Rebels in Paradise
Page 1
To David, again
“People cut themselves off from their ties to the old life when they come to Los Angeles. They are looking for a palace where they can be free, where they can do things they couldn’t do anywhere else.”
—TOM BRADLEY, the grandson of slaves, whose 1973 election as Los Angeles’s first black mayor resulted in an unprecedented twenty-year tenure and the establishment of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Timeline: 1955–1969
Introduction
ONE. 1963: Andy and Marcel
TWO. Ferus Gallery
THREE. Riding the First Wave
FOUR. Ferus Goes Forth
FIVE. Okies: Ed Ruscha, Mason Williams, Joe Goode, and Jerry McMillan
SIX. Bell, Box, and Venice
SEVEN. Glamour Gains Ground
EIGHT. The Dawn of Dwan
NINE. A Bit of British Brilliance: David Hockney
TEN. Wilder Times with Bruce Nauman and Artforum
ELEVEN. The Ascendency of Irwin’s Atmospherics
TWELVE. Set the Night on Fire
THIRTEEN. Chicago Comes to Los Angeles
FOURTEEN. A Museum at Last
FIFTEEN. Bringing in the Trash: Ed Kienholz’s Revenge
SIXTEEN. Gemini GEL
SEVENTEEN. Between Form and Function: Frank Gehry
EIGHTEEN. London Calling, L.A. Answers
NINETEEN. Love-ins and Outs
TWENTY. Charge of the Light Brigade: Irwin, Wheeler, and Turrell
TWENTY-ONE. Fantastic Plastic Lovers: DeWain Valentine, Peter Alexander, and Helen Pashgian
TWENTY-TWO. Odd Man In: John Baldessari
TWENTY-THREE. Ferus Fades to Black
TWENTY-FOUR. The End of the Innocence
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Also by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp
Copyright
Timeline: 1955–1969
1955
Walter Hopps organizes Action I, exhibition in the Merry-Go-Round building on the Santa Monica Pier. Announcement is designed by his childhood friend, artist Craig Kauffman.
Ed Kienholz shows his work at Von’s Café Galleria, Laurel Canyon. Meets his future wife Mary Lynch.
Later opens his first gallery in the lobby of the Coronet Theatre Cinema.
Wallace Berman publishes first issue of his magazine of poetry and pictures, Semina.
Peter Voulkos teaches ceramics at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (future Otis College of Art and Design). Students include Billy Al Bengston, Ken Price, and John Mason.
The film Rebel Without a Cause, directed by Nicholas Ray, stars Dennis Hopper, James Dean, and Natalie Wood.
Dean, 24, dies in a car accident.
1956
Lorser Feitelson begins his TV show, Feitelson on Art, which runs until 1963.
Kienholz opens his Now Gallery.
John Altoon returns to Los Angeles from New York and Europe and teaches at Chouinard Art Institute.
Ed Ruscha and Mason Williams arrive in Los Angeles. Ruscha enrolls in Chouinard. Williams discovers folk music clubs in L.A. Joins the Navy.
Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz organize the “4th Annual All-City Outdoor Art Festival” in Barnsdall Park.
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road published.
First polyurethane surfboards go on the market.
1957
Llyn Foulkes, Judy Gerowitz (later Chicago), and Irving Blum move to Los Angeles.
Wallace Berman and Robert Alexander open Stone Brothers boutique and printing press.
George Herms presents Secret Exhibition, his assemblage sculpture on a vacant lot in Hermosa Beach.
Robert Irwin has first solo show at Felix Landau Gallery.
Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz open Ferus Gallery. Wallace Berman exhibition is closed and artist is arrested for obscenity. John Altoon is given solo show.
1958
The TV police series 77 Sunset Strip debuts.
Everett Ellin opens first gallery and Chez La Vie café, which closes after a year.
Ruscha shares a house with fellow Chouinard students and Oklahomans Jerry McMillan, Pat Blackwell, and Don Moore. Joe Goode joins them in early 1959 and enrolls at Chouinard.
Larry Bell enrolls at Chouinard.
Billy Al Bengston, Craig Kauffman, and Ed Moses have first solo shows at Ferus.
Robert Alexander and James Newman open Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco and show many Ferus artists including Moses, who starts using the name Ed Moses Y Branco.
Irving Blum buys out Kienholz and becomes co-director of Ferus at new location on La Cienega Boulevard.
Publication of The Holy Barbarians, with John Altoon on the cover, an account of the Beat scene in Venice by Lawrence Lipton.
Peter Voulkos ceramics, sculpture, and paintings shown at the Pasadena Art Museum.
Democrat Edmund (“Pat”) Brown elected Governor of California.
Lenny Bruce performs monologues inspired by improvisational jazz and left-wing politics.
Richard Neutra builds the Singleton house in Bel Air.
1959
Craig and Vivian Kauffman travel to Europe from 1959 to 1961.
Ken Price returns to L.A. from graduate school in Alfred, New York.
Virginia Dwan opens her gallery in Westwood.
Four Abstract Classicists, a show of geometric abstract painting by John McLaughlin, Lorser Feitelson, Fred Hammersley, and Karl Benjamin at the L.A. County Museum of History, Science, and Art.
A show by abstract artist Lee Mullican is held at the UCLA art galleries, organized by curator Frederick S. Wight.
1960
The contraceptive pill comes on the market.
John Lautner designs the “Chemosphere,” or Malin residence.
Opening of the LAX theme building designed by Charles Luckman, William Pereira, Welton Becket, and Paul Williams.
Julius Shulman photographs Case Study House No. 22 designed by Pierre Koenig. The nighttime view of fashionably dressed young women seated in a glass-walled living room cantilevered over a hillside with a grid of lights in the distance defines the exotic, modern Southern California lifestyle.
Everett Ellin opens his second gallery on North La Cienega Boulevard.
Billy Al Bengston paints his Dracula series with a small orchid shape in center of canvas.
Larry Bell begins paintings of nested hexagons.
Ferus shows Jasper Johns with Kurt Schwitters; Ken Price’s first solo show.
The Pasadena Art Museum presents the clay sculpture of John Mason in May, followed by Robert Irwin in July, and Richard Diebenkorn in September.
1961
Beach Boys Surfin’ Safari album is released, launching a surf music trend. About 30,000 young people are surfing California beaches each weekend.
Willem de Kooning at the Kantor Gallery and Helen Frankenthaler at Primus-Stuart Gallery. Ferus artists are packaged as something entirely different: Ken Price’s exhibition announcement depicts the artist surfing; Bengston’s shows the artist driving his motorcycle.
A forest fire destroys more than 500 houses in Bel Air, Brentwood, and Malibu, including that of Dennis and Brooke Hopper.
Dwan Gallery’s Yves Klein: Le Monochrome opens on May 29.
Ed Kienholz is given a show at the Pasadena Art Museum in May and included in the Museum of Modern Art’s The Art of Assemblage organized by William Seitz the following fall.
In May, Huysman Gallery, founded by art historian Henry Hopkins, puts on War Babies.
1962
Kienholz shows
his first life-size installation of a bordello, Roxy’s, at Ferus. It is followed in March by the geometric abstract paintings of Larry Bell. In May, Robert Irwin presents line paintings. In July, Andy Warhol’s first show features the Campbell’s Soup Cans paintings.
In September, Hopps presents New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum. The show includes Jim Dine, Robert Dowd, Joe Goode, Philip Hefferton, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud, and Andy Warhol. Ruscha has the announcement printed at a workshop that usually makes boxing posters.
Dwan Gallery shows Robert Rauschenberg in March, the same time that Everett Ellin Gallery shows Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely.
Ed Moses shows at the Alan Gallery in March and Billy Al Bengston shows at Martha Jackson Gallery in May, both in New York City.
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is published. Peter, Paul and Mary make popular the Bob Dylan song Blowin’ in the Wind.
Death of Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles.
Ken Price moves to Japan, then to Ventura, 1963–1965.
Pasadena Art Museum gives solo shows to John Altoon and Llyn Foulkes.
Beginning of Monday night art walks on North La Cienega Boulevard.
Walter Hopps appointed curator of the Pasadena Art Museum. Oversees Kurt Schwitters retrospective, June 20–July 17.
Joe Goode’s first solo show is with Dilexi Gallery.
The first issue of Artforum published by John Irwin in San Francisco.
1963
Dwan Gallery shows Martial Raysse, Franz Kline, who had died in 1962, Larry Rivers, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle, and Ed Kienholz. Claes Oldenburg shows soft sculpture at Dwan in October and stages Autobodies, a Happening involving dozens of cars and a parking lot.
At Ferus: Irving Blum shows New Yorkers Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as L.A.’s John Mason, Ed Moses, Larry Bell, and Ed Ruscha. Ruscha creates his first artist’s book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations.
More galleries open on North La Cienega Boulevard: Rolf Nelson, director of Dilexi, leaves to open his own gallery and present a Fluxus event Blink. He shows Joe Goode, Llyn Foulkes, and George Herms. Ceeje Gallery shows Charles Garabedian and Edmund Teske. David Stuart Gallery shows Tony Berlant and Dennis Hopper.
Everett Ellin closes gallery and moves to New York to be director of Marlborough Gallery.
Edward G. Robinson’s highly regarded collection of Impressionist art is rejected by the trustees of the L.A. County Museum, fearful of his left-leaning politics. It is shown in his Beverly Hills home as a charity event before being auctioned after his divorce.
The L.A. County Museum exhibits Six Painters and the Object, organized by Lawrence Alloway—who coined the term “Pop Art”—for the Guggenheim Museum. It features Dine, Johns, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, Warhol, and James Rosenquist. The L.A.’s version includes Six More: Bengston, Goode, Hefferton, Ruscha, as well as Thiebaud and Mel Ramos from San Francisco.
Marcel Duchamp retrospective is held at the Pasadena Art Museum organized by Hopps. Hopps named director in August. Hires James Demetrion as curator and Harold (Hal) Glicksman as assistant and preparator.
Pasadena Art Museum shows paintings of John McLaughlin.
The Cinerama Dome Theater, designed by Welton Becket, features a wraparound screen inside a geodesic dome on Sunset Boulevard.
Tom Wolfe publishes his essay “Kustom Kar Kulture in Southern California: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.”
Lenny Bruce arrested for obscenity at the Unicorn.
Death of Aldous Huxley in Los Angeles.
Ed Moses travels to Europe, 1963–64.
George Herms directs Moonstone, with Dean Stockwell.
Wallace Berman makes first Verifax collages.
Andy Warhol films scenes for Tarzan and Jane Regained … Sort Of.
1964
Kienholz joins the Dwan Gallery. Dwan also shows James Rosenquist and Lucas Samaras.
Ferus shows Studs, with Moses, Irwin, Price, and Bengston, a show that underscores the macho reputations of these artists.
An exhibition of Post-Painterly Abstraction with a catalog written by critic Clement Greenberg opens at the L.A. County Museum of Art in April. Irwin refuses to participate.
David Hockney visits Los Angeles. Paints first swimming pool paintings using acrylics. Meets Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, and Nicholas Wilder.
Founding of Watts Towers Art Center by Noah Purifoy and Sue Welsh.
Douglas Wheeler makes first light paintings.
Frank Gehry builds the Danziger house and studio in Hollywood.
The Beatles’ first concert at the Hollywood Bowl.
Roger McGuinn forms the Byrds.
Opening of the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip.
Death of Rico Lebrun in Los Angeles.
Dorothy Chandler uses her social and political clout as wife of L.A. Times publisher to develop downtown performing arts complex the Music Center.
L.A. is second most populous city in the nation. Rapid Transit District is established with little result.
1965
The L.A. County Museum of Art opens in April in a modern building designed by William Pereira on Wilshire Boulevard. One of its first shows is New York School: The First Generation—Paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, organized by LACMA’s curator of modern art, Maurice Tuchman.
Nicholas Wilder Gallery opens on North La Cienega Boulevard, giving Bruce Nauman his first solo show. Shows Joe Goode’s staircases leading to blank walls. Hockney lives with Wilder as a roommate and paints his portrait in the swimming pool.
The Pasadena Art Museum shows Jasper Johns retrospective.
The Dwan Gallery shows Rauschenberg and Mark di Suvero. Dwan has become such a force in the city that UCLA shows the Virginia Dwan Collection in September.
Dwan opens gallery in New York, where Ed Kienholz presents The Beanery.
Ferus shows Richard Pettibone’s miniature copies of paintings and sculptures as seen in the homes of L.A. collectors L. M. Asher, Donald Factor, Dennis Hopper, Ed Janss, Robert Rowan, and Frederick Weisman.
Artforum magazine relocates from San Francisco into offices above Ferus Gallery.
Hopps is curator of the American Pavilion of the 8th São Paulo Biennale, September 4 to November 28, and features Bell, Bengston, Irwin, Donald Judd, Barnett Newman, Frank Stella, and Larry Poons. Ruscha is included in the Guggenheim’s exhibition Word/Image.
Rolf Nelson Gallery gives first solo show to Judy Gerowitz (Chicago).
Sam Yorty is reelected L.A. mayor; race riots in Watts result in 35 dead, 4,000 arrested, and $40 million in property damage.
Irving Petlin organizes Artist Protest Committee.
Mark di Suvero designs the Artists Peace Tower built by volunteers on the corner of La Cienega and Sunset Boulevards. Vija Celmins’s paintings of fighter jet planes shown at David Stuart Gallery.
Larry Bell moves to New York for a year, where the Pace Gallery shows his glass cubes.
1966
A retrospective of Ed Kienholz opens to great controversy at the L.A. County Museum of Art, with the board of supervisors calling the show “revolting and pornographic,” urging its removal.
Robert Irwin and Ken Price are given shows at LACMA with a catalog by Lucy Lippard and Philip Leider. The museum mounts a retrospective of Surrealist Man Ray.
The influential movement of Abstract Expressionist ceramics, including Bengston, Mason, Price, and Voulkos, is surveyed at the UC Irvine art gallery in October, while John Mason is given a solo show at LACMA in November.
Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, with the Velvet Underground, play to unenthusiastic audience in L.A.
The Doors are banned from the Whisky a Go Go for using the word “fuck” on stage.
Neil Young moves to Los Angeles and helps form Buffalo Springfield.
Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs organize the Watts Acid Test for 600 participants.
&nbs
p; LSD declared illegal substance.
John Chamberlain, visiting Malibu, is inspired by squeezing a sponge in the bathtub to produce sculptures of foam rubber bound with a cord that are shown at Dwan Gallery.
Ferus Gallery closes with Warhol’s Silver Clouds and Cow Wallpaper.
Hopps is asked to resign from Pasadena Art Museum and moves to Washington, D.C. James Demetrion becomes director of PAM. Hopps returns briefly in 1967 to oversee installation of his Joseph Cornell retrospective.
Shirley Hopps divorces Walter and marries Irving Blum.
Rolf Nelson shows the sculpture of Judy Gerowitz and starts calling her Judy Chicago, the name of her native city. She adopts the new name.
In New York, the Primary Structures show of minimalist sculpture at the Jewish Museum includes Bell and Chicago. In London, Robert Fraser Gallery shows Bell, Berman, Kauffman, Ruscha, Conner, and Hopper.
1967
Ferus/Pace Gallery shows Craig Kauffman with Roy Lichtenstein, and Donald Judd.
LACMA shows American Sculpture of the ’60s with 165 works by 80 artists organized by Maurice Tuchman.
An ephemeral environment called Dry Ice is created in Century City by Judy Chicago, Lloyd Hamrol, and Eric Orr.
The Pasadena Art Museum, with John Coplans curating, shows Mason Williams’s Bus, Allan Kaprow’s Happening of stacked ice blocks, Fluids, and James Turrell’s installation of projected light.
The newly formed print workshop Gemini GEL invites Robert Rauschenberg to produce Booster, the largest print made up to that time.
1968
Pasadena Art Museum shows light installations by Robert Irwin and Doug Wheeler.
LACMA shows Wallace Berman retrospective.
Molly Barnes Gallery gives John Baldessari his first solo show in L.A.
Blum, who severed business relations with Pace, reopens as the Irving Blum Gallery and shows Ruscha’s painting the Los Angeles County Museum on Fire.
LACMA organizes Late Fifties at Ferus. LACMA also mounts first retrospective of Billy Al Bengston.
Dwan closes L.A. gallery and moves to New York. Douglas Chrismas opens Ace in her former gallery space.
The L.A. artists are seen in many group shows, including The West Coast Now, with 62 artists at the Portland Art Museum; Los Angeles 6 at the Vancouver Art Gallery; and Documenta 4 in Kassel, Germany, including Bell, Davis, Hockney, Irwin, Kienholz, and Nauman.