Michael Fallon - Creating the Future: Art and Los Angeles in the 1970s

CREATING THE FUTURE

Copyright 2014 Michael Fallon

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fallon, Michael, 1966- author.

Creating the future : art & Los Angeles in the 1970s / Michael Fallon.

pages cm

1. Art and society--California--Los Angeles--History--20th century. 2. Art, American--California--Los Angeles--20th century--Themes, motives. I. Title.

N72.S6F35 2014

709.794'9409047--dc23

2014014415

ISBN 978-1-61902-404-5

Cover design by Maren Fox

Interior Design by Megan Jones Design

COUNTERPOINT

2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

Berkeley, CA 94710

www.counterpointpress.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Nicole & Eleanor

CONTENTS

1971, the Art and Technology Exhibition, and the End of L.A.s Modernist Daydreams

The Rise of Women Artists

The Rise of Chicano Artists

Or, Anger and Dissent in the Early 1970s Art Scene

L.A.s Explosion in Conceptual and Performance Art

How L.A.s Street Culture Inspired a New Lowbrow Art Movement

Public Art in the Landscape of L.A.

A Trio of Outsiders Quietly Subvert the L.A. Art World

The Birth of L.A.s Young Romantics

L OS ANGELES EMERGENCE AS A NATIONAL ART capital in the mid-twentieth century owes as much to circumstance and timing as it does to the artists of the era. Beginning in the 1950s, after a half-century of intensive polish, the far Western outpost region known as Southern California emerged as Americas shining beacon of hopea forward-looking, golden Shangri-La by the Pacific Ocean.

Los Angeleswhich had grown by mid-century to become Californias cultural and demographic capitalwas at the time a city engrossed in its rise to the top. As the richest, healthiest, most admired urban area in the United States, the city embodied the California Dream. By the 1960s, L.A. was where you went to find openness and warmth, fulfillment and happiness; it was where you could realize your dreams and be the person you were always meant to be. It was a place where great riches were attainable, and where eternal youth seemed possible. It was the home of Hollywood, of young, handsome politicians, of sexy and free-spirited rock gods and goddesses. In the popular media of the timein films like Gidget and Beach Blanket Bingo, television shows like 77 Sunset Strip, in Beach Boys songs and on album covers, and in countless magazine picture profilesLos Angeles was modern, hip, and far sexier than the American norm.

As a visual concept, L.A. had wide appeal. Iconically speaking, the city was associated with money, palm trees, glamorous movie stars, clear blue skies, and, above all else, sunshine. Its colorsmolten gold, linen white, deep azure blue, and sparkling candy-apple redwere dazzling. Los Angeles evoked chrome and bright plastic and neon signs and freshly laid asphalt gleaming in the midday sun; it was the sleek ellipse of a surfboard hewn from space-age polyurethane. It was the racy streamline, in the parlance of Tom Wolfe, of a 57 Chevy Bel Air, or it was the sweeping modernist arches over soon-to-be ubiquitous fast-food hamburger joints (or over the H.G. Wellsian Theme Building at LAX, as the citys vast international airport was known). The lingering image one had after leaving L.A. was of an endless river of steel and rubber churning and snaking through the citys wide valley passes and out across a vast and endlessly productive land basin.

As Los Angeles grew through the middle years of the last century, gaining confidence, stature, and notoriety, its culture naturally matured and spread into areas long deemed the territory of the Eastern establishment. This included literature, theater, dance, music, and visual art. L.A.s first generation of noted visual artistscelebrated in recent years in the Jeff Bridges-narrated documentary The Cool School and in Hunter Drohojowska-Philps widely praised book Rebels in Paradisecame to maturity right in the midst of Californias colorful 1960s explosion of visual wish fulfillment. Like much of the rest of Californias growing population, these artistsall intent on making a big splash in this exciting and new cityhad come to L.A. from a variety of backgrounds and places. Wallace Berman, the oldest and initially most experienced artist of the group, was born in Staten Island but grew up in L.A. after his family moved to the Boyle Heights neighborhood during the 1930s. Bermans assemblage works heavily influenced the art of the era, and his first solo show took place at a new space, the Ferus Gallery, which opened in Los Angeles in 1957. Ed The others in the groupEd Moses, Craig Kauffman, Robert Irwin, John Altoon, and Kenneth Pricewere born in disparate locations around the Los Angeles area and came from a range of different upbringings before finding their ways to the Ferus Gallery.

Beyond the fact that they were all male and of white European backgrounds, there was little that connected the Ferus Gallery stable of artists beyond their collective sense of ambition and a confident belief in what they could accomplish in their new California home. As early as 1961, in fact, the Ferus Gallery began packaging their shows with the California experience in mind. Ken Prices exhibition announcement that year had a picture of the artist surfing at a local beach, arms stretched upward in a gesture of triumph. Billy Al Bengstons exhibition announcement in 1961, meanwhile, depicted the artist with his motorcycle. In 1963, Ed Ruscha made a key artistic breakthrough when he created his first artists book for a Ferus exhibition. That the book was called Twentysix Gasoline Stations reveals how Californias culture was influencing the Oklahoma native. In 1964, as the wider art world began to take notice of what was happening in Los Angeles, the Ferus Gallery mounted a group show of four of its artists (Moses, Irwin, Price, and Bengston) with a title that said everything about the local artistic mindset: Studs.

The Ferus groups swagger had its clearest expression in the career of founder Walter Hopps. From the beginning, Hopps had provided a By the time Hopps was named curator of the American Pavilion of the 8th Sa Paolo Bienal in 1965, where he would promote three of the Ferus cohort (Bell, Bengston, and Irwin), one thing was clear: Under the onslaught of Feruss virile artistic energy and Hoppss groundbreaking work as a curator, the national and international art world could no longer ignore what was happening in Los Angeles.

THE LUSTER OF THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DREAM, as reflected in the work of the Ferus Gallery and its artists, was so bright by the late 1960s it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when it all began to grow dim. Many people willingly overlooked the initial warning signs of social degradation in Californiathe Watts riots in 1965

By the early 1970s, it was clear that the California Dream had begun to spoil. As the British journalist Michael Davie would note in his book