This was originally published as part of DailyServing’s week-long FORCE OF FAILURE in March 2011. Then, MOCA had opened a show of Rodarte’s Black Swan costumes that coincided with the Oscars and Fashion Weeks around the world, and L.A. performance artist Dawn Kasper had just done a performance in which she revisited Vito Acconci’s 1971 Claim performance. Since Autumn/Winter collections have just debuted in London,[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley In 1983, art historian T.J. Clark delivered his paper, “More on the Differences Between Comrade Greenberg and Ourselves” at the Vancouver conference, Modernism and Modernity. Clement Greenberg, the critic who named kitsch “the epitome of all that is spurious” and had a Pollock hanging in his bathroom, was in the audience. I[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley “She could have been signed on the basis of her pedigree alone,” said columnist Stephen Metcalf, talking about Whitney Houston on Slate’s culture podcast Tuesday, four days after the singer’s death. “Her godmother was Aretha Franklin. Her mother was an accomplished gospel singer. Her cousins were Deedee and Dionne Warwick. She could[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley A grad school classmate of mine, one of the more resourceful people I’ve met, had a studio that looked like a carpenter’s shop. Though not clean per se, it was functional and organized, with shelving units and a storage loft above a small couch. When he got stuck or couldn’t decide why[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley “At this moment, my iPad is totally f–ing me up,” said Eleanor Antin last Sunday at the Hammer Museum, in Act V of Before the Revolution, a remaking of her originally one-woman ballet. Act V was actually called “The Interruption,” because the performers were slated to stop performing and the artist to[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley “A kiss puts form into slow and stretchy motion,” writes Sylvia Lavin. A kiss “renders geometry fluid.” Our relationship to buildings can be like that too — slow, stretchy, fluid. So Lavin suggests in Kissing Architecture, her new book with a bright pink cover and a delightfully sensual take on architectural criticism.[.....]

L.A. Expanded: Notes from the West Coast A weekly column by Catherine Wagley I have a checkered brown and white shirt with sleeves and a collar that looks like something Ashton Kutcher would have worn in That ’70s Show. I still wear it, though I bought it at a thrift store when I was in high school. I had written a play about U.S. college[.....]