Author: Tim Nye Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC ISBN: 1580933866 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
A beautifully produced monograph devoted to the paintings and drawings of John Altoon, a central figure in the Los Angeles art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. Haunting and erotic, Altoon’s colorful paintings and intimate drawings capture a magical moment in postwar California, between the Beat Generation and the sexual and psychedelic revolution of the late sixties. His larger-than-life personality and enthusiasm energized the circle of artists associated with the Ferus Gallery, a nexus of L.A. avant-gardism that included such still influential figures as Ed Keinholtz, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Larry Bell, and Ed Ruscha. A boisterous, hard-living man, in love with the ladies, Altoon was plagued by bouts of depression alternating with episodes of mania that sometimes turned destructive. He died young, at the age of 43, from a massive heart attack, and his funeral is said to have included the largest number of Los Angeles artists ever to gather in one spot. This unique, oversized presentation includes reproduced sketchbooks; moving personal essays by major figures including poet Robert Creeley and pioneering West Coast curator Walter Hopps; photographs of Altoon in his Venice studio; a booklet of letters to Altoon; and over 50 works of art.
Author: Kristine McKenna Publisher: ISBN: Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 330
Book Description
In 1950s California, and especially in Los Angeles, there existed few venues for contemporary art. To a whole generation of California artists, this presented a freedom, since the absence of a context for their work meant that they could coin their own, and in uncommonly interesting ways. The careers of Ed Ruscha, Wallace Berman and Ed Kienholz all begin with this absence: Ruscha turned to books as a means of dissemination, Berman pioneered mail art through his magazine Semina and in March 1957, Ed Kienholz, in collaboration with curator Walter Hopps, co-founded one of California's greatest historical galleries, Ferus. Within months of opening, Ferus, which is Latin for "wild," gained notoriety when the Hollywood vice squad raided Berman's first--and, in his lifetime, last--solo exhibition, following a complaint about "lewd material." Shows by Kienholz and Jay DeFeo followed, but 1962 was Ferus' annus mirabilis, with solo shows by Bruce Conner and Joseph Cornell, and the first solo shows of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol on the west coast. The following year, Ferus also hosted Ed Ruscha's first solo exhibition. After Kienholz and Hopps parted ways--Hopps went on to mount the first American Duchamp retrospective at the Pasadena Art Musuem--the reins were handed to Irving Blum, who got Ferus out of the red and ran the gallery until its closure in 1966. A Place to Begin is an illustrated oral history of this heroic enterprise. With 62 new interviews with Ferus artists and more than 300 photographs (most previously unpublished), it retrieves a lost chapter of twentieth-century American art. Edited by Kristine McKenna, noted expert and co-editor of the critically acclaimed Semina Culture.
Author: Michael Duncan Publisher: ISBN: 9780983587026 Category : Abject art Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Until recently, the figurative artists who dominated the Los Angeles art scene of the 1940s and 50s had largely been written out of art history. L.A. Raw is an attempt to right that wrong. Bringing together works by 41 artists in a variety of media, it traces a lineage that connects postwar figurative expressionism to the 1960s and 70s investigations of politics, gender and ethnicity in art. The featured artists include John Altoon, Wallace Berman, William Brice, Hans Burckhardt, Chris Burden, Cameron, Judy Chicago, Connor Everts, Llyn Foulkes, Charles Garabedian, David Hammonds, Robert Heinecken, John Paul Jones, Kim Jones, Ed and Nancy Kienholz, Rico Lebrun, Paul McCarthy, Arnold Mesches, Betye Saar, Ben Sakoguchi, Barbara Smith, James Strombotne, Jan Stussy, Edward Teske, Joyce Treiman, Howard Warshaw, June Wayne, Charles White and Jack Zajac.
Author: Lawrence Lipton Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing ISBN: 1786256207 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 538
Book Description
Mr. Lipton’s book is the first complete and unbiased survey of the beat generation and its role in our society. Here are the intimate facts about these people and their attitudes toward sex, dope, jazz, art, religion, parents, landlords, employers, politicians, draft boards, the law and, most important, toward the “square”. The author presents a picture of their way of life, their individual backgrounds, the language they have appropriated, in terms made clear for the first time to those of us who have been confused and puzzled about them. He also provides a balanced discussion of their literature, art and music, of what they produce and fail to produce in the arts they practice.—Print Ed.
Author: Walter Hopps Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1632865319 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 353
Book Description
Art Forum's Best of the Year List A panoramic look at art in America in the second half of the twentieth century, through the eyes of the visionary curator who helped shape it. An innovative, iconoclastic curator of contemporary art, Walter Hopps founded his first gallery in L.A. at the age of twenty-one. At twenty-four, he opened the Ferus Gallery with then-unknown artist Edward Kienholz, where he turned the spotlight on a new generation of West Coast artists. Ferus was also the first gallery ever to show Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans and was shut down by the L.A. vice squad for a show of Wallace Berman's edgy art. At the Pasadena Art Museum in the sixties, Hopps mounted the first museum retrospectives of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell and the first museum exhibition of Pop Art--before it was even known as Pop Art. In 1967, when Hopps became the director of Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art at age thirty-four, the New York Times hailed him as "the most gifted museum man on the West Coast (and, in the field of contemporary art, possibly in the nation)." He was also arguably the most unpredictable, an eccentric genius who was chronically late. (His staff at the Corcoran had a button made that said WALTER HOPPS WILL BE HERE IN TWENTY MINUTES.) Erratic in his work habits, he was never erratic in his commitment to art. Hopps died in 2005, after decades at the Menil Collection of art in Houston for which he was the founding director. A few years before that, he began work on this book. With an introduction by legendary Pop artist Ed Ruscha, The Dream Colony is a vivid, personal, surprising, irreverent, and enlightening account of his life and of some of the greatest artistic minds of the twentieth century.
Author: Carol S. Eliel Publisher: Prestel Publishing ISBN: 9783791353548 Category : ART Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This first major book on John Altoon, a legendary figure of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s, examines the artist's work not only in the context of his peers but also considers his resonance for later generations of artists. Dynamic and often erotically charged, the drawings and paintings are intimately connected--Altoon's exuberant canvases both respond to and inform the primal energy of his works on paper. This book includes photographs of many previously undocumented works as well as a historical and contextual essay, a distinctive text by artist Paul McCarthy, and brief statements by Monica Majoli, Monique Prieto, Laura Owens, and Barbara T. Smith.
Author: Stephanie Barron Publisher: Prestel Publishing ISBN: 9783791352558 Category : Ceramic sculpture, American Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This book was published on the occasion of the exhibition Ken Price Sculpture: A Retrospective, which was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Exhibition itinerary: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 16, 2012-January 6, 2013, Nasher Sculpture Center, February 9, 2013-May 12, 2013, Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 18-September 22, 2013.
Author: Jay Belloli Publisher: RAM U.S.A., Publications and Distribution ISBN: Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 152
Book Description
"A remarkable catalog of a remarkable exhibition in 1999, recreating a fertile and exciting period in the artistic past of Southern California. During the '60s and early '70s, the old Pasadena Art Museum - now the Norton Simon Museum - aggressively collected the finest art of the moment, and brought together cutting edge Los Angeles artists like Llyn Foulkes and Ed Kienholz, along with world renowned artists like Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Frank Stella. This exhibition brought the collection to light once again, combining it with works from music and film, reviving the spirit of a magic moment."
Author: Tim Nye
Author: Kristine McKenna
Author: Michael Duncan
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Author: Lawrence Lipton
Author: Walter Hopps
Author: Carol S. Eliel
Author: Catherine Grenier
Author: Stephanie Barron
Author: Jay Belloli