Left Coast magazine comment

[This post refers back to recent previous post about art magazines.]

Post by Anna Conti
Hi Roberta,

Interesting theory about the left coast, right coast magazine split.

I stopped subscribing to art magazines a long time ago, but still flip through them at the newsstands. These days when I see an issue that I feel compelled to buy, it’s usually Juxtapoz, occasionally Art on Paper, or something new that I haven’t seen before. Like you, I’ve noticed that there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of aspiring art publishers. Sad to say, their efforts usually disappoint.

The most disappointing art mag crash and burn is Modern Painters. Remember when it was actually about painting? Remember when the writing was good?

Juxtapoz has always been more than a “goth or skater dude” magazine. The thing about Juxtapoz is that they don’t pay much attention to boundaries like high/low art, historical/contemporary, or whatever. Yes, they obviously have a West-Coast contemporary viewpoint (they’re based in San Francisco,) but they’ve been spotlighting other kinds of work for years. They’ve done stories on blockbuster museum shows and figures like Dali, Magritte, Ernst, straight-ahead photorealist artist Nicola Wood, California visionary artists like Masami Teraoka & Irving Norman. They don’t go into much depth with these pieces, but if you think about their name, it makes sense. They’re saying, “Here’s some cool stuff from our usual aesthetic, plus how about this over here? Waddya think?”

–Anna Conti is an artist and blogger living in San Francisco.