L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy

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L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy

January 22 - April 15, 2012

The Pasadena Museum of California Art (PMCA) is presenting L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy on view from January 22, 2012 to April 15, 2012. The figurative artists, who dominated the postwar Los Angeles art scene until the late 1950s, have largely been written out of today's art history. This exhibition, part of the Getty Foundations initiative "Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980," traces the distinctive aesthetic of figurative expressionism from the end of World War II, bringing together over 120 works by forty-one artists in a variety of media -- painting, sculpture, photography, and performance. (right: William Brice, Untitled (Malibu Figure), 1968, Oil on canvas, 69 1/2 x 59 inches. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA., © Estate of William Brice)

L.A. RAW surveys the continuing presence of dark expressionistic work in Southern California, providing a fresh local heritage for the figurative art of today. The exhibition fills in a gap in knowledge about post World War II art, tracking figurative art through postwar existentialism, the Beat movement, 1960s politics, and 1970s feminism and performance -- the forces that lead to the explosion of body-oriented art in the 1980s.

The exhibition includes commanding figurative works by Rico Lebrun, Howard Warshaw, Jack Zajac, and William Brice that provide a fascinating heritage for the darker side of the Ferus Gallery scene, exemplified with work by Edward Kienholz, Wallace Berman, Llyn Foulkes, and John Altoon.

Artists such as Hans Burkhardt, David Hammons, Judith Baca, and Charles White use their work to vent political outrage, while Eugene Berman, June Wayne, John Paul Jones, and Joyce Treiman convey more melancholic, contemplative assessments of mankind. L.A. RAW also includes four artists associated with the important venue, Ceeje Gallery: Charles Garabedian, Roberto Chavez, Ben Sakoguchi, and Les Biller. Judy Chicago, Barbara T. Smith and Carole Caroompas present deeply personal feminist expressions, while performance artists Chris Burden, Kim Jones and Paul McCarthy develop a new kind of physical expressionism.

The passionate consistency of all the artists -- whose work often depicts a boldly honest, stripped-down view of humanity in its rawest, most elemental state -- demonstrates the ongoing relevance of expressionism as a primary approach to art making.

L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy places both lesser- and better-known artists in a historical context, giving unique insight into the reactions to World War II and the atomic bomb; to the repressions of the Eisenhower Era; to the fallout of 1960s idealism; and to ongoing racial and gender struggles. (left: Betye Saar (b.1926), Nubian Shadows, 1977 , mixed media collage on paper,19 1/2 x 23 inches, signed and dated. Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY )

The exhibition is curated by art writer and independent curator Michael Duncan, a Corresponding Editor for Art in America whose writings have focused on maverick artists of the twentieth century, West Coast modernism, twentieth century figuration, and contemporary California art. L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980 will be accompanied by a 200 page catalogue, a much-needed reference for the study of post-war American figurative art. It will include essays by Duncan and art historian Peter Selz who have each written extensively on many of the most the most prominent figures of twentieth century West Coast art history and many of the L.A. RAW artists. Co-published by PMCA and Foggy Notion Press, the volume will also feature short biographical essays on each of the artists written by Duncan.

(above: Rico Lebrun, Untitled (Three figures), 1960, ink and wash on paper, 18 x 18 1/2 inches. Private collection)

Wall label text for the exhibition

Rico Lebrun (1900-1964)

The most respected artist in Southern California in the late 1940s and early 50s, Rico Lebrun was acclaimed for expressionist paintings and drawings with a nearly sculptural presence. He taught at Jepson Art Institute, where he inspired a generation of figurative artists including fellow teachers Howard Warshaw and William Brice. His breakthrough drawings and paintings made in 1950 in preparation for a mural on the theme of the Crucifixion for Syracuse University marked a loosening of his Cubist-inspired style. These works led to his most controversial series, close-up depictions of decaying bodies from Nazi extermination camps. Late series based on Dante's Inferno and the writings of Marquis de Sade are harrowing excursions into the base elements of humankind.

Sleeping Soldier, 1949

India ink and charcoal on paper

Collection of Paul McCarthy

The Magdalene, 1950

Tempera on Masonite

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, gift of Wright S. Ludington, 1960.18

Buchenwald Cart, 1956

Oil on Masonite

Private collection, Washington, D.C.

Untitled (Figure 1959, 2-44), 1959

Ink wash on paper

Courtesy of Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Culver City, California

Untitled (Three figures), 1960

Ink wash on paper

Private Collection

The Oppressor (after de Sade, 6-8), 1962

Ink wash on paper

Courtesy of Koplin Del Rio Gallery, Culver City, California

Pedestal:

Head, c. 1960

Cast bronze

Collection of Frank Wyle

Eugene Berman (1899-1972)

Born in St. Petersburg, Eugene Berman fled Russia with his family during the Revolution and made his way to Paris where he became a key member of the Neo-Romantic movement. With an offer to set-design in Hollywood, Berman set up a studio in the Villa Carlotta on Franklin Avenue. In the early 1940s he began a series of paintings reinterpreting the plights of classical mythological heroines, using as his model the actress Ona Munson, best remembered today for her role as Belle Watling, the madam in Gone With the Wind. Berman and Munson married in 1949. In Los Angeles, Berman was very much a member of the European émigré coterie and particularly friendly with Igor Stravinsky. Intrigued after seeing work by Rico Lebrun, Berman sought him out, and, for a period, a friendship ensued. Howard Warshaw, William Brice, and Jack Zajac considered Berman a mentor and were strongly influenced by his drawing style.

Medusa's Corner, 1943

Oil on canvas

Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

Howard Warshaw (1920-1977)

Known for his refined draftsmanship, Howard Warshaw shared with Lebrun a committed interest in the techniques of European masters, as well as a desire to transcend those skills in order to capture the life force of his subjects. Shown as a young artist by New York's prestigious Julian Levy Gallery, Warshaw was first influenced by the Neo-Romantic painters, particularly Eugene Berman. Later enraptured by Lebrun's works-and fascinated by his lectures at Jepson Art Institute (where they both taught)-Warshaw developed a unique style of volumetric depiction, building on techniques gleaned from Cubism and old master drawing. He showed at actor Vincent Price's Little Gallery and then for many years at Felix Landau Gallery. He taught for over twenty years at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Cat Skulls, 1946

Oil on canvas

Courtesy of Sullivan Goss--An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

The End of the World, 1948

Pastel on paper

Collection of Vincent Price Art Museum

Man into Pig, c. 1960

Oil on cardboard

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Ames to the Donald Bear Memorial Collection, 1963.6

Untitled (woman), 1944

Oil on canvas

Courtesy of Sullivan Goss--An American Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

William Brice (1921-2008)

William Brice was the son of Broadway star Fanny Brice and producer Nicky Arnstein. He studied in New York at the Art Students League before ending up at Chouinard Art Institute and Otis Art Institute. While still a student, he met Howard Warshaw who became a close friend. Rico Lebrun later invited both artists to teach at Jepson Art Institute, which emphasized drawing as the foundation of art-making. Brice left Jepson to accept a teaching position in the art department of UCLA, where he remained for thirty-eight years. In the 1950s Brice became known for his masterfully drawn, subtly unsettling figure studies. He later began to highlight human forms in stark architectural spaces that were inspired by his house and studio, designed by architect Richard Neutra. Brice's elegant late paintings and drawings of Cycladic icons and fragments of classical ruins are symbolic distillations derived from a lifetime of figure drawing.

Nude, 1951

Gouache and pastel on board

Private Collection

Study of Two Figures, 1959

Ink wash on paper

Collection of Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College

Untitled (Malibu Figure), 1968

Oil on canvas

Courtesy of the William Brice Estate and LA Louver Gallery, Venice, California

John Paul Jones (1924-1999)

Although John Paul Jones's reputation is based primarily on his work as an innovative printmaker, his paintings and drawings are sensitively drawn, melancholic depictions of isolated and forlorn figures. Born in Indianola, Iowa, Jones attended Simpson College in his hometown until being drafted during World War II. He fought in the Battle of Okinawa, one of the war's bloodiest conflicts. Jones later attended the State University of Iowa, where he was able to explore his interests in art. In 1953 he moved to Los Angeles after being appointed assistant professor at UCLA. He soon began exhibiting at Felix Landau Gallery, where he showed regularly until 1970. In 1969 Jones joined the faculty at University of California, Irvine, where he remained until retiring from teaching in 1990. His work radically changed in 1978 as he became interested in sculpture and minimalist forms.

Boy, 1957

Charcoal on paper

Private collection

Ronk's Woman, 1964

Oil on canvas

Collection of Stanley and Elyse Grinstein

Portrait of a Seated Boy, 1955

Casein on board

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Wright S. Ludington, 1957.7.1

Jack Zajac (b. 1929)

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Jack Zajac moved with his family to Southern California in 1946. As a teenager, he was invited by Millard Sheets to study at Scripps College. His early success was rapid, including a 1951 solo exhibition at the Pasadena Art Museum and representation by Felix Landau Gallery -- where he had nine subsequent solo shows. In 1954 he was named a Prix de Rome fellow along with architect Robert Venturi and writer Ralph Ellison. Early works employed subject matter derived from emotionally charged religious rites. In the fiberglass Deposition (Descent from the Cross), Zajac transformed into sculptural terms the pose of Christ as depicted in the Louvre's Deposition (c. 1455), a painting by French Renaissance master Enguerrand Quarton. In 1969 Zajac left Southern California to take a teaching position at University of California, Santa Cruz. He continues to make work, dividing his time between Santa Cruz and Italy.

The Plain, 1961

Oil on canvas

Collection of the artist

Center pedestal:

Deposition (Descent from the Cross), 1959

Fiberglass

Private collection

Charles White (1918-1979)

A pioneering African American artist, Charles White is known for his fine draftsmanship and telling social commentary. When White was sixteen, he won scholarship competitions to local Chicago art academies but was denied entry because of his race. Two years later he won a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago, where he finished a two-year program in a single year. After teaching in New Orleans for a year, he relocated to New York to study mural painting at the Art Students League. He began to exhibit widely and continued to win commissions for murals. In 1956 a recurring bout with tuberculosis impelled White to relocate to Los Angeles where he soon began teaching at Otis Art Institute. White's presence on the West Coast was particularly appreciated by local black artists such as David Hammons, John Outterbridge, and Betye Saar.

J'Accuse # 1, 1966

Charcoal on paper

Private collection

Robert Cremean (b. 1932)

A vastly underrated sculptor whose works encompass an ambitious range of philosophical and psychological ideas, Robert Cremean was a key participant in the Los Angeles art world of the 1950s and 60s. Raised in Toledo, Ohio, where his father was a tool designer and businessman, Cremean became interested in art in high school and went to Alfred University to study ceramics. After two years he transferred to Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he blossomed as a figurative sculptor. After receiving his M.F.A., he was immediately hired in 1956 as instructor of sculpture at UCLA. Exhibiting first with Paul Kantor Gallery, he developed a long-standing relationship with Esther Robles Gallery, showing there from 1960 to 1975. Unhappy with teaching, he left Los Angeles in 1958. Although he lived in Los Angeles for only two years, his frequent exhibitions here gave him a unique presence in the local scene.

Self Portrait, 1954

Plaster

Crocker Art Museum, Gift of Robert de la Vergne

Main Fragment for a Disputed Curia, 1962

Wood, metal, canvas

Crocker Art Museum, Gift of Robert de la Vergne

Billy's Bath, triptych, 1968

Laminated wood and metal

Crocker Art Museum, Gift of Robert de la Vergne

Jan Stussy (1921-1990)

A brilliant draftsman and important educator, Jan Stussy made tough-minded paintings, drawings, and prints that strip human pretenses to their grim essences. A polemical advocate of the teaching of drawing as the foundation of art, he taught at UCLA for over forty years. An early interest in landscape painting gave way in the late 1950s to more symbolic figurative works on brown Masonite. Beginning in 1957 he began showing with Esther Robles Gallery. Visiting Rome in 1959 with his artist wife Kim, he was thrilled to meet one of his favorite artists, Rico Lebrun, who at that time was an artist in residence at the American Academy. Stussy's best-known series, Man in a Box, was an existentialist twist on Leonardo da Vinci's drawing of the idealized Vitruvian man.

Shrouded Victim¸ 1959

Charcoal and casein on Masonite

Private Collection

Man and Beast, c. 1977

Oil on Masonite

Private Collection

The False Accuser, 1968

Mixed media on Masonite

Private Collection

Thoughts on the Death of Bob Greenberg, 1972

Mixed media on Masonite

Collection of Maxine Stussy Frankel

June Wayne (1918-2011)

June Wayne was instrumental in the revival of interest in lithography and printmaking in the United States. Precocious and independent-minded, Wayne dropped out of school at age fifteen, determined to become an artist. During the Depression she was accepted into the easel project of the Works Progress Administration in Chicago. Later, after working for a year in New York as a jewelry designer, she moved to Los Angeles to await her surgeon husband's return from the war. By the late 1940s Wayne began to circulate in the Los Angeles art world and exhibit her work. In 1960 Wayne was given a grant from the Ford Foundation to form the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, established to train master lithography printers to work with US artists. In 1969 the Ford Foundation funded Tamarind's expansion and move to its current headquarters at the University of New Mexico.

Hommage á Autun, State 1, 1958

Lithograph

Collection of June Wayne Estate

"Shine Here to Us, and Thou Art Every Where...," John Donne Series, 1956

Lithograph

Collection of June Wayne Estate

The Travelers, Justice Series, 1954

Lithograph

Collection of June Wayne Estate

Tower of Babel B, Fables Series, 1955

Offset lithograph

Collection of June Wayne Estate

John Altoon (1925-1969)

The most gifted abstract painter of the Ferus Gallery stable, Los Angeles artist John Altoon was also a remarkable draftsman, manifest in figurative studies and hundreds of wildly comical narrative drawings featuring surreal animals, haplessly horny men, and sex-besotted beach bunnies. Altoon's drafting abilities won him a scholarship to Otis Art Institute, but his studies were interrupted by wartime service in the Pacific. After the war he returned to several art schools, ending up at Chouinard Art Institute. Altoon's superb draftsmanship won him immediate critical success. Although one of the most charismatic members of the Southern California art scene, he suffered from psychological disturbances that often led to violent outbursts and manic behavior. His untamed figurative works were often inspired by ideas and fantasies that surfaced during his psychoanalytic sessions.

Untitled (woman), c. 1962

Pastel and ink on illustration board

Courtesy of the Estate of John Altoon & The Box Gallery, Los Angeles

Untitled (couple), c. 1962

Pastel on board

Courtesy of the Estate of John Altoon & The Box Gallery, Los Angeles

Llyn Foulkes (b. 1934)

Llyn Foulkes pursues visceral effects to convey a dark vision of American culture in trouble. Born in Yakama, Washington, he was exposed in high school to the works of Salvador Dalí. After briefly attending the University of Washington, Foulkes joined the army and was posted to Europe, where he became absorbed in art history. After military service, he moved in 1957 to Los Angeles to study art at Chouinard Art Institute. Foulkes emerged from school fully developed as an artist. Experimenting in his studio in the early 1970s, Foulkes blotted out the face of a self-portrait with a swatch of blood-red paint. This act led to the portraits referred to as Bloody Heads-exemplified here by Custer's Last Stand-that exploded the public facades of businessmen, military leaders, bureaucrats, and art officials, stripping away their faces to reveal the rot within.

Custer's Last Stand, 1973

Oil over photographic reproduction on panel

Collection of Thomas Solomon and Kimberly Mascola

The Suspension, 1973-74

Mixed media on canvas

Collection Laguna Art Museum, Gift of Ruth and Murray Gribin

2001.010.067

Edward Kienholz (1927-1994)

Nancy Reddin Kienholz (b. 1943)

In assemblages of distressed found objects and poetic memorabilia, Edward and Nancy Kienholz created some of the most potent political art of the past century. Born in a small Washington farming community, Ed Kienholz considered himself self-taught as an artist and scorned organized art education. In the mid-1950s he collaborated with Walter Hopps on mounting shows and soon opened the Ferus Gallery. Not suited to be an art dealer, Kienholz gave up his share of the gallery after a year and a half. In 1972 Kienholz met Nancy Reddin and a collaborative relationship was formed. Generated out of more than politics and social consciousness, the Kienholz voice was a mythic American one, balancing bluster and refinement in sprawling extravaganzas. Filled with details that hint at the dreams and secrets of everyday people, the Kienholzes' installations achieve a unique, plainspoken poetry.

Edward Kienholz

Animal Trap (for Ruthie), 1962

Mixed media assemblage

Collection of Joni and Monte Gordon, Los Angeles

Pedestal:

Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz

Still Life with Little Bird, 1974

Wood, cloth, bird, fan, light, plaster case, paint, and polyester resin

The Betty and Monte Factor Family Collection

Arnold Mesches (b. 1923)

Born in the Bronx, Arnold Mesches came to Los Angeles at age nineteen on a scholarship to study at Art Center, where he took classes from Edward Biberman and Lorser Feitelson. Working in 1945 on a short-term job as a Hollywood scene painter, he participated in a labor strike that resulted in the FBI tracking him for twenty-seven years. In late 1950s and early 60s, Mesches made searing paintings responding to revelations about the death camps of World War II. For Dance of the Survivor he employed the traditional theme of Christ's deposition to depict an angst-ridden scene of wartime suffering. In the 1970s Mesches experimented with hyperrealism, returning to more gestural narrative work in the 80s after moving to New York, where he became a part of the explosive Neo-Expressionist East Village scene. Now living in Florida, he continues to work and exhibit widely.

Dance of the Survivor, 1958

Oil on canvas

Collection of Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College

Allegory 2, 1958

Oil on canvas

Collection of Vincent Price Art Museum, East Los Angeles College

Jirayr Zorthian (1911-2004)

A maverick artist, Jirayr Zorthian was born in western Turkey and showed artistic talent as a child. His Armenian family lived through two massacres before leaving the country when he was nine. The family settled in New Haven where Zorthian won a full scholarship to Yale University. Zorthian's early works were influenced by the styles of the Regionalists, WPA artists, and the Ashcan School. Over the years he completed forty-two murals. In 1946 Zorthian moved with his first wife to California where they purchased a 45-acre ranch property in Altadena. Using materials discarded by builders and local city projects, he added structures to the ranch, converting it into a sprawling studio. In the late 1940s he focused on portraiture, using his family and members of the nearby Pasadena community as models. In the 1950s his works became more personal -- reflecting his troubled relationship with his wife and subsequent divorce.

Induction Fever, 1952

Ink on paper

Collection of the Zorthian Family Trust

Untitled (three figures), c. 1954

Oil on canvas

Collection of the Zorthian Family Trust

Untitled (portrait), 1967

Oil pastel on paper

Collection of the Zorthian Family Trust

James Strombotne (b. 1934)

For over fifty years, James Strombotne has celebrated the human figure in paintings with luminous color, quirky humor, and an off-kilter sense of drama. A precocious talent, he won acclaim while still an undergraduate at Pomona College. In 1956, just after graduation, he was given a solo exhibition at Ed Kienholz's Coronet Louvre gallery. Strombotne participated in the 1960 and 1962 Whitney Annuals and the 1964 Carnegie International. His works from the 1960s were vibrant, boldly reductive narrative paintings addressing racism, Cold War paranoia, and the atrocities of war. Strombotne's 1991 estimation of himself "a romantic, a sensualist, a fabulist and a visionary artist" is of a piece with his statement to Time magazine in 1961, "What I want in my work is beauty, power and mystery. Each word in capitals. Real beauty, real power-plus mystery. I want my pictures to be specific as hell, but enigmatic too."

Political Execution, 1962

Oil on canvas

Courtesy of the artist

American Dream, 1968

Oil on canvas

Courtesy of the artist

Joyce Treiman (1922-1991)

Born in the Chicago suburbs, Joyce Treiman attended the University of Iowa where she worked with instructor Philip Guston. Treiman's allegorical and narrative paintings of the 1950s extend postwar angst into mythological and fantastical realms. After moving to LA in 1960, a specifically Californian light entered her paintings. In Rabbit and Pills, an open studio door floods a suburban kitchen with harsh beams that enhance the hallucinogenic quality of a bizarre bacchanalia in progress. In her 1960s depictions of grim myths, troubled fantasies, and disturbing encounters, Treiman presented a kind of survey of the skewed American psyche, ranging from the submerged repressions of Eisenhower suburbia to the explosive social upheavals of the burgeoning youth cult.

Rabbit and Pills, 1967-68

Oil on canvas

Collection of Dr. Andrea Weiss

Self Portrait, 1974-75

Oil on canvas

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Stuart and Beverly Denenberg in Loving Memory of Joyce Treiman, 1991.108

Connor Everts (b. 1926)

Raised in the Pacific Northwest, Connor Everts was the son of a Mexican American mother and Irish American father who was a union activist. After serving in the coast guard during World War II, he left art school to work full time as a longshoreman, continuing to paint after hours. He soon moved to Mexico, where he finished his BA at Mexico City College in 1952. In 1954 after studying medieval art at the Courtauld Institute, he returned to California, where he worked nights as a longshoreman and painted during the day. Made as a kind of personal reaction to the assassination of President Kennedy, the series Studies in Desperation symbolically depicts the dissolution of a romantic relationship. It achieved local notoriety after it was deemed obscene by the LA district attorney's office. After a hung jury, the artist was acquitted of the charges in a second trial.

The Altar (A Comment on Automation), 1959-60

Ink wash on pasted paper on board

Courtesy of the artist and Caldwell-Jimmerson Contemporary Art

Prototype, Studies in Desperation, 1963

Charcoal on paper

Courtesy of the artist and Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art

Prototype, Studies in Desperation 2, 1963

Charcoal on paper

Courtesy of the artist and Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art

Charles Garabedian (b. 1923)

Charles Garabedian spent much of his childhood in an orphanage in Detroit before, in 1933 his Armenian émigré father was able to move the family to East Los Angeles. After service in the US army, he entered college, finishing his degree at USC. Through the 1950s he worked a number of odd jobs, including stints as a factory worker and railroad clerk. In 1954, he took a drawing class at the private art school Howard Warshaw ran with Keith Finch. The positive response to his work prompted him to set up a studio. In 1957, at age thirty-four, he was accepted on probation into the graduate program at UCLA. In school Garabedian was groomed by UCLA's classically trained figurative artists William Brice, Sam Amato, and Elliot Elgart. An instinctual Freudian, Garabedian offers mythic retellings of war, friendship, death, and sexual experience, mining both individual and collective consciousness for sparks of subconscious truth.

Untitled, 1963

Oil on canvas

Collection of Ben Sakoguchi

Man Holding a Piece of Glass, 1971

Resin, acrylic and ink

Collection of the artist, courtesy of LA Louver Gallery, Venice, California

Roberto Chavez (b. 1932)

Roberto Chavez was a stalwart member of the Ceeje Gallery stable in the 1960s and is perhaps best known as one of the founders of the Chicana/o Studies program at East Los Angeles College. His penchant for quirky narratives and humorously oblique social commentary is evident in paintings and murals with exuberant color and daringly sardonic themes. Chavez grew up in a melting-pot neighborhood in East LA He took art classes at LA City College before serving in the navy, where he trained as a photographer. After his discharge in 1954, he entered UCLA, where he completed his undergraduate art degree and entered the master's program, studying with William Brice and Jan Stussy. In 1974 he painted a two-hundred-foot-long mural at ELAC, titled The Path to Knowledge and the False University which was painted over in 1981. He retired from teaching in 2009 and continues to make art.

Nude with Yellow Scarf, 1961

Oil on cardboard

Collection of A. Chavez

Eve, 1960

Oil on canvas

Collection of George Wanlass

Adam, 1960

Oil on canvas

Collection of George Wanlass

Skull, 1962

Oil on canvas

Collection of A. Chavez

Les Biller (b. 1934)

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Les Biller was so taken with the splendors of Hawaii on his first visit in 1953 that he decided to leave USC and transfer to the University of Hawaii. In 1958, with his family, he returned to Los Angeles to attend graduate school, briefly at USC and then at UCLA. He soon won a two-year Fulbright grant to study art in Japan where he was stimulated by the visual cacophony and tumultuous activity of postwar Japanese life. With its bikini-clad courtesan, blaring television, and precarious mountain views, Trainstop is a surreal depiction inspired by one of the ramshackle traditional inns he visited on his travels. Chair Monk depicts a monk engaged in sokushinbutsu-a legendary Buddhist practice of self-mummification ritual involving starvation and the drinking of a poisonous tea that embalms the body from the inside.

Trainstop, 1964

Oil on canvas

Collection of Kirsten Biller

Chair Monk, 1965

Oil on canvas

Collection of the artist

Ben Sakoguchi (b. 1938)

In his masterful paintings, drawings, prints, and installations, Ben Sakoguchi has commented on the foibles and injustices of American society with trenchant wit and subtle poetry. His edge as a satirist and social commentator stems from the horrendous and disruptive experience of his early childhood. When he was four years old, his family was uprooted from San Bernardino and sent to a wartime internment camp for Japanese Americans in Poston, Arizona. Sakoguchi later attended San Bernardino Valley College, finishing his education with an MFA from UCLA. He was enlisted to exhibit at Ceeje Gallery where he enjoyed his first solo exhibition in 1964. That same year he was hired by Pasadena City College where he taught until retiring in 1997.

Fat Satrap With Friends, c. 1961

Pencil on paper

Collection of Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Miss Dorothy Brown to the Ala Story Collection, 1965.21

Eva J Often Sits by Her Window, c. 1963

Engraving on paper, ed. 1/10

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Ala Story Purchase Fund to the Ala Story Collection, 1966.7

Leslie Is Not a Boy, 1965

Serigraph on paper, ed. 1/10

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Stuart and Beverly Denenberg in Loving Memory of Joyce Treiman, 1991.108

'Spraying is in,' Popped Wee Willie Limphand, 1967

Acrylic and spray enamel on canvas

Collection of Jan Sakoguchi

Edmund Teske (1911-1996)

Edmund Teske suffered neglect during his lifetime by a photography establishment that frowned on his unabashed celebrations of spirituality, nostalgia, and homoeroticism. Born in Chicago, Teske was inspired in 1934 by an exhibition of works by Edward Weston and purchased a Rolleiflex camera. His photographs won the respect of Frank Lloyd Wright, who commissioned him to photograph several of Wright's architectural designs in Wisconsin and Illinois. His association with Wright led him to photograph the architect's Taliesin West in Arizona and Barnsdall House in Los Angeles. Teske decided to settle in Hollywood and became Alice Barnsdall's assistant, living on her property until 1949. In 1958 Teske perfected the technique of duotone solarization, a darkroom process that exposes photographs to quick blasts of light during developing. He also experimented with composite printing, combining two or more negatives to create veil-like image overlays.

Davenport, Iowa, Male Nude (1940s), Composite New York City (1937), 1970s

Gelatin silver print

Courtesy of Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles

Mono Lake, Composite with Jeffrey Harris as Shiva, 1970s

Gelatin silver print

Courtesy of Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles

Shiva Shakti, Davenport, Iowa (1942), Composite with Shirley Berman (1956) and Male Nude (1940s), 1977

Gelatin silver print

Courtesy of Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles

Bill Allard with Pregnant Lula (early 1960s), 1964

Gelatin silver print

Courtesy of Stephen Cohen Gallery, Los Angeles

Cameron (1922-1995)

Artist, performer, poet, and occult practitioner, Cameron (born Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel) was one of the most fascinating underground figures of mid-century California. A maverick follower of the esoteric mysticism of Aleister Crowley and his philosophical group, the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), Cameron was also an accomplished painter and a mentor to younger artists such as Wallace Berman and George Herms. Cameron's most notorious role was as wife and spiritual avatar of scientist and mystical thinker Jack Parsons, one of the founders of Cal Tech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and, until his violent death, a star pupil of Crowley and the OTO. In 1955 Berman included in the first issue of his literary and artistic journal Semina a reproduction of a drawing Cameron had made the previous year during her first experience with peyote, which she had taken after hearing a lecture by Aldous Huxley. Peyote Drawing became renowned when the Los Angeles police department cited it as "lewd" and shut down Berman's 1957 exhibition of drawings, assemblages, and sculptures at Ferus Gallery. After this experience, Cameron, like Berman, refused to show her art in commercial galleries.

Buried Doll, 1955

Oil on board

Collection of the Cameron Parsons Foundation

Dark Angel, 1955

Gouache on board

Collection of the Cameron Parsons Foundation

Peyote Drawing, 1957

Ink on paper

Collection of the Cameron Parsons Foundation

Wallace Berman (1926-1976)

Wallace Berman was an enigmatic underground figure whose collages and assemblages articulate an important strand of dark mysticism in postwar American culture. Berman took classes at Chouinard Art Institute and Jepson Art Institute before pursuing his independent artistic path. He is best known for his Verifax works of the 1960s and 70s, a series of photo-collage grids of images taken from newspapers and magazines reproduced by means of an early prototype of the Xerox machine. The pictures, each framed by the same image of a handheld transistor radio, feature wildly varied symbols and inspirations that were in the air. Acting as a kind of magic tablet, Berman's transistor radio broadcasts talismanic images that are visual counterparts to the Kabbalistic connotations of the Hebrew alphabet characters that were also often featured in the works.

Faceless Faces, 1963

Verifax photographic image

Collection of David Yorkin

Untitled #40, c. 1964-1974

Negative Verifax photographic image with acrylic

Courtesy of the Estate of Wallace Berman & Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles

Untitled #70, c. 1964-76

Single negative photographic image

Courtesy of the Estate of Wallace Berman & Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles

Posthumous Fragment #124, 1964-76

Single negative photographic image

Courtesy of the Estate of Wallace Berman & Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles

Posthumous Fragment #128, 1964-76

Single negative photographic image

Courtesy of the Estate of Wallace Berman & Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles

James Gill (b. 1934)

Widely acclaimed in the 1960s for his politically charged Pop paintings and sophisticated photo-manipulations of media images, James Gill has reemerged in recent years after a long hiatus. Born in Tahoka, Texas, he was encouraged to become an artist by architect Bruce Goff. Gill won a fellowship to study painting and architectural design at the University of Texas in Austin, and in 1962 he moved to Los Angeles. Soon after arriving, he began showing with Felix Landau Gallery, becoming known for darkly haunting works dealing with politics and social issues that used manipulated photographic images worked over with grease pencil, charcoal, and paint. Gill's manipulation of photography was contemporaneous with similar experiments made by Robert Heinecken and Wallace Berman. With perhaps even more audacity and control, he deconstructed the formal elements of photography with painterly finesse.

Uncommon Places, 1968

Oil and graphite on canvas

Collection of the artist

Ground Zero, 1965

Oil and graphite on canvas

Collection of Dr. S. Gregory and Martha Smith

Robert Heinecken (1931-2006)

A seminal proto-postmodernist and long-time educator, Robert Heinecken was a master of photographic manipulation who led the way for 1980s photo-appropriation. After dropping out of UCLA, Heinecken enlisted in the navy as a naval aviation cadet and was trained as a jet-fighter pilot. After his discharge in 1957, he returned to UCLA with a new sense of commitment. He received his BA and remained for graduate school, studying printmaking with John Paul Jones and photography with Don Chipperfield. Remaining at UCLA as an instructor, he rose through the ranks and was able to initiate a photography program in 1962. Interested in the history and sociology of photography, Heinecken began in the early 1960s to alter found photographs through superimpositions and darkroom techniques. Heinecken often manipulated pornographic images, sometimes in large formats with photographic emulsion on canvas, attempting to strip them of their power.

Fractured Figure Sections, 1967

Photographs on wood, #1 of 3

Collection of the Robert Heinecken Estate, Chicago, Illinois

14 or 15 Buffalo Ladies #1, 1969

Photographic lithograph, ed. 11

Courtesy of Stephen Cohen Gallery

Cream Six Single, 1970

Photo emulsion on canvas

Private collection, Los Angeles, California

David Hammons (b. 1943)

Born in Springfield, Illinois, David Hammons was the youngest of ten children and raised by a single mother. At age twenty he followed his sisters to LA to study commercial art. Dissatisfied, he took an evening class in drawing taught by Charles White at Otis Art Institute which became an eye-opener. He ended up at Otis where he became aware of other LAartists such as Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden who were pushing boundaries of the avant-garde. In the late 1960s Hammons transformed a former large dance hall on Slauson Avenue into a studio and hangout for himself and his three children. There, he developed a unique method for making body prints, covering himself with margarine or grease and pressing his body to illustration board which was then sprinkled with powdered pigment or chalk. These works deal with African-American identity in a variety of ways, ranging from the political to the lyrical.

Self Portrait, 1971

Photo silkscreen

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Norma Bartman, 1985.73.1

Boy with Flag, 1968

Body print with silk screen

Collection of Michele Asselin & Dr. Joseph Meltzer

Ebony Kiss, 1974

Mixed media

Collection of Betye Saar

Judy Chicago (b. 1939)

Feminist pioneer, Judy Chicago established her career in Los Angeles as Judy Gerowitz with Minimalist resin sculptures associated with the Finish Fetish movement. Her self-realization as a woman led to artworks that have helped change attitudes about gender roles and create new opportunities for women artists around the world. Chicago moved to Los Angeles in 1957 to attend UCLA. In 1970 Chicago took a teaching job at California State University, Fresno, where she established the Feminist Art Program. In 1971 she relocated the Feminist Art Program to California Institute of the Arts, where she shared leadership with painter Miriam Schapiro. Chicago's lithographs were perhaps her most direct and aggressive feminist statements. Love Story, with its text taken from a sado-masochistic passage of The Story of O (1954), and Gunsmoke, with its image of Chicago enduring forced fellatio on a pistol, express her unrepressed rage against male aggression.

Gunsmoke, 1971

Offset lithography

Courtesy of ACA Gallery, New York

Love Story, 1971

Offset lithography

Courtesy of ACA Gallery, New York

Red Flag, 1971

Photo-lithography

Courtesy of ACA Gallery, New York

Ceramic Goddess #3, #6, #7, 1977

Bisque

Courtesy of ACA Galleries, New York

John Outterbridge (b. 1933)

John Outterbridge's early work deeply influenced artists of the LA African American community, most notably Betye Saar and David Hammons. Born in Greenville, North Carolina, the oldest of eight children, he was encouraged in a creative direction by his self-employed, salvage-man father and artistically inclined mother. In 1963 he moved from Chicago to LA to seek new opportunities. He became involved in the burgeoning community of African American artists that included Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, and Mel Edwards. A lack of painting supplies led him to experiment with found, discarded materials. From 1967 to 1973, Outterbridge was employed part-time as an installation preparator at the Pasadena Art Museum. His fifteen assemblages of the Rag Man series were made from canvas stuffed with discarded fabric in loosely figurative shapes. The Captive Images are headless doll-like sculptures that play off the ancestral and religious figures of older cultures and his own Southern roots.

Captive Image, Ethnic Heritage Series (ammo box piece), c. 1975

Mixed media sculpture

Collection of Dr. Vaughn Payne

Captive Image, Ethnic Heritage Series (woman with bowl), c. 1975

Mixed media sculpture

Collection of Dr. Vaughn Payne

Captive Image #2, Ethnic Heritage Group, c. 1978-82

Mixed media

Collection of Betye Saar

Hans Burkhardt (1904-1994)

An accomplished expressionist who provided a link between mid-century East and West Coast painting, Hans Burkhardt made some of his most powerful works in reaction to war. At age nineteen, he left Switzerland for New York City and in 1927 enrolled at Grand Central School of Art, where he learned drawing from Arshile Gorky. In 1937, eager for a fresh start after the troubled breakup of his marriage, Burkhardt moved to LA In 1966, incensed by U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Burkhardt made a series of works addressing the brutality of war. Of these, the largest and most searing is My Lai, a ten-foot-wide field of thickly textured paint onto which were applied fifteen skulls and bone fragments that Burkhardt had collected from ruined graveyards in Mexico for student drawing exercises.

My Lai, 1968

Oil, assemblage with skulls on canvas

Betye Saar (b. 1926)

Betye Saar has long been revered for socially relevant assemblages, collages, and prints that deconstruct the loaded imagery traditionally associated with African Americans. Lesser known but just as potent are works with lyrical themes, exploring her personal history and interests in the occult. Saar's awareness of the artistic uses of found materials started in childhood. She enjoyed visiting her grandparents' house in Watts, where she watched nearby Watts Towers being constructed over the years. She explored in her early prints interests in occult practices and mystical thought, featuring images of tarot cards, alchemical symbols, palmistry drawings, and phrenology charts. Named after the Swahili word for wood, her assemblage Mti (1973) is a shrine to a black rag doll featuring wooden animal and human figures from India organized on top of an exotic palm-frond table.

Sorceress and Seven Assorted Birds, 1964

Lithograph on paper

Collection of the artist; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

Nubian Shadows, 1977

Mixed media collage on paper

Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

Mti, 1973

Mixed media floor assemblage

Collection of the artist

Judith Baca (b. 1946)

Artist and community activist Judith Baca is best known for her epic work The Great Wall of Los Angeles (1976-2006), a 2,754-foot mural in the San Fernando Valley that tracks the history of LA from prehistoric times to the 1950s. Baca lived in Watts with her Mexican American mother and grandmother until the age of six, when the family moved to the Valley. After attending California State University, Northridge, where she took classes with Hans Burkhardt, she was employed by the City of LA to work in recreation centers with local youth. Baca was able to channel the energies of members of opposing gangs into planning and executing mural projects in East LA parks. In 1974, Jerry Fernandez, one of the boys working on a mural, was killed in a gang fight. In grief over the senseless killing, Baca made the pastel drawing Dead Homeboy Killed by a Placa.

Dead Homeboy Killed by a Placa, 1974

Wood stain on paper

Collection of the artist

Uprising of the Mujeres (study), 1977

Pastel on paper

Courtesy of the artist

Sketch for Uprising of the Mujeres Mural, 1979

Pencil on paper

Courtesy of the artist

Kim Jones (b. 1944)

An innovator in the development of performance art in the 1970s, Kim Jones was born in San Bernardino and raised in west Los Angeles. As a teenager, he took classes at Art Center, where he met John Altoon and attended lectures by Lorser Feitelson. After unsettled art school stints, he voluntarily enlisted in the Marine Corps for a tour of duty in Vietnam. Returning to Chouinard in 1971, he made a series of paintings and drawings featuring a frog appropriated from the satirical drawings of Altoon. In the mid-70s, Jones developed the character Mudman around what he called the "Icarus sculpture," a web of sticks, cheesecloth, and foam rubber that he wore in performances. Jones received widespread attention for Wilshire Boulevard Walk, Mudman's twelve-hour journey by foot along the thoroughfare from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Ocean.

Untitled (Naked Woman Darkhead), 1971

Ink on paper

Private Collection

Untitled, 1973

Ink on paper

Courtesy of the artist and Pierogi Gallery

Snail Pierce, 1976

Ink & felt tip marker on paper

Courtesy of the artist and Pierogi Gallery

Telephone Pole Piece, 1978

Black & white photograph, 10 x 8 inches

Courtesy of the artist and Pierogi Gallery

Hollywood Walk, 1980

Black & white photograph, 10 x 8 inches

Courtesy of the artist and Pierogi Gallery

Barbara T. Smith (b. 1931)

In fantastical and unpredictable performances, Barbara Turner Smith has analyzed the wonder and perversity of the everyday. Raised in Pasadena, Smith married in 1951 while still an undergraduate at Pomona College, where she studied painting, art history, and religion. After her graduation in 1953, she continued to paint despite the pressures of motherhood and family life. In 1965 she enrolled at Chouinard Art Institute, where she took classes from Emerson Woelffer and Connor Everts. In 1969 Smith enrolled in the MFA program at UC Irvine, where she became involved with other students interested in performance such as Chris Burden and Nancy Buchanan. The performance Pucker Painting was first staged at the Woman's Building during a performance event scheduled during a College Art Association conference. Smith stood nude for several hours near a sign inviting viewers to apply red lipstick and "Kiss the 'canvas' so as to make a beautiful painting."

Dubious Madonna, 1959

Oil on canvas

Courtesy of the artist and The Box Gallery, Los Angeles

Pucker Painting, 1976-8

Six photographs, documentation of performance, reprints

Courtesy of the artist and The Box Gallery, Los Angeles

Chris Burden (b. 1946)

Sculptor and performance artist Chris Burden expanded the perimeters of art in daring actions of the early 1970s using his body. Born in Boston, the son of an engineer father and biologist mother, Burden grew up in France and Italy. Just after finishing high school in Massachusetts, Burden received a National Science Foundation Grant to spend two months in La Jolla and decided to attend Pomona College the next year. Interested in sculpture, Burden enrolled in 1969 in the masters program at UC Irvine where he shifted into performance, using his body as a kind of testing ground for simple actions. As Burden became well known, sensationalized reports in magazines about his actions became widespread. In order to vent his frustrations with misinterpretations, he made collage works that featured notated versions of these stories. The pencil inscriptions on Donatello detail his bitter responses to these inaccuracies and clichés.

Documentation of Selected Works 1971-74 [including Shoot (1971), Bed Piece (1972), Through the Night Softly (1973), 220 (1971), Deadman (1972) Fire Roll (1973), Icarus (1973), B.C. Mexico (1973), TV Ad (1973), Back to You (1974), and Velvet Water (1974)], 1971-75

Video transferred to DVD, 34:38 minutes, color and b&w, sound

Chris Burden 71-73, 1974

Binder with text and photographic images, ed. 7/50

Private Collection

Donatello, 1975

Collage and felt tip pen on paper

Private Collection

Nancy Buchanan (b. 1946)

A key figure in the development of LA performance art, Nancy Buchanan is also known for video works challenging conventional social relations, gender roles, and approaches to mass media. Many of her early works are feminist critiques of the manners and morals of bourgeois social relationships. Raised in California the daughter of an air-force scientist, Buchanan was a member of the first graduating class of the UC Irvine. In the early 1970s, while still an undergraduate, Buchanan cofounded F Space gallery with Chris Burden and Barbara T. Smith. One of her early works, Tar Baby featured an African American friend, Clifford Mabra Jr., dressed as a surgeon, standing over a hospital gurney on which Buchanan lay nude. Mabra methodically covered her body first with a tar-like substance, then with colored feathers. The performance commented on the various forms of dehumanization caused by racism, sexism, and the medical system.

Early Selected videos [including With Love From A To B (collaboration with Barbara T. Smith) (1979), Tar Baby (fragment) (1977), Please Sing Along (1974), Primary & Secondary Spectres (1979), and These Creatures (1979)], 1974-79

Video transferred to DVD, 35:33 minutes, color and b&w, sound

Courtesy of the artist

Tar Baby, 1976

Photographs, 6 performance stills; video excerpt, 10 minutes

Courtesy of the artist and Cardwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art

Wolfwoman, 1977

Photograph and text on paper, 3 parts

Courtesy of the artist and Caldwell Jimmerson Contemporary Art

Carole Caroompas (b. 1946)

Carole Caroompas incorporates images from mass media in collages, paintings, and performances that comment on the impact of myths and prototypes on psychology and behavior. The troubled relationship of the sexes has been her work's chief subject matter. Raised in Newport Beach, Caroompas majored in English literature at Cal State Fullerton. Having become interested in art, she enrolled in the graduate program at USC where her mentor was Connor Everts. Loosely influenced by the burgeoning Pattern and Decoration movement, Caroompas inserted her image into self-consciously decorative arrangements of patterns and found materials. Collages on cardboard tubes such as About Face and Fat Face Pointillée incorporate paper-doll images of the artist-with a Statue of Liberty mask in the former, and with a pointillist body from Georges Seurat's Les Poseuses (1888) in the latter-among a busy array of feathers, newspaper clippings, game pieces, and bits of fabric.

About Face, 1974

Mixed media on cardboard tubes