Sculptor Richard Serra was interviewed by Mark Simmons at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, just prior to the opening of Serra's show at the Museum's Geffen Contemporary building. Mark Simmons works as a preparator at the museum and helped install the show. Mark Simmons: In an interview in 1993 you said you wanted architecture to be a neutral background. How has the Geffen Contemporary here at MOCA in Los Angeles fit in with what you said you wanted?

Richard Serra: Well, I basically think this (building's) architecture is like industrial shit and there are two of them (buildings which.. . . .

By Mat Gleason

Are you going to see the Matthew Barney film? Well I only got asked it about a hundred times. Each time the answer was "no." Held firm on it as well. Even had the chance on a Sunday night, but opted for the revival of Hitchcock's Rear Window at the Rialto in Pasadena. A real movie. Stinky carpets and Jimmy Stewart have their appeal. Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2 came to Hollywood, or more exactly, Santa Monica's Nuart Theater. All of my sources indicate it was a solid art world crowd. No Hollywood honchos, no actors, no "industry people." Just the future payers-back of student loans, tenure track pigment peddlers and Paul Schimmel's tush. Sold out, each showing. Full house to see what a lot of people I trust actually liked, although an . . . . . .

In the new work of Cindy Sherman, the subject of a woman’s “look” is explored in a manner almost tragic in its poignancy. These are women which society would view as “past their prime.” They all appear to have maintained a specific manner of dress and makeup application, perhaps one that “worked” for them in the past. But now that is passed, and what is left, Sherman shows us, is a naive dignity skirting the precipice of self-delusion. Surely, we think, these characters (all portrayed, in her usual manner, by the artist herself in large, crisp cibachrome prints) must know that the “beauty” which society proscribes has now eluded them for good. What was once purchasable through consumer products and fashion is . . . . . . . . . .

This exhibit is currently on view at the Whitney Museum, New York thru October. This review is from the show's debut venue, L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art in Downtown Los Angeles.

Barbara Kruger's career retrospective is currently on view at the L.A. MOCA's Geffen Contemporary wing in Downtown. The only way to take this show seriously is to bring a walkman and plenty of Duran Duran tapes. It is not too early for the 1980s to look dated, especially its advertising styles masquerading as art. Kruger's politics, too, tow the line of that politically dead decade. Quite in tune with the entire 80's approach . . . .

Monday, August 14, 2000. It was a great day in Los Angeles. It was the day the truth of what this country has become played out, violently, yet quite plainly, in a calculated stormtrooping march of police state glee. All day long there had been a palpable energy on the streets. These are sidewalks ordinarily devoid of people. It was one hundred degrees. Hotter still amidst the concrete. Everywhere downtown, people walked. Delegates to the Democratic National Convention were conspicuous in their conservative attire. A slogan-emblazoned T-Shirt seemed the only uniform of the true American, the freedom fighter, the voice in the wilderness of the new corporate American conglomerate. But the wilderness had emptied out into the streets of downtown L.A. The cacophony had coagulated into the sound of a giant raspberry, mockingly aimed at an establishment club which assumed its liberal credentials were intact.. . . . .

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