On a fairly regular basis, my opining takes the form of prognostication.  Again, I flatter myself: I am often good at predicting about how technology adoption will shape and be shaped by culture. As an example, I pitched the idea of “PANDORA FOR ART” to some web developer friends of mine.  (They insisted that I misunderstood the nature of my business.)  Months later, there was a new art sales site being funded by Peter Thiel whose pitch was, “PANDORA FOR ART.”

More recently, I mentioned that I thought Pinterest was ideally suited to forming “virtual” collections.  Today, my colleague Diana sent me a link to Pictify. Another friend of mine thinks that I am getting closer to the zeitgeist, but that I am not actually far enough ahead to capitalize on it.

He’s probably right, but in the meantime, I should really learn when to shut the h@ll up.  Honestly, some of these ideas might actually have a cash value in the right circumstance.

In other news, I had dinner with Howard Fox last night.  He is absolutely WONDERFUL - a model for how to balance kindness, curiosity, intelligence, and discernment into one easy manner.

Southern California was gracious enough to provide an appropriate meteorological overture to our adventure with a fine mix of sun and fog.  Indeed, to see the sun’s light and color mediated by fog was to be perfectly primed to see Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park paintings.

The painting at left greets you as you enter the exhibition.  It was the easy painting to love, with almost every color represented in a more or less pleasing proportion and with large forms organized into a composition that nods, at least, to a traditional understanding of perspective.  I stood transfixed for quite a while, but it later struck me that it verged on pandering.  The exhibition designer made a smart choice for an introductory work, but there are other paintings in the show that reward a good long stare more richly than this one.

Everyone in California should see this show.  Until recently, Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park paintings were among the most valuable California works available.  Of course, the recent Clyfford Still sale at Sotheby’s basically buried that reputation under an avalanche of headlines and cold hard cash.

Thus, the minor tragedy that this earth-shaking exhibition (and critical component of PST) is located at a tiny museum in Orange County with almost no signage at the edge of one of Southern California’s preeminent malls.  I’m so grateful to the Orange County Museum of Art for mounting the exhibition and I don’t fault them for their lackluster signage or diminutive size.  No, I fault the larger institutions closer to Santa Monica (hint: I’m staring at you LACMA) for not making a larger space (and a larger audience) available.  On a Sunday afternoon, there were about sixty-five people in the museum.

These are my favorite works by one of my very favorite painters, so I could easily make this post too long telling you why.  I’ll spare you (mercy AND generosity… how’s THAT folks?).  In the meantime, get thee to the OC. The exhibition runs through May 27th.  RD: 1 :: I5: 0.

I, myself, heard the song for the first time on Pandora, which is how I hear most music produced after 2002.  I don’t listen to the radio, or watch MTV, or follow any of the music blogs.  I exist in a cozy little cocoon of carefully selected music (classical, jazz, blues, bluegrass, hip hop, and various electronic forms both common and esoteric).  My own playlists form one half of the cocoon and Pandora the other half.  Every once in a while, YouTube manages to slip through my little chrysalis, but mostly I remain blissfully unaware of new music.

To correct for my growing curmudgeonliness, I created stations for the Yeah-Yeah-Yeahs and Phantogram.  Both stations play “The Dog Days are Over” about four or five times a day.  Thus, the “curatorial” role that Pandora plays in my life has been compromised by “payola” - an old radio model where music publishers pay broadcasters to “push” a certain song.

This is an ongoing issue, isn’t it?  We’re searching for good curation, but commerce pays for those people and services that provide it.  Whether it’s Google or a gallery, there is some financial imperative to “push the fish.”  As a gallerist, I will always give people the truth if they ask.  Pandora, on the other hand, feels otherwise.  I guess the dog days are over, whatever that means.

Enter: my map of this weekend’s art fairs in Los Angeles.  Woo, is there a LOT of art that’s going to be shown.  Art Platform, PULSE LA, the Brewery Art Walk, and Beyond Eden.  I am going to try to make it to at least two of these events. (I am also going to go to the Edouard and Luvena Vysekal show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.) Reviewing the offering, you can see that further curation may be necessary. Put simply, we live in a world of too much stuff.

Enter: Pinterest.  This is a very cool new piece of software that allows you to “pin” things to your virtual “cork board” and share it with an undeserving world. See, for example, my mate’s Pinterest Board.  I see huge possibilities in this idea. You could become a freelance curator of Pez Dispensers or vintage Saabs. You could also forgo buying things in favor of putting them into a virtual space where you can stare at them all starry-eyed.

Finally, a little help in becoming a curator of Eames stuff. Remember friends, good curators have both knowledge and taste. You should either educate yourself to where you have both or find a friend who already has them.

SOMETIMES, I wonder whether I am anything other than a weather vane for the winds of the coming zeitgeist.  Has anyone else noticed that the steampunk aesthetic also fetishizes the period? Moreover, has anyone noticed the new Pip Hop (aka Chap Hop)? Finally, could the Gallery’s recent acquisition of the Estate of Leon Dabo be any more perfectly timed for all of this? Any steampunk people want a lovely painting for your parlor? Just checking…

Finally, there is this whole PACIFIC STANDARD TIME project to go over. Yes, I did just spend nine years mastering the history of modern art in California (and LA, in particular). Yes, I did notice the multi-million dollar, Getty Funded, sixty-plus museum exhibition foofaraw devoted to the subject I have spent much of my career promoting. (See our latest exhibition here.) What can I say? I am ALMOST NEVER happy with my successes.  This is pretty much a grand slam, which is why I am now moving on to the nineteenth century. Soon, I plan to find out what that whole Indie music scene thing was about.

The music was fantastic and the crowd responded enthusiastically with generous gifts to the Academy.  (Frank Goss put the Master in Master of Ceremonies as auctioneer of five special items.)   It was a grand, grand evening.  One party-goer said that it was, “the last great hurrah of the season.”  (Won’t Santa Barbarans be interested to find out that we have more than one season?)

Here, we see the effects of wine on hand-held photography.  Susan is so glamorous.  I am so shiny. We are both so blurry. That’s how you know that people were having fun.  There are never any sharp, well-lit pictures at good parties…

At the Tim Burton exhibition, they didn’t even put up very many tags.  (How could they?  There were 700 plus objects)  They handed out customized iPod Touches.  Each object had its own app.

To check into Cubism apps, I downloaded Fracture.  The image above was made with the app.  It features a beautiful 70s car.  Cubism?  There’s an app for that, too.  On the one hand, it is wonderful that people can explore the formal side of Cubism in an intuitive way.   On the other hand, yet another wonderous human idea has been commoditized and sold for less than a dollar.

Pertinent to that, have you used the new iPad in the gallery?  What do you think?  Is it applicable?

Bless me reader, for I have sinned.  It has been almost a year since my last digression.

I was mortified to learn that there are people who FOLLOW my blog.  They were mild-mannered in their complaints, but I took their concerns to heart.  I urged them to consider that there HAD been updates (Did they visit this page or this one?   This page has been updated since October of 2010.), but dumb excuses fell on deaf years.

SO.  A new update.  This picture was taken just two days ago.  I am the arty-looking type in the black suit standing close to a friend of mine at the opening of my new LA’s RISEN exhibition.

I have so much to add, but I’ll need material for next June.  Until then, keep the faith.  Keep the lights on.  Keep on truckin’.  And, if you don’t wanna, keep it to yourself.

Briefly, however, I will submit that I have recently created my first two books for distribution through the Print on Demand service, Blurb.  I created the books in Adobe InDesign, exported to a specialized PDF, uploaded the files and got my books back.  One of the books cannot yet be discussed.  The other book is called De Forest’s Santa Barbara.  Frank Goss wrote most of the text, but I wrote the biography and a couple of the remarks.  The first copies should arrive by 1st Thursday in November.

That is not the reason for this post, but I thought I would mention it anyway.  I wanted to briefly comment on two things:

1.  David Brooks’ FABULOUS new article “The Flock Comedies”

I didn’t take any sociology classes.  Indeed, I was told that sociology was for girls who wanted to get married to a nice college boy.  I was mistaken on both counts.  This article articulates things about our society today that are well worth noting.  Great phrases include (but are not limited to): the eroticization of friendship, friendship mob, and an insular and stultifying social fortress.

2.  The Death of the Humanities

This past week, the NY Times has four articles (Going back, I could only find this one.)  on the death of the humanities.  The debate arose in response to plummeting enrollment and the recent S.U.N.Y. decision to discontinue the French department at one of their schools.  Obviously, I’m a soft-science kinda guy.  On the other hand, I get it.  I get the rationale for the cut.  What more needs be said?  One thing:  some things have a value that cannot be translated into dollars.  Those things are valuable and important, but NOT remunerative.  If this world is going to remain worthwhile, we are going to have to get it together to support valuable things that don’t pay out.  Fortunately, I think that the blogosphere will do wonders in that arena.  Optimism: a Young Man’s Game if Ever There Was One.

It could be:

• my early (and absurd) love of Legos
• the particular symptom set of my mild OCD
• my fetish for the style and optimism of midcentury art, architecture, and design
• my background in computer-aided graphic design

but for some reason, I have always loved geometric abstraction.

Still, I didn’t quite expect HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of Santa Barbarans to respond the same way.  I received dozens of e-mails and even two tweets about the success of the exhibition.

I will post exhibition photos as they become available. Special thanks to Ken Bortolazzo, Nancy Gifford, Zack Paul, and John Moses for their help in making the show such a resounding success.