours I was there.  Kids were smiling and concentrating at every turn.  In fact, the only kids I saw crying were the ones who didn't want to leave.  I overheard many a parent promise to return the following weekend as a pacifier.  If I were a betting woman...and sometimes I am...I'd bet those weren't empty promises.  I personally can't wait to go back, and I don't even have children!

I took some pics of kids interacting with the opening exhibit Childsplay for your viewing pleasure.

Culture Lust favorites at The New Children's Museum:  Brian Dick's No Rules Except...Yard.  You may think I like this piece because of the ellipsis in the title... I obviously love ellipsis.  But this piece has ellipsis and mattresses and chaos and tire pillows!  What's not to love? I also liked Mark Mulroney's Shadow Puppets and Nick Rodrigues' Porta-Party - it's a booth shaped like an iPod with a disco ball inside and an iPod full of music - you get inside and dance, groove, booty shake, what have you.  I'm thinking about commissioning one for my office at KPBS. 

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

This past weekend, we heeded the strange siren call of the Salton Sea and drove once again into Imperial Valley.  As an amateur photographer and a collector of stories, Imperial Valley has become an obsession.  There are incredible images at every turn and generous storytellers -- real characters with a weathered but reliable charisma.  You meet them in the strangest places.  This is the story of meeting one in the middle of the desert. 

I've spent a fair bit of time around the Salton Sea (though it never seems like enough) and some surreal story always emerges from my visits to the Valley.  Last July, we went to Bombay Beach and I had a terrifying encounter with thousands (millions!) of flies trapped in a car... OUR CAR! And I'm not talking regular ole flies; I'm talking flies that had just been hobnobbing on rotting fish.  Apparently bored with miles of fish carcasses, swarms of flies decided to bum rush our car (more advice:  even if you are in the 110 degree heat of Bombay Beach, don't leave your car window cracked.  The flies will find you).  And you know what?  There's only one way to get rid of those suckers... you just have to get in the car and drive.  Imagine it right now, sitting at your desk, what it would be like to get in a sauna-like car with thousands of flies and the stench of dead fish -- now imagine having to sit there with them all over you while driving as fast as you can with the windows down so they would fly out.  I'm telling you, it tested my mettle and, well... I personally think I'm special forces material now.      

Anyway, for this trip, I wanted to see Salvation Mountain and Slab City, sans flies.  Both places were featured in two recent films:  a documentary called Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (narrated by John Waters!) and Into the Wild, last year's feature film directed by Sean Penn.  

Slab City and Salvation Mountain are in the middle of the Mojave desert, about three miles east of Niland, California, at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains.  Driving through Brawley and Niland, we were a little worried about getting lost.   Having left the GPS at home (another genius move), we figured we'd rely on the old school method of a paper map.

Words of advice: If you can't GPS,  then you best not forget to laminate. 

It turns out Salvation Mountain isn't hard to find. Once you get to Niland, just go to Main Street (not that many streets to begin with) and head east.  Before the road bends, you catch a glimpse of the colorful, candy-like mountain in the distance.  I can't imagine what it would be like to just stumble upon Salvation Mountain.  Driving in the desert involves observations like:  "wow, look at that cactus," and,  "boy, is it hot out here," and "I wonder if there are rattlesnakes," not "hey, check out the brightly-colored mountian spouting Bible verse."  And that's why you have to see Salvation Mountain;  it's so wonderfully strange and alien.

Salvation Mountain is the work of one man with lots of paint and a simple message:  God is Love.  Originally, Leonard Knight thought he'd spread the word of God through a hot air balloon, because...you know... why not? 

He spent 10 years trying to raise the money for the balloon and then decided he would try and sew it together himself.   He began sewing in Nebraska, but the fabric rotted one winter, and when Leonard moved to Slab City he discovered his project wasn't salvageable.  It was time to give up the hot air balloon dream and figure out what to do next.  It occurred to him that he could paint a mountain into the landscape.  To that I just say: it's the desert.  Trippy ideas bounce off the land left and right.  One could attribute Leonard's dream to the desert heat or his pure evangelism, but either way I'm sure glad he stuck to it. 

Leonard estimates it's taken over 100,000 gallons of paint to make the mountain, which is constructed out of adobe and straw.  Leonard has worked on it year round for almost 30 years.  In the summer months, he works early in the morning and naps during the extreme heat.  If you visit, he'll be there giving tours, telling you about his mission, and posing for pictures. 

Leonard lives right at the base of Salvation Mountain, in a vintage truck with a makeshift cabin built on the back.  The truck is also painted in bold colors with Bible verses. Leonard has no electricity, water, or a bathroom.  He's off the grid, but has an entire mountain to show for it.

Tourists and residents of Slab City and Niland bring him food and paint.  Some even stick around to work with him for a couple of hours. 

I read that some years back, a dust up ensued over whether Salvation Mountain was an environmental hazard.  There's probably tons of lead on that thing.  Nothing much came of the controversy and in 2002, Senator Barbara Boxer placed Salvation Mountain on the Congressional Record as a national treasure.  Leonard must have told us this four or five times.  He's so proud that someone thinks it's a treasure.  

Leonard is 77 years old.  Salvation Mountain is now protected, but it's all the more special when you can see it with him. Go visit.  Bring him some paint or make a donation. 

Leonard Knight is an outsider artist, a missionary, and a classic dreamer.  You gotta love dreamers in the desert.

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

I just watched a new documentary called What Remains about the photographer Sally Mann.  Anyone interested in photography or the life and mind of an artist should watch this film.  It’s true I have a thing for artist documentaries, but I’m not so blinded by my addiction that I don’t see the good and the bad.  This is one of the best I’ve seen in a while. 

Mann is probably best known for a 1992 collection of photographs titled Immediate Family, which included some nude photographs of her children.  A real dust-up ensued over these images, with critics and conservatives crying child pornography.   Despite the controversy, the photographs in Immediate Family drew significant attention for combining romantic, pastoral qualities with the intimacies of family and childhood.  Time Magazine soon called her America’s greatest photographer. 

This documentary follows Mann through the creation of a new series of work called What Remains, which is about death and decay.  Mann is filmed mostly on her family farm in Lexington, Virginia where she does a lot of her photography and has an enviable studio. 

She reveals so much of her artistic process and family life in this documentary.  It’s a very intimate portrayal, to the point where the filmmaker was allowed to be present at dawn one morning when Mann and her husband are first waking up.  That filmmaker is Steven Cantor and it’s not the first time he’s turned his lens on Sally Mann.  He made a short about her Immediate Family series and the controversy.  The short is called Blood Ties and was nominated for an Oscar in 1994.  For a treat, it’s included in the What Remains DVD's special features. 

I particularly like what Mann had to say about southern artists, herself included.  She says they’re susceptible to myth, to a love of the land, and a commitment to the past.  She says what sets southern artists apart is their willingness to “experiment with dosages of romance.”  This, she claims,  would be “fatal for any postmodern artist” who’d get laughed right out of New York for such proclivities.   Having lived in the south and covered the arts for a good stretch, I think she nails that description.

What Remains is available April 22nd from Zeitgeist Films, a great resource for interesting documentaries and beautiful, auteur-driven feature films (Todd Haynes, Atom Egoyan).  I recently watched another documentary in their stable called Tierney Gearon:  The Mother Project.  It’s also about a female photographer, celebrated and famous, who also caused controversy with naked photographs of her children.  It’s a good documentary, but Gearon is such a vastly different subject than Mann; less thoughtful, more anxious, and slightly narcissistic.  She’s interesting for that combination of traits, but her personality and life experiences naturally set the tone for that film, which is completely different from the tone of What Remains. 

I guess that’s part of what I like about the Mann documentary.  It mirrors Mann’s personality and work.  It takes it’s time, soaking up the landscape, the shadows and quiet spaces, and makes room for reflection.  There’s a beautiful sequence where Mann cuts her husband’s hair, sitting outside on their land.  We learn a lot about their long life together, and the challenges they face.  It makes that simple moment of cutting his hair all the more powerful. 

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

What do we hear when we hear a who?

By Tom Fudge 

Last week protestors caused a ruckus around the opening of a movie called Horton Hears a Who. The movie is based on a children’s book by the late Dr. Seuss, a one-time San Diego resident whose real name was Ted Geisel.  The demonstration was inspired by the story’s proclamation, by kind-hearted elephant Horton, that “a person’s a person, no matter how small.” Anti-abortion activists came to the movie’s premiere and handed out flyers afterwards, telling people that Horton’s statement explains why we need to protect the unborn.

The demonstration irked a few pro-choicers. But it didn’t bother me. I have no idea what Ted Geisel’s views on abortion were or whether he even gave the subject any thought. I do know that art speaks to different people in different ways, and the producer of the art is only half of the equation. Consumers make up the other half. And if Horton’s love of people “no matter how small” makes you think of a fetus, so be it.

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

I was in Mexico this weekend and you won't believe what I stumbled upon!

You think your eyes are playing tricks on you, but they're not.  You are actually looking at a large nude torso of a woman with giant boobs.  Believe it or not, she is the home of an artist named Armando Muñoz Garcia.  He watches TV in her tummy and sleeps in her ta ta's.

This is one of the many things to love about Tijuana and Baja, California:  the spontaneous, organic, mixed-media, resourcefully constructed, unregulated, individualized, half-built, mashed up architecture.  It's so topsy turvey from our American way of life - the idea that something so significant as a home, the emblem of the American dream, can be toyed with in such a way.   I'm reminded of a show we did recently on These Days about homeowners' associations and the ridiculous rules they enforce.  I imagine a house like the one above would send some of those association board members into cardiac arrest. 

So here's what happened...we were driving along toward Puerto Nuevo and stopped so one of our passengers could do some roadside shopping.  I looked up on a hillside and saw what looked like a large face.  We got out of the car for a better view and realized the face might be attached to an entire body!  Obviously, one doesn't pass up such things, so we asked our fellow travelers to sit tight while we checked it out.  We then proceeded to cross three highways, climb some relatively steep inclines (in flip-flops) and hike up a little hill to find ourselves in front of the house of Armando Muñoz Garcia.  

Armando is a sculptor and painter who is also known for a 56-foot sculpture in Tijuana called  La Mona.  La Mona is also a dwelling, and I believe it's half-built.  She stands among a dense residential mix of homes and shacks built into the city's hillside.  I've read reports that many of the residences surrounding La Mona are squatter shacks, but I don't know that for sure.  I've seen La Mona from a distance, across a canyon, and she's something to behold.  Kind of like a Lady Liberty for Tijuana. 

Since La Mona, Armando has been busy building this residence.   He's spent the last 12 years working on her. Here's an even closer look...

Armando met us outside and seemed thrilled with our snapping pictures.  Not a shocker.  One assumes if you build a naked woman house, you're counting on some looky-loos.  We had to decline his offer for a tour because our guests, including three children, were waiting in a hot car below.  But Armando was kind enough to invite us back - an invitation I plan to take him up on as soon as possible.  Apparently, the structure is four stories - the living room and kitchen are in the tummy, the bedroom's in the chesty parts, and the head and hair will be his studio.  He plans to work on a flowing mass of hair next.

Here are the best directions I could find online.  Be sure to stop by and say hello to Armando.  He's charming and gracious and the house is crazy fun. 

Note: Angela Carone is taking a well-deserved vacation. She'll be back at the helm mid-October. Hang tight because good things await!

Stefan Bucher is an illustrator and designer living in Los Angeles.  His mission?  To draw a monster every day.  On his site, you can follow the daily monster project and watch a video of each drawing in the making (which is so interesting to watch).  Bucher has also invited visitors to make up stories featuring his monsters.  Some are twisted, others are funny.  This is one of those sites I just love - for the pure creativity and the oddball refuge it provides.  When people talk about the cream that will rise to the top in the sea of amateur websites, this one should rise for originality alone.