4. Hockney, David Hockney, 43.
5. Livingstone, David Hockney, 21.
6. Hockney, David Hockney, 87.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 92.
9. Livingstone, David Hockney, 69.
10. Hockney, David Hockney, 97.
11. Ibid., 98.
12. Ibid., 99.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 68.
15. Livingstone, David Hockney, 97.
16. David Hockney, interview with author, November 6, 2010.
17. Hockney, David Hockney, 151.
18. Ibid.
19. Betty Freeman, interview with author, July 4, 2006.
20. Ibid.
21. Hockney, David Hockney, 104.
22. Ibid., 158.
23. J. Randy Taraborrelli, Sinatra: Behind the Legend (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1997), 464–65.
24. Marcia Simon Weisman, Collecting, Sharing, and Promoting Contemporary Art in California (Los Angeles: Regents of the University of California, 1983).
25. Richard Dorment, “David Hockney: 1960–68, Nottingham Contemporary,” Telegraph, December 2–8, 2009.
26. Livingstone, David Hockney, 70.
27. Mary Lou Luther, “Looking Back at a Futurist,” in Moffitt, Rudi Gernreich Book, 14.
28. Don Bachardy, interview with author, June 29, 2007.
29. Arthur Secunda, Artforum 1, no. 6 (1962). The early issues of Artforum often did not state a month because the editors were not sure when they would be coming out.
30. Bachardy, interview with author, June 29, 2007.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
Chapter Ten. Wilder Times with Bruce Nauman and Artforum
1. Katherine Bishop Crum, Nicholas Wilder and His Gallery, 1965–1979 (New York: Franklyn Parrasch Gallery, 2005).
2. Oral history interview with Nicholas Wilder, July 18, 1988, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute.
3. Joe Goode, interview with author, April 7, 2007.
4. Wilder, oral history.
5. Fidel Danieli, “The Art of Bruce Nauman,” Artforum, December 1967, 15–17.
6. Nauman lived in Los Angeles until 1979 when he bought a ranch in New Mexico.
7. Goode, interview with author, April 7, 2007.
8. Ibid.
9. Philip Leider, “The Cool School,” Artforum, Summer 1964, 47.
10. Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting, 79.
11. Coplans, “Post Painterly Abstraction,” Artforum, Summer 1964, 6.
12. Amy Newman, Challenging Art: “Artforum” 1962–1974 (New York: Soho Press, 2000), 46.
13. Ibid., 295.
14. Ibid.
Chapter Eleven. The Ascendency of Irwin’s Atmospherics
1. Dagny Corcoran, interview with author, September 21, 2007.
2. Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting, 87.
3. Ibid., 90.
4. Ibid., 78. (Similarly, Ruscha painted the edges of his early large canvases, sometimes labeling them as though they were the spines of books.)
5. Lawrence Weschler describes U.S. political involvement on page 94 of Seeing Is Forgetting. It was also mentioned to me by Christopher Knight.
6. Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting, 93.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 95.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 96.
Chapter Twelve. Set the Night on Fire
1. Ed Bereal, “In Search of Ms. America: An Autobiography of the Watts Years, 1965–75,” Art and Politics in Los Angeles, no. 92 (November–December 1992), 18–19, cited in Grenier, Los Angeles, 1955–1985, 143.
2. McKenna, Ferus Gallery, 207.
3. Neilsen Blum, interview with author, May 22, 2008.
4. Jeffrey Kastner, “1000 Words: Peace Tower; Irving Petlin, Mark di Suvero, and Rirkrit Tiravanija Revisit the Artists’ Tower of Protest, 1966,” Artforum International 44 (March 2006).
5. Ibid.
6. Mark di Suvero, interview with author, January 24, 2008. He went on to build another large-scale sculpture on the lawn of the Pasadena Art Museum that is now on view at Storm King Art Center in New York.
7. Kastner, “1000 Words: Peace Tower.”
8. Lee Quarnstrom, “Acid Test Chronicles,” http://www.postertrip.com/.
Chapter Thirteen. Chicago Comes to Los Angeles
1. Levin, Becoming Judy Chicago, 105.
2. Ibid., 106.
3. Judy Chicago, Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (Garden City: Doubleday & Company Inc., 1975), 35.
4. Ibid., 37.
5. Levin, Chicago, 112.
6. Chicago, Flower, 36–37.
7. Levin, Chicago, 120.
8. Ibid., 121.
9. Ibid.
10. Despite their interest, none were asked to take part in the 1969 Art and Technology exhibition at LACMA.
11. Levin, Chicago, 129.
Chapter Fourteen. A Museum at Last
1. Walter Hopps interview with Jim Edwards, Pop Art US/UK Connections: 1956–1966 (Hatje Cantz, 2001).
2. Suzanne Muchnic, Odd Man In: Norton Simon and the Pursuit of Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 77.
3. Byrnes and his wife Barbara, who had an art gallery in Hollywood, bought a painting by Mark Rothko around the same time. They later sold it for enough to buy a house designed by Richard Neutra, which went up in value but nothing like as much as the Rothko they had sold.
Chapter Fifteen. Bringing in the Trash: Ed Kienholz’s Revenge
1. Kienholz, oral history.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Other prominent European museums bought his tableaux, including The Beanery, which is now at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Encouraged by such support, Kienholz himself moved to Berlin in 1972 with his fifth and final wife, Nancy Reddin Kienholz, daughter of Tom Reddin, the former L.A. chief of police. She collaborated with him to complete his artwork, which was attributed then to both of them, until his death from a heart attack in 1994.
6. Lyn Kienholz, interview with author, June 2, 2008.
7. Ibid.
8. Hopps, Kienholz, 24.
Chapter Sixteen. Gemini GEL
1. Elyse Grinstein, interview with author, May 9, 2007.
2. Suzanne Felsen became a jewelry designer.
3. Sidney Felsen, interview with author, October 23, 2009.
4. Oral history interview with Rosamund Felson, October 10–11, 2004, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
5. Ibid.
6. Ruth E. Fine, “Gemini G.E.L.: Online Catalogue Raisonné,” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., http://www.nga.gov/gemini/.
7. Rosamund Felson, oral history.
8. Elyse Grinstein, interview with author, May 9, 2007.
9. Stanley Grinstein, interview with author, May 9, 2007.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Newman, Challenging Art, 132–33.
13. Ibid.
Chapter Seventeen. Between Form and Function: Frank Gehry
1. Frank Gehry, interview with author, September 28, 2007.
2. Frank Gehry interviewed by Sidney Pollack in his documentary film Sketches of Frank Gehry, 2005.
3. Gehry, interview with author, September 28, 2007.
4. Ibid.
5. Barbara Isenberg, State of the Arts: California Artists Talk About Their Work (New York: William Morrow, 2000), 51.
6. Gehry, interview with author, September 28, 2007.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. McKenna, Ferus Gallery, 236.
11. Gehry, interview with author, September 28, 2007.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
Chapter Eighteen. London Calling, L.A. Answers
1. Harriet Vyner, Groovy Bob: The Life and Times of Robert Fraser (London: Faber and Faber, 1999), 113.
2. Ibid., 115.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Mary Lynch Kienholz, interview with author, July 30, 2010.
6. Hopper, interview with author, March 20, 2006.
7. Kauffman, interview with author, October 24, 2008.
8. Babitz, interview with author, July 6, 2010.
9. Eve Babitz, “Roll Over Elvis: The Second Coming of Jim Morrison,” Esquire, March 1991, posted in http://forum.JohnDensmore.com/.
10. Warhol and Hackett, POPism, 167.
11. Patrick S. Smith, Warhol: Conversations About the Artist (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988), 217.
12. Warhol and Hackett, POPism, 189.
13. Ibid., 190.
14. Babitz, interview with author, July 6, 2010.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Eric Bluhm, “Along for the Ride: Ed Ruscha and Mason Williams,” Art US, May–June, 2006, 10–13.
18. “Free Mason,” Time, April 11, 1969, 68.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Williams, speaking at The Getty Center, Los Angeles, January 24, 2007, Modern Art in Los Angeles: Okies Go West; An Evening with Jerry McMillan, Ed Ruscha and Mason Williams.
Chapter Nineteen. Love-ins and Outs
1. Léon Bing, Swans and Pistols: Modeling, Motherhood, and Making It in the Me Generation (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 120.
2. Ibid.
3. Williams, interview with author, September 10, 2010.
4. McKenna, Ferus Gallery, 174.
5. James Demetrion, interview with author, July 9, 2010.
6. Renato Danese, interview with author, August 22, 2010.
7. Kauffman, interview with author, October 24, 2008.
8. Neilsen Blum, interview with author, May 22, 2008.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Bell, interview with author, September 15, 2007.
15. Demetrion, interview with author, July 9, 2010.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. McKenna, Ferus Gallery, 298.
19. Tomkins, “Touch for the Now,” 48.
20. McKenna, Ferus Gallery, 190.
21. Paul Richard, Washington Post, March 22, 2005.
22. Newman, Challenging Art, 210.
23. Ibid., 99–100.
24. Ibid., 136.
25. Ibid., 138.
26. Demetrion, interview with author. “In May 1969, I went to the Des Moines Art Center, as director. Coplans went to Akron Art [Museum] after Tom Terbell, a member of the board with no experience, was given the position of museum director.”
27. McKenna, Ferus Gallery, 190.
Chapter Twenty. Charge of the Light Brigade: Irwin, Wheeler, and Turrell
1. Jan Butterfield, The Art of Light and Space (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993), 21.
2. Ibid. Much was made of the relationship to the warm, sparkly quality of light in Southern California that certainly had to be the primary influence for artists who lived near the ocean whether they were surfers or not. The larger concern, however, was perception, and to follow that line of inquiry, many of the artists were working with complex new technologies and materials in the confines of their studios. “Artists in Southern California investigating light phenomena were not reacting to the specific quality of natural light here. Most artists were working primarily with artificial light and only later did they extend their investigations to situations of controlled external light,” wrote Hal Glicksman, who organized or installed numerous shows of such work at PAM and the art gallery at UC Irvine. Ibid., 15.
3. Ibid., 120.
4. Doug Wheeler, interview with author, June 4, 2010.
5. Ibid.
6. Butterfield, Art of Light and Space, 73.
7. Newman, Challenging Art, 133.
8. Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, “Environmental Art: The Art of Perception,” in The Panza Collection: Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza, Varese (Milan, Skira, 2002), 10, cited in Grenier, Los Angeles 1955–1985, 187.
9. Butterfield, Art of Light and Space, 120.
10. Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting, 131.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 134.
Chapter Twenty-one. Fantastic Plastic Lovers: DeWain Valentine, Peter Alexander, and Helen Pashgian
1. Dave Hickey, Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960–1970, ed. Kristine Bell and Tim Nye (Gottingen: Steidl/David Zwirner, 2010), 15.
2. Jane Livingston, “Recent Work by Craig Kauffman,” Artforum, February 1968, 36–39, cited in Grenier, Los Angeles 1955–1985, 170.
3. Robert Pincus Witten, “Craig Kauffman,” Artforum, April 1969, 70.
4. DeWain Valentine, panel discussion at The Getty Center, May 19, 2010, Modern Art in Los Angeles: The Industrialized Gesture.
5. Ibid.
6. Peter Alexander, panel discussion at The Getty Center, May 19, 2010, Modern Art in Los Angeles: The Industrialized Gesture.
7. Ibid.
8. Helen Pashgian, panel discussion at The Getty Center, May 19, 2010, Modern Art in Los Angeles: The Industrialized Gesture.
9. Jack Brogan, panel discussion at The Getty Center, May 19, 2010, Modern Art in Los Angeles: The Industrialized Gesture.
10. Alexander, panel discussion at Getty.
11. Pashgian, panel discussion at Getty.
12. Newman, Challenging Art, 258.
Chapter Twenty-two. Odd Man In: John Baldessari
1. Hunter Drohojowska, “John Baldessari: No More Boring Art,” ARTnews, January 1986, 62–69.
2. Oral history interview with John Baldessari, April 4–5, 1992, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Drohojowska, “John Baldessari,” 67–68.
6. Ibid.
7. Baldessari, oral history.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Drohojowska, “John Baldessari,” 62–69.
11. Baldessari, oral history.
12. Drohojowska, “John Baldessari,” 62–69.
13. Christopher Knight in Jessica Morgan et al., John Baldessari: Pure Beauty (Los Angeles: L.A. County Museum of Art, 2009), 47.
14. Ibid., 49. LACMA curator Maurice Tuchman put two canvases on hold for the museum and bought one about three years later—at which point he wanted the original price of $600. He expected loyalty since Baldessari had been given a Young Talent Award, which came with a $1,200 stipend. Baldessari wondered, “Well, why didn’t you give me the money for the award then, instead of six hundred dollars?” Baldessari, oral history, Archives of American Art.
15. Ibid.
16. Drohojowska, “John Baldessari,” 64.
17. Ibid., 62.
18. Baldessari, oral history.
19. Drohojowska, “John Baldessari,” 63.
20. Newman, Challenging Art, 253.
Chapter Twenty-three. Ferus Fades to Black
1. Blum, oral history.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Blum, interview with author, October 18, 2005.
6. Blum, interview with author, May 30, 2010.
7. Jasper Johns, “Marcel Duchamp [1887–1968],” Artforum, November 1968.
8. After Berman died, a posthumous show of his work was held at the Timothea Stuart Gallery. Berman’s grandmother attended, and George Herms recalled guiding her around the gallery, which included a seamless room created by Doug Wheeler. A two-sided drawing by Berman was suspended. After looking at one side, Herms guided the grandmother around to look at the other side, which featured a graphic and detailed drawing of “a girl giving a blowjob to a big dick,” recalled Herms. Abashed, he looked at Berman’s grandmother, who shrugged and said, “You know, you could never tell what he was think
ing.” George Herms, interview with author, March 8, 2005.
9. Warhol and Hackett, POPism, 277.
10. Ibid., 274.
11. Ibid., 279.
Chapter Twenty-four. The End of the Innocence
1. Babs Altoon, interview with author, June 16, 2006.
2. Christopher Knight, interview with author, November 8, 2010.
Acknowledgments
Despite the cliché that those who remember the sixties weren’t really there, I found I could rely on the memories of any number of people who definitely were. Walter Hopps had a few memories to share with me just days before his death on March 20, 2005. Irving Blum offered many stories about this glittering era. Ed Ruscha, the first Ferus artist I met after moving to Los Angeles, was and is an inspiration. Others who offered encouragement at the outset of this project were Dave Hickey, Peter Plagens, Lawrence Weschler and Christopher Knight, all of whom have written astutely about these artists and this period.
I am grateful to all the artists, dealers, collectors, their friends and family: Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Ken Price, John Mason, Frank Gehry, Joe Goode, Jerry McMillan, Mason Williams, John Baldessari, Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, Mark Di Suvero, Claes Oldenburg, Don Bachardy, David Hockney, Gregory Evans, Doug Wheeler, James Turrell, Peter Alexander, DeWain Valentine, Helen Pashgian, Judy Chicago, Vija Celmins, Virginia Dwan, Cecilia Dan, James Corcoran, Dagny Corcoran, Babs Altoon, Rosamund Felsen, Sidney Felsen, Stanley and Elyse Grinstein, James Demetrion, Hal Glicksman, Lyn Kienholz, Mary Lynch Kienholz, Vivian Rowan, Penny Little Hawks, Happy Price, Bridget Johnson, Doreen Nelson, Shirley Hopps Blum, Danna Ruscha, Eve Babitz, Julian Wasser, Zazu Faure, Paul Ruscha, Robert Dean, Mary Dean, Larry Gagosian, Margo Leavin, Frank Lloyd, Craig Krull, Renato Danese, Arnold Glimcher, Michael Kohn, Jean Milant, Ulrike Kantor, Shoshana Blank, Patricia Hamilton, Charles Cowles, Doug Chrismas, Kimberly Davis, Elizabeth East, Peter Goulds, Ronnie and Vidal Sassoon, Sally Drennon, Peggy Moffitt, Chris Claxton, Ann Marshall, Teri Garr, Michelle Phillips, and the beat goes on.…
A moment here to remember those who have died with their boots on in recent years: Henry Hopkins, Dennis Hopper, Craig Kauffman, Betty Freeman, and Patricia Faure.
I’m indebted to the colleagues who have contributed to a deeper understanding of L.A.’s cultural history including Cécelie Whiting, Michael Duncan, Thomas Crow, Kristine McKenna, James Meyers, David Pagel, Leah Ollmann, Richard Hertz, Pamela Burton, Barbara Rose, Barbara Haskell, Gail Levin, Naomi Sawelson-Gorse, Debra Burchette Lere, Calvin Tomkins, Kevin Starr, Lars Nittve, Robert Berman, Suzanne Muchnic, and Barbara Isenberg. At the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Carol Eliel, Stephanie Barron, and Toby Tannenbaum; at the Orange County Museum of Art, Karen Moss and Elizabeth Armstrong (now at Walker Art Center); at the Museum of Contemporary Art: Paul Schimmel and Ann Goldstein (now at the Stedelijk Museum); and at Scripps College: Mary McNaughton. Thanks also to Lisa Fung and Kelly Scott at the Los Angeles Times, Robin Cembalest at ARTnews, Walter Robinson at Artnet and rock and roll writers Michael Walker and Barney Hoskins. Bill Lasarow’s Artscene Visual Radio aired interviews with many of the artists, which are still on the internet. I thank Gail Eichenthal and Sheila Tepper at KUSC and Karen Huang, who helped with my early research thanks to the support of ArtTable. The Getty Research Institute as a whole, and Andrew Perchuk and Rani Singh in particular have been invaluable, as have David Rodes at UCLA and Liza Kirwin at the Archives of American Art. Special thanks to Catherine Grenier for the landmark exhibition of Los Angeles art at the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the invaluable catalog. Of course, this book would not be possible without my agents, Eric and Maureen Lasher, and my thoughtful and supportive editors, Jack Macrae and Kirsten Reach. I thank them for their faith in this project. A special thank-you goes to my amazing husband, David Philp, as always.
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