Your Social Life - Short Edition

There's plenty of things to do this weekend in Los Angeles, despite the rain and the cold that are coming, but I'm not into going out at all, so I'll provide you with the short edition. I'm sure you can do a bit of legwork yourself if you deem FBC!'s list insufficient for your voracious social cravings.

Your weekend starts tonight with two concurrent events, the 7 PM Holiday Party and Live Auction at LAXart where, if you have a bit of money, you can bid on some fabulous Christmas or Hanukkah presents AND support a space that's as vital to Los Angeles as MOCA. The tickets cost $50 which isn't that much for this type of event, but probably a bit too much for unemployed nerds like me. But if I had money to spend I'd be there.
The second event tonight is at REDCAT where you can see a bunch of worthy art historians, curators and artist to present a "significant image" (of their own choosing) for one minute, an idea appropriated by Micol Hebron from Agnès Varda. I'm not among the worthies, so I won't show up, obviously. As a performance event it may be interesting, nevertheless as an art historian I just think the concept demonstrates perfectly how today most people are unable to spend MORE than one minute in front of an image to look at it, and say something meaningful about it. Some of the worthies tonight are friends of mine, so please buddies don't take this personally, I just think it proves how the contemporary culture is unable to consider pictures on a deep level if one has been stuffed with too much theory, and done too little looking.
Ask the very same people to spend 1 hour each in front of the same choice they decided upon, and make it a 40-hour long series of events as a follow-up, and now I'd be interested (though I'd add as a rule people should be barred from dwelling on the personal). It costs $12, if you feel like participating in it. Personally if I were a Deus Ex-Machina I'd put all the participants on stage and would ask them to spend that hour I was speaking about being eloquent about, oh, I don't know, one of Stella's Black Paintings, or a minor 18th century Dutch landscape, or just one of those Shepard Fairey propaganda posters (without a slogan, otherwise it's too easy). I think we'd get a really interesting result. If you're still up after (or before) the 1 minute per image event, you can stay downtown and join the regular Downtown Art Walk. Since you will be walking you can get yourself a drink as well.

OK, so by Saturday you should feel like forgetting about all these images worth only one minute of important art people's time, so why not go and attend the closing of Morgan Fisher exhibition at China Art Objects? You will be able to watch his work at your leisure, and hang out with Morgan who's the coolest post-structuralist filmmaker, as they say in art schools, as well as being simply a very good artist.
Before heading over to Chinatown, you can spend your lunch hour at the Pacific Design Center outpost of beleaguered MOCA and attend the Lari Pittman and Catherine Opie book signing. Hurry, while we still have MOCA in Los Angeles! Go to the bottom of the page I'm linking to for complete information about time, location, etc.

On Sunday it will be raining, so instead of doing Christmas shopping, I'd say why don't you go visit and support your local museums? LACMA, MOCA, the Hammer, SMMOA, the Norton Simon, the Getty... plenty of places to go to, and if really you do freak out about buying presents, head over to their bookstores and buy art catalogues to your loved ones. Much better and more durable than ugly sweaters, and better for your weight management than boxes of cookies.

The picture above, Maya Schindler, Who Wants To Be A MIllionaire (white), 2008, Paint on mylar, features in tonight auction at LAXart, so if you feel like offering me a present for Christmas you know where to look for. I pinched the pic from LAXart website.