Arts and culture of Los Angeles
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The arts and culture of Los Angeles are varied.
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[edit] Motion pictures
The greater Los Angeles area is the most important site in the United States for movie and television production. This has drawn not only actors, but also writers, composers, artists, and other creative individuals to the area.
The area is home to many institutes that study and appreciate film production, such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and American Film Institute. Various awards are given annually for movie and television production, some of which garner huge worldwide audiences. There are many small Film festivals, like the Los Angeles Film Festival sponsored by IFP/Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival conducted by the Outfest. Specialty theaters like Grauman's Egyptian Theatre and art houses like the Nuart Theatre screen eclectic mixes of new and historic movies.
Film production in Los Angeles faces increasing competition, however, from other parts of the United States and from the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Toronto. The phenomenon of entertainment companies running away to other locales in search of lower labor and production costs is known as "runaway production."
The motion picture and TV industries have helped create the image that defines Los Angeles across the world. Many tourists flock to see Hollywood-related landmarks such as the Walk of Fame and the Grauman's Chinese Theater.
[edit] Literature
Los Angeles's literary side includes Raymond Chandler, whose hard-boiled detective stories were set in pre-war and immediate post-war L.A. Ross Macdonald carried on the Chandler tradition into the 1950s, and in the 1960s and 1970s blended it with themes of classical tragedy. Walter Mosley, James Ellroy and Joseph Hansen are among the local succesors to Chandler. Nathaniel West's book, The Day of the Locust, depicted a raw side to the Hollywood dream. Ray Bradbury wrote science fiction after moving to the city in 1934. Actress Carrie Fisher has found success as a novelist. The best known local poet was Charles Bukowski, who mostly lived in Hollywood but in the later part of his life lived in San Pedro. Tens of thousands of screenplays have been written by L.A. city residents, and the movie business has attracted many authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, Tennessee Williams, Evelyn Waugh, and William Faulkner.
[edit] Fiction
Los Angeles has provided fertile territory for writers of fiction. During the twentieth century, fiction portraying the city has highlighted the complexity of the city and the discontinuities between its public image and the reality of living there. The size and scale of the city have also provided crime writers with a suitably complex city against which to set their stories. Works that explore life in the city include:
- James Robert Baker, "Fuel-Injected Dreams", 1986; "Boy Wonder", 1988
- Raymond Chandler,The Big Sleep, 1939
- Raymond Chandler,Farewell My Lovely, 1940
- Raymond Chandler,The Long Goodbye, 1953
- Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero, 1985
- James Ellroy, Black Dahlia, 1987
- James Ellroy, LA Confidential, 1990
- James Ellroy, White Jazz, 1992
- John Fante, Wait Until Spring, Bandini, 1938
- John Fante, Ask the Dust, 1939
- Roger L. Simon, The Moses Wine series, starting with The Big Fix, 1973
- Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One, 1947.
- Nathaniel West, Day of the Locust, 1939.
[edit] Music
Los Angeles is also one of the most important sites in the world for the recorded music industry. The landmark Capitol Records building, which resembles a stack of albums, is representative of this. A&M Records long occupied a studio off Sunset Boulevard built by Charlie Chaplin (who wrote the music for his own films). The Warner Brothers built a major recording business in addition to their film business. At the other end of the business, local Rhino Records began a reissue boom by digging through archives of old recordings and repackaging them for modern audiences.
Los Angeles had a vibrant African-American musical community even when it was relatively small: a number of musical artists congregated around Central Avenue, and the community produced a number of great talents, including Charles Mingus, Buddy Collette, Gerald Wilson, and others in the 1930s and 1940s before disappearing in the 1950s.
In the 1960s the Sunset Strip became a breeding ground for bands like The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and The Doors. The Beach Boys were founded in nearby Hawthorne. Much hard rock has come out of Los Angeles, including hard rockers Van Halen from nearby Pasadena, "hair bands" like Mötley Crüe & Guns N' Roses, thrash metal acts like Slayer, and also 90s rock bands such as KoЯn. There was a sizeable punk rock movement which spawned the hardcore punk movement featuring bands like X, Black Flag and Wasted Youth. In the 1980s, the Paisley Underground movement was native to Los Angeles. In the 1990s, Los Angeles contribution to rock music continued with acclaimed artists such as Beck, Sublime of Long Beach, Tool and Rage Against the Machine. At the end of the 1990s the nu metal band Linkin Park was formed in Santa Monica, and was named after Lincoln Park in that city, near their recording studio. Although Los Angeles has produced few internationally successful or critically notable acts in the 2000s, the city retains its importance as a center of live rock music and of the music industry.
In the heart of downtown Los Angeles is the Music Center of Los Angeles County. The Music Center consists of the new Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Ahmanson Theatre, and the Mark Taper Forum. The courtyard, fountain, and public art make it a beautiful location. Adding to its cultural importance, on the same street are the Los Angeles Central Library, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Colburn School of Performing Arts, and the Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra now performs at Walt Disney Concert Hall after having spent many years in residence at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and performs summer concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. The Los Angeles Master Chorale also calls the Walt Disney Concert Hall home. The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is also the residence of the Los Angeles Opera and Dance at the Music Center. The Ahmanson Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, and the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, are home to the Center Theatre Group, now directed by Michael Ritchie. It was previously directed by Gordon Davidson.
The demands of scoring thousands of hours of soundtracks for TV and movies also provides work for composers and classically-trained musicians, bands, orchestras, and symphonies
- See also: List of songs about Los Angeles
[edit] Art
The plein air movement of impressionistic landscape painting found early adherents in the Los Angeles area, and became a signature style of California art. In the 1960s, Corita Kent, then known as Sister Mary Corita of Immaculate Heart College, created bright, bold serigraphs carrying the messages of love and peace.
The city also has a famous "public art" program which requires developers to contribute one percent of the cost of construction of new buildings to a public art fund. Much of this money has been spent in downtown Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is known for its mural art, and its thousands of examples of wall art are believe to outnumber those in every other city in the world. Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco all created murals in the area.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the Chicano art movement took a strong hold in Los Angeles. Much of the work produced followed the Mexican muralist tradition of sending potent social messages. Works produced in this era by the East Los Streetscapers are still extantnt in East Los Angeles and at the Estrada Courts, and works by Judy Baca and the Social and Public Art Resource Center are found citywide. Chicano arts in Los Angeles also gave rise to the internationally renowned Self Help Graphics & Art, known for its Corita Kent-influenced serigraphs and its annual Día de los Muertos festival.
Muralism also has importance outside the Mexican American comminty. Kent Twitchell has painted many murals in the area, and the city of Venice, California is well-known for its murals, as well as for the presence of numerous street performers.
Los Angeles is home to some of the best graffiti art in the world. Sites such as the Belmont Tunnel have been documented in numerous books and magazines on underground art.
Some of the most respected art museums in the world can be found in Los Angeles. They include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, the Norton Simon Museum, the Huntington Library art collection and botanical gardens, and the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. Other smaller art museums in the city include the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the California African American Museum of Art, and many sculpture gardens throughout the city, including those at the University of Judaism and the University of California, Los Angeles.
[edit] Architecture
In downtown Los Angeles, there are several buildings constructed in the Art Deco style. In recognition of this heritage, the recently built Metropolitan Transit Authority building incorporates subtle Art Deco characteristics.
Modern architecture in the city ranges from the works of pioneering African-American architect Paul Williams, to the iconoclastic forms of Frank Gehry. Charles Eames and his wife Ray Eames designed famous chairs and other domestic goods.
[edit] Heritage
The greater Los Angeles metro area has several notable art museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the J. Paul Getty Center on the Santa Monica mountains overlooking the Pacific, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), the Hammer Museum and the Norton Simon Museum. In the 1920s and 1930s Will Durant and Ariel Durant, Arnold Schoenberg and other intellectuals were the representatives of culture, in contrast to the movie writers and directors. But, until the early 1960s the region was something of a "cultural wasteland" compared to San Francisco and New York--if culture is defined as the "high arts" of ballet, opera, classical music and legitimate theater. However, as the city flourished financially in the middle of the 20th century, the culture followed. Boosters such as Dorothy Buffum Chandler and other philanthropists raised funds for the establishment of art museums, music centers and theaters. Today, the Southland cultural scene is as complex, sophisticated and varied as any in the world.
[edit] Cuisine
While the cuisines of many cultures have taken root in Los Angeles, it is the home of the Cobb Salad, invented in the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood, the French-Dip sandwich, originated by either Cole's or Phillippe's restaurant in downtown, the ice blended coffee drink by Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and Tommy's Hamburger.
[edit] Criticism
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The high profile of Los Angeles has generated many critics of its cityscape, people, culture, and image.
Los Angeles has been derided by many in the rest of the United States for most of the last century. To quote one dyspeptic observer, the city "oozed up through the unstable earth like some noxious tropical plant growing and spreading over the plain and sending forth strange fruit to contaminate the rest of the country."[citation needed] H.L. Mencken complained about the stink of oranges, and likewise once called the city "nineteen suburbs in search of a megalopolis."[citation needed] Douglas Adams noted that the city is "like several thousand square miles of American Express junk mail, but without the same sense of moral depth,"[citation needed] while Bertolt Brecht compared Los Angeles to hell with its "endless processions of cars/Lighter than their own shadows, faster than/Mad thoughts, gleaming vehicles in which/Jolly-looking people come from nowhere and are nowhere bound."[citation needed] Norman Mailer once analogized Los Angeles as a "constellation of plastic," in reference to its alleged artificiality and cheapness.[citation needed]
In addition, Los Angeles had, at one point, an increasing reputation for racial tension, engendered by cases of police brutality, racial rioting, and segregated communities.
One particular critical narrative that has been some gaining dominance recently is that of Los Angeles portrayed as a dystopia. Examples include movies such as Blade Runner, novels like Snow Crash, and popular nonfiction interpretations by urban theorist Mike Davis, author of the acclaimed works City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear. However, this view has roots extending as far back as Los Angeles native Willard Huntington Wright's 1913 article, "Los Angeles, the Chemically Pure," and is perhaps best exemplified by Nathanael West's The Day Of The Locust, the ending of which eerily prescinds the 1992 Rodney King riots.
