Last night, CULTURED, Lake Bell, Adam Cohen, and A Hug From the Art World hosted a celebratory dinner at the Maybourne Beverly Hills ahead of Frieze Los Angeles. The occasion? An expansive Beryl Cook exhibition landing for the first time on the West Coast.
Dining at Dante—the SoCal outpost of the legendary New York restaurant—guests Kathy Hilton, Patricia Arquette, Logan Lerman, and Lisa Edelstein sampled the establishment’s Mediterranean fare while overlooking Hollywood from the hotel rooftop. Not to be outdone by Tinseltown, art-world fixtures turned out in earnest as well: curator Matthew Higgs, art dealer Gavin Brown, gallerists Anton Kern and Olivier Babin, consultant Lauren Taschen, collector Anita Zabludowicz, writer Annie Armstrong, and painter Jennifer Guidi were all in attendance. U Beauty founder Tina Chen Craig, producer Josh Abraham, and home design entrepreneur Zoë de Givenchy rounded out the chic set.
Co-hosted by actor and director Lake Bell, who wore a floor-length, leopard-print dress for the occasion, the evening had a distinctly lighthearted, playful feel—particularly appropriate for fêting the work of Beryl Cook. The artist, who died in 2008, took an idiosyncratic approach to depicting everyday life: her English bar scenes and paintings of ladies in fur celebrated the joy to be found in the mundane.
Her winking, distinctive sense of humor helped make Cook one of Britain’s most famous and beloved artists. Never formally trained, she began to gain international recognition only after her U.S. debut in 2022, when A Hug From the Art World organized “Beryl Cook Takes New York.”
The West Coast installment of the show, “Beryl Cook Takes Los Angeles,” spans more than 40 works, from Cook’s first-ever painting, Hungover, 1962, to Tommy Dancing, 2007/8, her last. On display in the Maybourne’s black-and-white gallery space, the show is a testament to Cook’s sense of play. Against the neutral backdrop, her colorful work pops, bringing a dose of English sprightliness to the LA hotspot. A British invasion in Beverly Hills may not have been on everyone’s Frieze Week bingo card, but it certainly delivered.
