Hello, Los Angeles:

I’m culture writer Carolina A. Miranda, and I’ve been following a story out of Pepperdine University, about the closing of the exhibition, Hold My Hand in Yours, at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art — due to “overtly political content.”

Hyperallergic’s Matt Stromberg has a good overview of what happened. It began last week when administrators turned off a video in an installation by Elana Mann that engaged ideas of speech and protest. Administrators apparently also took issue with a large-scale piece by the group Art Made Between Opposite Sides (AMBOS) that featured a small fabric swatch that read “Abolish ICE.” 

It ended with the university shutting down the show six months early.  (The museum also appears to have removed all reference to the show from its website.) Late last week. Pepperdine’s campus paper, the Pepperdine University Graphic, followed up with a more detailed report. In it, a memo by a university official states that “Pepperdine’s established practice with the Weisman Museum has been to avoid overtly political content consistent with the University’s nonprofit status.” 

It’s a disheartening turn of events. With President Trump attacking universities and targeting the nonprofit status of perceived opponents, Pepperdine’s shutdown looks an awful lot like an institution obeying in advance. 

In the meantime, here’s what else I’m looking at:

• Contributor Paula Mejía writes about piñatas inspired by Hieronymus Bosch 
• The “Genius” grants have been announced
• A digital riff on Rodin

Keep scrolling….

At top is a view of one of Roberto Benavidez's piñatas from his eye-grabbing solo show at Perrotin, Bosch Beasts. (Paul Salveson / Roberto Benavidez / Perrotin)

STRANGE CREATURES

by Paula Mejía

A view of Roberto Benavidez's Bosch Beasts at Perrotin. (Paul Salveson / Roberto Benavidez / Perrotin)

In the early 16th century, a secretary named Antonio de Beatis accompanied Luigi d’Aragona, an Italian cardinal, on a European sojourn while extensively detailing their travels in a diary. When the two stopped to visit the Brussels palace of Count Henry III of Nassau in 1517, they laid eyes on something they’d never seen before: An elaborately-painted triptych, depicting nude figurines and strange animal hybrids in various surrealistic scenes that also drew on Biblical themes.

Although these triptychs were a familiar sight in churches at the time, it’s doubtful that the piece known as The Garden of Earthly Delights, painted by the Dutch artist Hieronymous Bosch sometime around the turn of the 16th century, was meant to accompany a congregation doused in incense and prayer: The artwork’s blatant horniness — with its overheated romping and plentiful bare butts — would have been out of step in a cathedral. Still, in his diary, De Beatis marveled at the “bizarre things” he observed in Bosch’s panels: “Birds, animals of all kinds, executed very naturally, things that are so delightful and fantastic that it is impossible to describe them properly to those who have not seen them.” 

More than five centuries later, de Beatis’ description about Bosch’s feral triptych — now housed in Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado — still feels relevant. But it’s also a fitting characterization for the dazzling batch of work by the Los Angeles-based artist Roberto Benavidez. For his solo show, on view for one more week at Mid-City’s Perrotin gallery, Benavidez plucked various creatures flitting through The Garden of Earthly Delights, and another Bosch triptych, The Hermit Saints, and transformed them into extravagant piñatas.

Bosch Beast No. 10, 2020. (Paul Salveson / Roberto Benavidez / Perrotin)

In the aptly-titled Bosch Beasts, the Mexican American artist brings a bounty of whimsical beings, including fowl, amphibians, and mammals, to the gallery. Some bear likenesses to recognizable animals of our world, such as a bird that appears to be pecking at a kernel. Except Benavidez’s bird is clutching a classic seven-sided mini-piñata in its mouth, a playful wink at how the artist is both subverting Bosch’s celebrated work and also the traditional folk artform of piñata. (If you peer at the center of Bosch’s triptych, you’ll find this same bird.) Other figures in Benavidez’s show — including one that looks like a badger and a reptile mated, and another capybara-esque critter that could be mistaken for a chicken when viewed from a certain angle — exist in an otherworldly realm of the contemporary artist’s imagination.

Benavidez’ piñatas bear little resemblance to the cheery, plump vessels stuffed with treats at children’s birthday parties. But his delicate sculptures are made from the same humble materials that artisans have long used to craft piñatas: crepe paper, glue, wire. His methods for creating them are similar, too. To make a new sculpture, Benavidez swathes layers of paper-mache around two balloons, then adds slivers of glue-dripped paper. More layers of paper-mache and some wire give further shape to the piñata’s body. Gradually, he adds features such as limbs and tails. Benavidez has also hidden something inside each piñata, but he’s secretive about what mysteries they might contain.

 
Bosch Beast No. 14, 2025. (Paul Salveson / Roberto Benavidez / Perrotin)

Benavidez, a former bronze sculptor, told The New York Times last year that working with piñatas felt “liberating because it was paper, so I knew I’d never be priced out of my art.” But the no-frills material led him to find a deep respect for the craft. “I used to say the reason I started with the piñata was to find a more accessible medium,” he observed in that same interview, “but the reason I have stayed is because I’ve discovered the richness of its history.” 

In Benavidez’s hands, one of the piñata’s defining elements, its thick fringes hanging from the sides, becomes the conduit for scintillating detail. Tiny rows of shimmering crepe paper morph into glimmering jade-green scales on a snake-like creature crossed with a monkey. Or, it can mimic the fluffy feathers on a winged animal — in this case, grinning maliciously as it clutches an unsuspecting frog in its jaw. 

The way Benavidez utilizes fringe in his piñata sculptures bears a deeper significance than a shrewd artistic choice, though. The popular craft has always existed on the margins, in a sense, because its artisans use everyday materials; it isn’t often thought of as high art. Drawing from his background as a mixed-race and queer artist, Benavidez’s distinctive sculptures also nod to the mutability of identity, which is often experienced by those who have lived on the fringes.

 
Benavidez depicts otherworldly creatures, as well as an angel clutching a seven-pointed star, at right. (Paul Salveson / Roberto Benavidez / Perrotin)

Much like the Bosch triptychs that inspired it, Benavidez’s work bears religious undertones. The only piece in his baker’s dozen of piñatas that does not feature an animal notably depicts an angel, grasping the traditional seven-sided star as though to avoid a descent to earth, or even hell. The seven-sided piñatas themselves have traditionally held a spiritual significance, with each point nodding to one of the seven deadly sins. 

Ultimately, Benavidez’s pieces aren’t what you might find at a party store, but they inspire a similar playful wonder recognizable to those who dare step up and blindly bash a piñata. They do so even though they might look foolish, trusting that their instincts will lead them towards the ultimate prize: the bounty inside. 

AROUND THE INTERNET 

A view of a burned lot in the Palisades. (Carolina A. Miranda)

It’s Carolina! I’ll be taking it from here…

• The Palisades Fire suspect used ChatGPT to create a dystopian image of people fleeing a fire.
• What is narrative art? Historian Leo Braudy has a crack at the idea behind George Lucas’s museum.
• The surprising fate of various toppled Columbus statues.
• Ben Davis digs into the history of Hitler’s infamous Degenerate Art Show, which is getting namechecked a lot these days.
• An interesting dive into the work of SoCal painter Ben Sakoguchi.
• The dance troupe Diavolo is doing a residency in their studio at the Brewery that includes a 2.5-ton aluminum wheel.
• Stylesville, a long-time black barbershop in the Valley, has been honored by the City of LA as a historic-cultural monument.
• Alissa Walker on why LA doesn’t need a convention center expansion is essential reading.
• I spent the summer hanging out at Rick Caruso’s malls for the Los Angeles Review of Architecture.
• This year’s MacArthur Fellows (a.k.a. “Genius” grant recipients) includes six visual artists, including two from California.
• Signing off with Mungo Thomson’s Sideways Thought, a wild supercut of Rodin’s sculptures as seen in print.

 Thank you for reading! 🤓

Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe to Art Insider for more design, art, and culture from Carolina Miranda.