Line sculptures and Loman drama: The best of L.A. arts and culture this weekend
A huge hello to everyone who included “seeking out more of Los Angeles’ arts and culture offerings” among their 2025 resolutions. I’m Times staff writer Ashley Lee, helping you reach that goal with this solo edition of the paper’s Essential Arts newsletter, while my colleague Jessica Gelt is out of office.
Best bets: On our radar this week
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Jong Oh
A collection of quietly striking sculptures from the artist — who was born in Mauritania, grew up in Spain and South Korea and now lives and works in Seoul — is on view at the Timothy Hawkinson Gallery in Beverly Hills. The solo show, titled “Goosewing,” celebrates how Oh assembles seemingly unremarkable materials like chains, strings and beads into precise pieces that play with light and space. The exhibition, which opened this past weekend, continues through Feb. 8. Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, 7424 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles. timothyhawkinsongallery.com
‘Death of a Salesman’
According to Times theater critic Charles McNulty, writing in 2022, Arthur Miller “had contemplated calling the play ‘The Inside of his Head,’ an indication that [it] isn’t built on a cement foundation of realism. This is a work of memory, shuttling between past and present.” This new production of the explosive drama, directed by Mark Blanchard, stars Joe Cortese, Frances Fisher, Cronin Cullen and Robert Smythe as the central Loman family, grappling with what it costs to chase the American Dream. Performances start Thursday and run through Jan. 26. Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St., Burbank. onstage411.com
Jeremy Jordan
The Tony-nominated actor — currently wrapping his star turn in “The Great Gatsby” on Broadway before stepping into the revival of “Floyd Collins” — is taking over the Wallis for two shows (the second of which was added due to popular demand). He’ll be telling stories and performing songs from his roles onstage and onscreen, including the musicals “Newsies,” “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Waitress,” the TV series “Smash” and the movie adaptation of “The Last 5 Years.” Thursday and Friday, 7:30 p.m. The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. thewallis.org
The week ahead: A curated calendar
MONDAY
Jeff Arcuri The New York City-based comedian kicks off the new year with a four-night stand.
7 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The Wiltern, 3790 Wilshire Blvd. wiltern.com
Idiocracy Who knew the future would arrive so soon? Mike Judge, with his hilarious — and depressingly prophetic — 2006 movie about a librarian sent forward 500 years.
7:30 p.m. Vidiots, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd., Eagle Rock. vidiotsfoundation.org
TUESDAY
Candida Höfer Catch the final week of the German photographer’s first solo West Coast show in more than 20 years, featuring precisely composed, large-scale images of architectural interiors.
Through Saturday. Sean Kelly, Los Angeles, 1357 N. Highland Ave. skny.com
WEDNESDAY
Igor Levit The Russian-born pianist solos on works by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms in a Colburn Celebrity Recital.
8 p.m. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Rod Wave The trap-soul singer makes a rescheduled stop on his Last Lap tour.
7:30 p.m. Intuit Dome, 3930 W. Century Blvd., Inglewood. intuitdome.com
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THURSDAY
Four Seasons & Strauss Carl St.Clair conducts the Pacific Symphony in Antonio Vivaldi’s violin concerti and Richard Strauss’ majestic “Alpine Symphony.”
8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday. Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. scfta.org
Alex Israel The artist’s first L.A. show in nearly a decade, “Noir” features large-scale cinematic paintings of local landmarks such as the Troubadour.
Through Feb. 22. Gagosian, 456 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills. gagosian.com
Schumann & Brahms Sunwook Kim plays Johannes Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto and Louis Langrée guides the L.A. Phil through Robert Schumann’s Fourth Symphony.
8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday; 2 p.m. Sunday. Walt Disney Concert Hall, 111 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. laphil.com
Dispatch: Pippa Garner, radical satirist
Pippa Garner, the radical artist who expertly satirized American consumerism in sculptures, drawings, garments and performances, died Dec. 30 of leukemia. She was 82.
Born in 1942 in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Garner briefly studied automotive design at Pasadena’s ArtCenter College of Art and Design after serving as a combat artist during the Vietnam War. Her work across all mediums featured absurdist transformations of mundane objects to skewer societal norms; her 1969 piece “Kar-Mann (Half Human Half Car),” melding a classic Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with the legs of a squatting man, resulted in her ArtCenter expulsion.
In 1974, Garner famously spoofed mass production by reconfiguring a ’59 Chevrolet so that, when driven forward across the Golden Gate Bridge, it seemed to be traveling backward — a performance popularized by its printing in the pages of Esquire magazine. And in 1982, she published “Better Living Catalogue: 62 Absolute Necessities for Contemporary Survival,” a satirical mail-order catalog with whimsical inventions that parodied consumers’ growing fascination with ingenuity, efficiency and comfort.
“Pippa Garner has satire down pat — that’s no mean feat, given the slipperiness of the literary genre,” wrote Times art critic Christopher Knight in his review of Garner’s 2017 exhibition at Redling Fine Art. “Garner has an ear for life’s mundane madness, which she turns against itself to throw things into high relief. More Horace than Juvenal, her insightful humor is arch rather than piercing.”
Philippa Venus Garner began her gender transition in the early 1980s, and often discussed her body as its own art piece. Her death was announced on her official Instagram account.
“She wanted a trans president, universal healthcare, the end of testosterone toxicity overload and pet-troll-eum, hormones for all, lusty living to the very end,” read the announcement. “For her, heaven was not in the sky but deep in Mother Earth. She will have a green burial in Marin County.”
Her work is currently highlighted in a double solo exhibition called “Misc. Pippa,” on view at Stars Gallery in Los Angeles through Jan. 18, as well as Matthew Brown in New York through Jan. 25. Both shows consist of drawings, photographs and sculptures, most of which were first conceived or produced in the 1970s and 1980s.
Culture news and the SoCal scene
Times staff writer Nathan Solis wrote about Beto de la Rocha, the 85-year-old Chicano pioneer whose still-life “La Mesa de Frank” was part of the landmark 1974 exhibition at LACMA by Los Four. Also featuring the works of Carlos Almaraz, Gilbert “Magu” Lujan and Frank Romero, it was “the first major exhibition of Chicano art in L.A. during an era when Latinos were largely ignored by mainstream art spaces,” wrote Solis. “The show’s 50th anniversary brings into focus the genius and career of De la Rocha, who now lives in assisted living but continues to paint whenever he visits his sister.”
If you kicked off 2025 with a bit of a waltz — as most tend to do, whether they realize it or not — Times classical music critic Mark Swed shared some enlightening thoughts on the New Year’s tradition: “The waltz happens to be one of history’s great subversive endeavors. It has been an entertainment capable of subtly disquieting empire, class, sexuality, music and dance. For two centuries, the waltz has collided with gunpowder and, more lately, AI, in ways that have shaped culture and society.”
Linda Lavin, the Tony Award-winning stage actor who became a working-class icon as a paper-hat-wearing waitress on the TV sitcom “Alice,” died last week of complications from recently discovered lung cancer. She got her first big break in the Broadway musical “It’s a Bird ... It’s a Plane ... It’s Superman,” went on to earn Tony nominations in Neil Simon’s “Last of the Red Hot Lovers,” Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories” and Nicky Silver’s “The Lyons,” and won for the Simon play “Broadway Bound.” She was 87.
“Her voice had a penetrating edge,” wrote Times TV critic Robert Lloyd in an appreciation of Lavin. “She could modulate when the part required, but whatever the character Lavin spoke with a stage actor’s precision. She could be sweet, evil, overbearing, put-upon, thoughtful, impulsive, girlish, vulnerable or manipulative and superimpose selected qualities for extra complexity, always with a compressed energy, obvious or veiled.”
And last but not least
Already breaking my New Year’s resolution to lessen my social media scrolling, thanks to these viral videos of West Coast Swing.
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