Courtesy Honor Fraser, photo by Josh White/JWPictures

Alexis Smith's Strangelove (2004)

This week, music videos get higher-art treatment, quirky paintings hang in Koreatown and a straight-shooting L.A. artist has a debut show at her new gallery.

5. Finding artistry on MTV
"We believe music videos are the most universal, accessible and entertaining art form in the world," says the Los Angeles Music Video Festival's "about us" page. They've also been vehicles for the weirdest collaborations between visual artists, musicians and filmmakers -- think of Bjork's Mutual Core, a collaboration with digital artist and programmer John F. Simon, or David Lynch's images for Interpol. On Friday, LAMVF curators will show two hours' worth of music videos they deem new and edgy at the Armory Center for the Arts.145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena; Fri., June 21, 8 p.m. (626) 792-5101, armoryarts.org.

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Ian Cox

Ben Eine, a former Lloyds of London agent who has met great success with a hand designed font named Vandalism, appropriately oversized and placed in illegal spaces (even on the façade of L.A. Weekly in 2011), hates to do solo art shows.

"It means I get all the attention," he tells L.A. Weekly in an alley late Friday night, as he prepares for his opening at Corey Helford's Circa Gallery the next day. "In a group show, I can aim for having the best painting in the show, but a solo show? I guess I'll always have the best painting -- and the worst."

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Courtesy of the artist and Santa Monica Museum of Art

Joyce Pensato's Batman (2012)

This week, one artist turns pop icons into haunting, dripping messes and another visits a burning volcano again and again.

5. Do architects believe in truth?
"I've been told to tell you that the slides are out of focus intentionally," said architect Tom Mayne in 1976, introducing a lecture by his colleague Coy Howard. After Howard got up in front of the audience at SCI-Arc, he began by addressing Pico Boulevard: "You consist of asphalt, cement and largely cheapish small buildings. ... You jerk through the city, stoplight to stoplight, like a blunt knife through an unfeeling body." Then a woman interrupted, telling Howard to raise his right hand and swear to tell nothing but the whole truth before he went on to talk about his fellow architects, whom he said probably didn't really believe in truth. Mayne, who won the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 2005, and Howard will give the keynote lecture at SCI-Arc's symposium on architecture's past and future this weekend. 960 E. Third St., dwntwn.; Fri., June 14, 3-9 p.m., and Sat., June 15, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. (213) 613-2200, sciarc.edu.

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Tibby Rothman

David Lloyd (right) chats with Andi Campognone (left), the Lancaster Museum of Art and History's director, at a recent gallery talk.

In the late 1980s, the abstract painter David Lloyd found himself where others wanted to be. Margo Leavin, who showed John Baldessari, Donald Judd and Alexis Smith, was his art dealer.

In the art world -- or, to be more specific, the business of art -- to land a respected gallery is essential to be perceived as an artist of merit, build a collector base, grow in stature and draw reviews, the ink that doesn't simply evaluate work but acknowledges that an artist and their pieces exist at all.

In the 1980s, in a world in which galleries were in or out (and still are) thanks to a hierarchy as strict as an 18th century debutante's bloodlines, the Margo Leavin Gallery was definitely in. Lloyd was on his way. By the early 1990s, he began to enter the collections of LACMA, the Orange County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. And he was selling out his gallery shows. Multiple shows. Even today, he laughs thinking about his younger self getting those checks and remembering the wonder of it.

And then, in the mid-90s, a funny thing happened. Lloyd walked away.

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Film by David Finster.

Still from The Florida Room by Asher Hartman.

See also:
*10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying
*10 L.A. Art Spaces That Change Our Idea of What an Art Space Is

This week, a man becomes a god in a play set in a midcentury landmark and an artist builds an adults-only dollhouse.

5. Sculpting the president
Sculptor Robert Merrell Gage announces, "We know what Lincoln looked like," early on in the 1955 documentary The Face of Lincoln, then proceeds to describe the different curves in the 16th president's face. As the film continues, Gage talks about Lincoln's life while sculpting a portrait of him. The film screens at the Fischer Museum at USC, where Gage taught when the film was made. 823 Exposition Blvd.; Sat., June 8, 1 p.m.; $15. (213) 740-4561, fisher.usc.edu.

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Photo by Fredrik Nilsen, Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery and Fredericks & Freiser

John Wesley's painting Untitled (Woman with Glasses) (2004)

This week, an artist turns two galleries and a storage unit into pseudo-sets for a remake of a Western, and 29 L.A. painters show in a former downtown bank.

5. Finally finished
"Little Ellie, what have I told you about self-expression? ... It goes nowhere," Stalin tells artist Eleanor Antin in Antin's new memoir, Conversations With Stalin. She has routine, imaginary encounters with the dictator throughout this book about growing up in New York, the child of Jewish communists. Antin began giving wry, colorful readings from the book a few years before she finished it. And why not? Refining and rehashing have been part of her art for decades (in the '70s, she aggressively dieted for 36 days to sculpt herself into an ideal figure, and in the '80s she periodically appeared in the guise of struggling African-American ballerina Eleanora Antinova). Now the book is finally done and she will read from it again at LACMA before signing copies. 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; Sun., June 2, 1 p.m.; free. (323) 857-6010, lacma.org.

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MAK Center

Curator Sylvia Lavin introduces her exhibition to a packed Schindler House

This is the third installment of our Pacific Standard Time Presents diary, tracking modern architecture happenings all over the city. Check out our previous entries:
*The Getty's Big, New Exploration of L.A. Architecture
*SCI-Arc's Gala and a Concert at Jackie Treehorn's House

High temperatures might be bad for art, but they're great for museums. The past week's blistering heat wave drove many an Angeleno into the air-conditioned respite of their local cultural institution -- I spotted Getty curator Christopher Alexander leading a particularly large tour through "Overdrive" on a steamy Saturday. Even when it's not serving as an escape from the heat, the show is an excellent destination, and a few hours wandering the exhibition filled me with a renewed sense of civic pride. In fact, I had a hard time seeing the "thoroughgoing urban mess" as described by one bitter East Coast reviewer in his description of the show (or maybe L.A. in general?) last week.

On another night, it was the promise of warm spring air -- and not a lick of air conditioning -- that packed the Schindler House for the MAK Center's "Everything Loose Will Land" opening. The al fresco vibe extended to the art: Sylvia Lavin -- in a snappy molecular-looking statement necklace -- admitted that she rather enjoyed curating an exhibition outside of a traditional museum, even though mounting a show in the drafty duplex is "pretty much like installing an exhibition outdoors."

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Courtesy Michael Benevento

A still from Wu Tsang and Alexandro Segade's Mishima in Mexico (2012)

This week, an artist makes deadpan jokes in vintage photographs, whistlers convene in Glendale and a Japanese novelist's tragedy of frustrated love is re-staged in Mexico.

5. Crowd of copycats
It's not yet certain how many people will participate in artist Sara Roberts' Clump and Whistle, a group performance at Glendale's Civic Center, but it shouldn't be more than 100, the number Roberts chose as her cut-off point. Clump and Whistle will work in the way the wave works at a football game, only with whistles. One person blows out a quick tune on one of the multitone whistles Roberts has provided, then the person next to him or her mimics the tune and so on until this tune has spread -- like a wave -- through the crowd. Two rehearsals precede this weekend's event, which means the effect will be at least slightly honed. Glendale Civic Center Plaza, Broadway and Glendale Boulevard; Sun., May 19, 1 p.m.; RSVP requested. machineproject.org.

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Kevin Scanlon

Heather Taylor

One of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2013 issue. Check out our entire People 2013 issue here.

To gallery owner, blogger, fashionista, lifestyle maven and all-around It girl Heather Taylor, life consists of "little moments of making things pretty." Sitting barefoot and cross-legged in her living room, she looks around at the colorful throws, the Moroccan table, the moss-green velvet settee, the neatly stacked art monographs. She has dark eyes, dark hair, red lips and an effortless, eclectic sense of style — like Frida Kahlo, without the misery.

She can't put a precise name to her style, she says, except to note that it is cozy and classic, with elements of "the indoor-outdoor L.A. thing." Whatever it is, people want to be around her — if not outright be her — because Taylor is the epitome of a certain kind of Southern California living: casual, elegant, playful and creative.

The spine of her business is Taylor De Cordoba Gallery, which she and her husband opened in Culver City in 2006, when the neighborhood "was just starting to become fun." She was 26 then. She has since made the gallery a warm, welcoming place for both emerging artists and the public.

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Anna Jones

Camille and Kennerly Kitt, the Harp Twins, perform at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills on Saturday

See also:
*5 Artsy Things to Do in L.A. This Week
*10 Best L.A. Art Galleries For Partying

Martin Schoeller's new show "Identical: Portraits of Twins" at ACE gallery in Beverly Hills is interesting enough on its own, but the opening this past Saturday was an unusual and memorable experience that, quite literally, made this L.A. Weekly reporter do more than a few double takes.

The party featured a rare Los Angeles appearance by the sublimely beautiful and exceptionally talented duo known as the Harp Twins, Camille and Kennerly Kitt. Also in attendance were dozens of pairs of identical twins. Twins of all ages, ethnicities, and professions crowded the lofty space, mingling and sipping cocktails as the strains of such tunes as Metallica's "Enter Sandman" and Rihanna's "Disturbia" lilted from the two golden concert grand harps and collective 20 fingers of Camille and Kennerly, transformed from gritty rock and pop into something that sounds downright angelic.

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