Robert Therrien (1947 – 2019 ) was born in Chicago but made Los Angeles is home for nearly 50 years, living and creating art there. He was part of the city’s tight-knit and experimental art circles of the 1970s, contributing to the rise of fabrication as a way of making increasingly complex works. His career spans much of the recent development of art in Los Angeles, including its escalating prominence as a center of global art making. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Robert Therrien, Stacked Plates (White)→
Michael Williams‘ Does It Hurt to Be Crazy? (2014) is a wildly inventive painting that invites the viewer to find order in apparent visual chaos. Just want are we looking at here? A cheerful pink ice cream mascot stands before an American flag while a giant yin-yang symbol floats nearby. A cartoonish figure leaps through the scene as fragments of suburban houses, parking lots, and abstract brushstrokes collide in a dizzying visual mash-up.
Few artists were as fascinated by everyday consumer products as Andy Warhol. From Campbell’s Soup Cans to Brillo Boxes, Warhol transformed ordinary objects into icons of contemporary art. One of his more unusual and lesser-known works from the late 1960s takes that fascination a step further: a wooden Coca-Cola crate filled with real Coca-Cola bottles painted entirely silver. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Andy Warhol’s Silver Coca-Cola Crate→
Before his passing in 2025, Joel Shapiro spent decades redefining what abstract sculpture could be. His monumental work Ark stands as a powerful example of that vision. At first glance, the sculpture appears to have been frozen in the middle of an explosion. Bold planes of red, blue, and yellow thrust outward at unexpected angles, balancing in a way that seems to defy gravity. Installed directly on the floor rather than elevated on a pedestal, the work encourages viewers to circle it and experience its constantly shifting presence. Depending on where you stand, it can suggest a vessel in motion, a collapsing structure, a child’s stack of oversized blocks, or even a figure striding through space. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Joel Shapiro, Ark→
During World War II, after the imprisonment of then partner, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington fled France and sought asylum in Spain. There, she experienced a series of psychological crises. Her family placed her in a sanatorium against her will, where she was subjected to severe treatments. Carrington eventually moved to New York, where Andre Breton encouraged you to write about her experiences in the Surrealist journal VVV. Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Leonora Carrington, Green Tea→
