JOHN LAUTNER TURNS 100

The John Lautner Foundation is pleased to present the John Lautner Turns 100 series this July 16-November 13, 2011. In celebration of what would have been John Lautner’s 100th birthday on July 16, 2011, the series will showcase Lautner’s extraordinary body of work while informing and inspiring the public about the importance of preserving it. Taking place in Los Angeles, California and Marquette, Michigan, programming includes exhibitions, film screenings, home tours, symposia, receptions, and more.

When he arrived in Los Angeles, the architect John Lautner said that he was so shocked that he was physically ill for a year. “It was so ugly,” he said of the city where, for the next 50 years or so, he nonetheless built some of the most celebrated buildings of the 20th century. The John Lautner house in Los Angeles known as the Chemosphere, which appeared in Brian De Palma's “Body Double.” I didn’t throw up when I moved to Los Angeles, though it did initially bring to mind Nathanael West’s dyspeptic take on the city in “The Day of the Locust,” with its “Mexican ranch houses, Samoan huts, Mediterranean villas, Egyptian and Japanese temples, Swiss chalets, Tudor cottages and every possible combination of these styles.”
Since then, though, I’ve grown to love the city’s funky pastiches and I’ve also discovered its modern masterworks, including those by Lautner; his teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright; and that Lautner fan Frank Gehry.

Lautner, who died in 1994, could rail bitterly about the jerry-built quality of the buildings in Los Angeles, pinning some of their shoddiness on the movies, likening them to sets. Yet the city and its environs proved a great stage where he could put his ideas into sensuous form, as you can see in the residences that, in turn, became film locations. These include the 1949 redwood-and-glass Schaffer house (it’s where Colin Firth’s character lives in “A Single Man”) and the 1960 space age pad called the Chemosphere, an elevated wonderment that looks as if it were built for the Jetsons and pops up in Brian De Palma’s “Body Double.”

“Houses,” Lautner said, “are built for the people who live in them” (and those of us who can only peek at them from the outside). His work and that ethos are at the center of “John Lautner Turns 100,” a celebration that begins on what would have been his centenary, this Saturday, and includes exhibitions, talks, a symposium, tours and documentaries. Some of these events will take place in Marquette, Mich., where he was born, but most are happening in ugly, beautiful Los Angeles. We’ll see you there. - NYT

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BECK, Cateano Veloso and Devendra Banhart to perform @ MOCA's 2010 Gala event tomorrow night.

On Nov. 13, the talent pulled in by this year’s MOCA gala creator, L.A.-based artist Doug Aitken, is a bit more time-tested. Aitken has enlisted chameleonic rocker Beck , a leader of the L.A. scene since 1993, when “Loser” became a folk-rap hit; Brazilian singer-songwriter-political activist Caetano Veloso, who helped launch Brazil’s hybrid Tropicalismo musical movement in the late 1960s; and Venezuelan-American performer Devendra Banhart, a sometime collaborator of Beck’s whom The Times has described as “among a recent wave of cosmic young folk players…stretching the definition of folk rock for a new century.”

Aitken and his musical allies will generate a work called “WE,” whose aim is a “cultural ambush” (Aitken’s term) of music and choreography “that will attempt to break the barriers of the stage and empower the evening through the arts.” There’s no word on whether Beck, Veloso and Banhart will play artist-decorated guitars that can be auctioned to benefit MOCA, as Lady Gaga’s Hirstified piano was last year, fetching $450,000. The 2010 gala is titled “The Artist’s Museum Happening,” in keeping with “The Artist’s Museum,” a large survey of L.A.-generated art since 1980 that opens at MOCA on Halloween.

Beck literally has happenings in his blood: his grandfather, Al Hansen, who died in 1995, was a player on the New York art scene in the late 1950s and 1960s; he was an early creator and chronicler of the unpredicatable art events called “happenings” that led to today’s genre of performance art. Speaking of happenings, getting in on what’s happening at the gala will cost you $5,000 or $10,000 per person, or $25,000, $50,000 or $100,000 for a table for 10. - Culture Monster


**Also, eighteen artists created one-of-a kind posters for the event, which will plaster the interior the gala’s unique venue—a structure designed by Los Angeles' ''Bohemian Modern'' architect Barbara Bestor. Click here to see an exclusive look @ four of these posters—from artists Hisham Akira Bharoocha, Raymond Pettibon, Steve Roden and Tyler Warren.

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