When art critic Peter Plagens published “Sunshine Muse: Art on the West Coast, ” in 1974, it was a long-needed history of California’s contribution to contemporary art. Though there were the inevitable gripes (“How could he leave out…?”), it’s...

Obie Award-winning playwright Matthew Lopez explores the complexities of race and family through a post-Civil War lens — and through the resonance of a Passover Seder — in his powerful drama, “The Whipping Man,” presented by the Pasadena Playhouse in association with South...

As a young man in Liverpool, John Lennon had two creative passions in life: art and rock ‘n’ roll. One fed the other, and each revealed something of an emerging personality with a playful, sometimes biting view of the world around him. The Beatles eventually made him famous, but he never...

The survival of the Alex Theatre in Glendale was in serious doubt when the landmark venue nearly lost vital funding with the state’s elimination of local redevelopment agencies in 2012. Its prospects look considerably rosier now.

There are family singing and dancing groups galore, families of pro chefs and pro writers, and even family magic acts, but it’s not every day that a nuclear household can brag of three world-class painters. Morgan Weistling, his wife JoAnn Peralta, and their eldest daughter, 19-year-old...

With all due respect to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers or Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, the silver screen’s most electrifying dance duo was the Nicholas Brothers. While Astaire and Kelly glided with their respective dance partners in classic movie musicals, Fayard and Harold Nicholas slid,...

The intricate Mithila art is made up of hundreds, maybe thousands, of fine lines and details, depicting human figures with proportionately large eyes and noses, telling the stories of the rituals, customs and everyday life in the ancient Mithila region.

Gainsborough's "Blue Boy," Thomas Lawrence's "Pinkie," landscapes by Constable and Turner: British art from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries will always be a hallmark of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. Yet the institution's collection of American art,...

Like all creative types, artists often benefit from the largesse of others. Genuine patrons of the arts, though, are scarce these days. The N.E.A., charitable foundations and corporate grants have largely replaced benefactors of earlier times like collector Peggy Guggenheim or new music doyenne...

When you wander through the show of acrylic constructions by artist Megan Madzoeff at the Offramp Gallery in Pasadena, don't be surprised if the nonrepresentational images bring to mind impressions of music. Strictly speaking, it's not what she has in mind, but the 38-year-old Madzoeff understands...

You may know that those colorful Victorian houses visible from the Arroyo Seco Parkway (the old Pasadena Freeway) are all part of the Heritage Square Museum. You may have visited the 1908 Arts and Crafts Gamble House once or checked out an exhibit at the Southwest Museum — 100 years old this...

Ah, Christmas at home in the 12th century with Henry II and family. Dinner, a little tree-trimming... and threats of fratricide, patricide and war, fueled by marital malice: What could be cozier? (“What shall we hang, the holly or each other?” asks Henry).

For decades, artist Ralph Steadman was author Hunter S. Thompson's main collaborator in the creation of Gonzo journalism, as it appeared in startling drawings in the books "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "The Curse of Lono" and elsewhere. The art took a hilariously dark view of American politics...

Regardless of size, a good art show can transport an audience outside of its everyday reality and into another space of consciousness, however briefly. If a small-scale exhibition does this, the possibility of a meaningful emotional connection between a viewer and the artist increases exponentially....

“Everyone dies with secrets, why can’t I?” Convalescing at home after a fall, Lilith Fischer, age 87, is snappish with her son on the phone, rude to her in-home aide and determined to keep the memories of her youth buried.

Pasadena painter's traveling show knocks the ball out of the park

To call the sandy-haired Terry Cannon a baseball fan is to damn with faint praise. He's a baseball obsessive. But Cannon is no Rain Man with batting averages, career wins and losses, and career RBIs rolling around in his head. He's fascinated with the little-known sociopolitical aspects of the...

When the Black Panthers in Los Angeles fought for change in the 1970s they started with the soil, planting an edible oasis in the heart of South Central. Today at 34th Street in Exposition Park, a garden dubbed Community Services Unlimited still draws neighbors together, inspiring an image of love...

Cemeteries aren't usually thought of as hotbeds of activity, but last Saturday night at the Forest Lawn Museum, atop the memorial park's Glendale grounds, proved the exception. As a blues band blared and colored lights splashed off the white walls of an adjacent chapel, several hundred guests ate,...

Lester Bowie, the late Art Ensemble of Chicago trumpeter, once dissected how Louis Armstrong purveyed his art in American culture: "The true revolutionary that's out waving a gun in the streets is never effective; the police just arrest him. But the police don't ever know about the one that smiles...

Artist Peter Adams likes a challenge. He has passions and procedures that make his paintings significantly more difficult than they might otherwise be. Known for his landscapes, Adams often likes to paint in nature, trying to capture a piece of the changing light. That's not terribly unique but as...

If you missed it over the summer or fall, there's still time to explore the remarkable exhibition, "Junípero Serra and the Legacies of the California Missions," at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.

If it's a truism that art reflects the surroundings and the time that it's made, there's another accompanying truth equally durable: All artists have to navigate in the surroundings they work in. Da Vinci could schmooze wealthy patrons, and Michelangelo had no talent for it. Pollock's exposed-...

Charles Phoenix, humorist, author, food-crafter and gleeful guide to pop culture at its kitschiest and most off-beat, will serve up his one-of-a-kind look at mid-20th century building design in “Charles Phoenix: Architecture in LA!” on Sunday at Art Center College of Design's Ahmanson...

If you should wander into the Boone Art Gallery at Pasadena City College, you'll see a grouping of large paintings that, at first glance, could be the work of a child. So simple are the spare arrangements of different colored circles and ovals in the show.

The modern art of the 20th Century didn't arrive fully formed without antecedents. In the case of the Art Deco movement of the 1920s, the style drew on the geometry, sleekness and minimalism of classicism. While Deco may have had a primary stronghold in Germany's Bauhaus, its gospel spread far and...