Art — both making it and enjoying it — seems a luxury in times of war. Yet the work of two Israeli artists, Orit Raff and Nir Evron, showing at the contemporary art space LAXART through Aug. 23, is not only a worthy distraction from the psychic weight of current events but also a testament […]

“Re:Mind,” a multimedia installation at USC’s Fisher Museum of Art, is the first solo show in the United States for Miri Chais, an Israeli-born artist who now lives in Los Angeles. For the show, Chais created and installed a room full of paintings and sculptures, as well as objects that have screens embedded in them, […]

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Sanford Jay Frank, the Emmy Award-winning writer and producer, screenwriting guru and conservative ideologue whom everyone called Sandy, died at his home in Calabasas on April 18 of complications arising out of a glioblastoma, a cancerous brain tumor. He was 59. Frank grew up in Springfield, Mass., where his father worked at the post office. […]

Anastasia writes: I was a college student at the time working part-time at Fromin’s deli, the first time he came in. There was something powerful and domineering about him. “I need things,” he said to me, his voice a rough mix of Brooklyn and post-nasal drip that sent an electric current though my whole body. […]

    George Rush and Joanna Molloy’s “SCANDAL: A Manual, The Inside Story of America’s Infamous Gossip Columnists” (Skyhorse/Norton) is the most fun read I’ve had all year — possibly in several years. It is a delicious look behind the curtain of New York’s gossip media industrial complex, the players and the played, and how […]

Wednesday, June 5, 2013 PURPLECLOVER.com Don Was, the multi-Grammy award-winning producer, a close collaborator of the Rolling Stones whose band Was/Not Was still plays the occasional gig; and who last year became president of legendary Jazz label Blue Note Records, is easy to spot in a crowd, or a police lineup for that matter, because […]

      “Here They Come II, Paris,” from the series “Big Nudes,” 1981. © Estate of Helmut Newton   Many years ago, on Jan. 23, 2004, to be precise, I was driving west on Sunset Boulevard when traffic stopped completely. There were police and an ambulance in front of the Chateau Marmont, where a […]

“Inside Llewyn Davis,” Joel and Ethan Coen’s new film, is the fictional story of one week in the life of a folksinger in Greenwich Village in 1961. The title character, played with total conviction by Oscar Isaac and supplied with credible material by the maven of American music, T-Bone Burnett, is acknowledged to have been […]

June 18, 2013 Jonathan Alter’s “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies” (Simon and Schuster), an account of the president’s reelection campaign and the challenges posed by the Republican’s obstructionist politics, has been on the New York Times Best Sellers list for several weeks. We recently spoke to the columnist for Bloomberg View about the […]