Rebels in Paradise (38 page)

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 thinking.” George Herms, interview with author, March 8, 2005.