The Best of LARB’s Featured Art

LARB’s Best: Art

The Best of LARB’s Featured Art

Rather than attempt to convince readers that the art in Los Angeles is commensurate with that in New York and other cosmopolitan centers, LARB’s art section welcomes the intimate and the provincial, showcasing artists less inclined to appeal to the art market. While the Los Angeles art world is in no way divorced from the movement of capital, it still nurtures the attractive possibility of experimentation and porousness. The artworks, artists, and exhibitions featured on our homepage every week for the past 10 years reflect LA’s decentralizing and expansive sensibility. Art puts on many hats in the selection below — some poetic, others familiar, some in vitrines, others high in the sky, some heavy, others light, some exclusive to artist-run spaces, others that extend into distant dimensions. Please see this as an invitation to peek at and perhaps linger with the art below, not as a statement set in stone. We aim to encourage engagement and, always, to allow room for surprise.





— Perwana Nazif





 






 

This digest is part of our year-round celebration of our 10th anniversary. To celebrate with us, please visit our anniversary page!





 






 

(Luchita Hurtado, Untitled c. 1950s. Crayon and ink on paper. 28.6 x 35.6 cm / 11 1/4 x 14 inches. © The Estate of Luchita Hurtado. Courtesy The Estate of Luchita Hurtado and Hauser & Wirth.)



  • Luchita Hurtado

    Luchita Hurtado

    Luchita Hurtado (b. 1920 in Maiquetía, Venezuela), was a Los Angeles-based artist who exhibited “Luchita Hurtado: Selected works, 1942-1950,” at Park...

    Feb 25, 2017

  • Bernadette Mayer

    Bernadette Mayer

    In July 1971, poet Bernadette Mayer embarked on an experiment: For one month she shot a roll of 35mm film each day and kept a journal...

    Apr 25, 2020

  • Bill Traylor

    Bill Traylor

    Born into slavery in 1854 on a plantation near Montgomery, Bill Traylor began making art at the age of 82. His works are notable for their flat and...

    Apr 14, 2016

  • Cy Twombly

    Cy Twombly

    Cy Twombly was born in 1928 in Lexington, Virginia, and died in 2011 in Rome, Italy. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston...

    Jan 29, 2017

  • In Plain Sight

    In Plain Sight

    Initiated by artists Cassils and rafa esparza, In Plain Sight is a coalition of 80 artists united to create an artwork dedicated...

    Jul 10, 2020

  • Martin Wong

    Martin Wong

    Martin Wong was born in 1946 in Portland, Oregon and was raised in San Francisco, California. He spent 1966 and 1967 studying architecture at...

    Sep 9, 2018

  • Kelly Infield

    Kelly Infield

    Kelly Infield is a multidisciplinary artist currently living in Los Angeles. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of design with a BFA in...

    Sep 3, 2019

  • John Martin

    John Martin

    John Martin creates drawings that synthesize his memories of a family farm in Mississippi with his modern life in Oakland. John’s fascination with...

    Jun 28, 2020

  • Tanya Merrill

    Tanya Merrill

    Tanya Merrill holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA from Columbia University. Recent exhibitions include Unclebrother/ Gavin Brown’s...

    Oct 29, 2018

  • Organic Music Societies

    Organic Music Societies

    Organic Music Societies is the first retrospective exhibition to examine Don and Moki’s collaborative practice from this fertile period. The...

    May 1, 2021