Angel City Brewing as seen by New York Times photographer Monica Almeida
ARTS DISTRICT DISH: In the eyes of the New York Times, the Arts District is its own destination within Downtown. Los Angeles based photographer, Monica Almeida, files a Travel Section photo essay that features Villian's Tavern, Angel CIty Brewing, Wurstküche, Los Angeles Gun Club, and Cirrus Gallery.
While the photos hints at an intimate understanding of the neighborhood (despite no reference to SCI-Arc), the introduction by Sam Lubell falls short. "The area, formed as a Business Improvement District in 2006," writes Lubell, giving the impression that the magic year when artists "gobbled up new factory studios and lofts, and often use streetside walls and storefronts as their canvases."
As most of you know artists have bunkered down east of the Alameda curtain since the late 1970s.
Nonetheless, it is interesting to see the Arts District again introduced to a national readership. It may be a combination of the attention its cafes have garnered, or the street art and wheatpastes curated in the neighborhood while "Art in the Streets" was mounted at MOCA a few blocks away.
Los Angeles Adds Amusement to Art [view]
More NY Times Ink: This is a must-read. Downtown's Gronk is a founding member of Asco, the collective of forward thinking painters, performance artists, musicians, photographers who met at Garfield High. They will be featured at LACMA Chicano Art themed exhibition for Pacific Standard Time, reminds the NY Times profile.
Gronk, along with Willie Herrón, Harry Gamboa Jr, and Patssi Valdez, as Asco, were "angry, illicit, deftly and economically conceptual, and shot through with the high camp of Hollywood, whose sign they could see in the distance from the streets of East Los Angeles."
"But the story of Asco lies even deeper, one of a subculture within a subculture, a group of artists fueled not just by their marginal existence within their city and country but by their alienation from the Chicano art movement as well." The New York Times' Randy Kennedy writes.
Works by Asco's "Chicano Pioneers" / NYTimes Art and Design
Comments