Creating the future : art & Los Angeles in the 1970s

425 Pages·2014·2.79 MB·English

by  Fallon

U.S. $28.00
PRAISE FOR CREATING THE FUTURE Creating the Future is a provocative look at the bur-
AA CC
geoning art scene in Southern California during the
RR RR CC RR EE AA TT II NN GG 1970s and its wide-ranging influence on the future
“The story of how, despite great odds, a viable art scene bloomed in Southern California TT of art. It seeks to debunk the idea that the progress
EE of art in Los Angeles ceased during the 1970s—after the
. . . A well-researched, wide-ranging history that amply captures the confusion, AA
decline of the Ferus Gallery, the scattering of its stable of
contradictions, and enormous energy of one triumphant decade.” —KIRKUS NN AA
artists (Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha,
DD
TT and others), and the economic struggles throughout the
“Michael Fallon interweaves dozens of biographies to tell the tale of the most formative
decade—and didn’t resume until sometime around 1984.
decade that the Los Angeles art scene will ever know. After the clubby Ferus gallery was LL II TT HH EE
However, this is far from the reality of L.A. art history.
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shuttered, the only artists left to lead Los Angeles were the outsiders. Artists as disparate
SS The passing of those fashionable 1960s-era icons, in
as Judy Chicago, Robert Williams, Bas Jan Ader, and Llyn Foulkes each take the
GG fact, allowed for the development of a chaotic array of in-
spotlight as Fallon brings to life a time when innovation mattered more than AA dependent voices, marginalized communities, and ener-
money. The earnestness of the author’s lean prose should create a hunger
NN getic visions that thrived during the stagnant 1970s. Fal-
MICHAEL FALLON is a longtime writer and and wistfulness for authenticity in the heart of every serious art lover.” GG TT FF UU TT UU RR EE lon’s narrative describes and celebrates the wide range
—MAT GLEASON, Coagula Art Journal of intriguing artists and the world—not just the works—
editor on arts and culture based in Minneapolis, EE HH
they created. He reveals the deeper, more culturally dy-
where he serves as the Executive Director of Min- LL
“Unfairly maligned as a cultural wasteland, the Los Angeles of the 1970s was actually EE EE namic truth about a significant moment in American art
neapolis TV Network, a public access communi-
home to a stunning array of artists and art scenes that channeled the disillusionment of SS history, presenting an alternative story of stubborn cre-
ty media center. He has published hundreds of
ativity in the face of widespread ignorance and misappre-
the era — and the myriad challenges of life in the sprawling, smog-choked city — into
reviews, feature articles, essays, and profiles in II
FF hension among the art cognoscenti, who dismissed the
print and on the internet for City Pages in Minne- work that was powerful, enduring, and profoundly influential. Kudos to Michael Fallon for NN
1970s in Los Angeles as a time of dissipation and decline.
apolis, The Orange County Weekly, The St. Paul shining a brilliant and well-deserved spotlight upon this fascinating period.” UU
TT Coming into being was an ardent local feminist art
Pioneer Press, Pittsburgh City Paper, Minneap- —DAN EPSTEIN, author of Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America
HH TT movement, which had lasting influence on the direction
olis-St. Paul Magazine, The Utne Reader, Public in the Bicentennial Summer of ‘76, Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky
EE of art across the nation; an emerging Chicano Art move-
Art Review, American Craft, and Art in America. Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s UU
AA RR TT AA NN DD ment, spreading Chicano murals across Los Angeles and
Fallon received national attention for his blog 11
RR to other major cities; a new and more modern vision for
about the struggles of artists, The Chronicle of “Michael Fallon performs a double service with Creating the Future: He contradicts 99
the role and look of public art; a slow consolidation of lo-
Artistic Failure in America. His current blog— the notion that artistic activity in Southern California lost its mojo after the 1960s, and 77 EE LL OO SS AA NN GG EE LL EE SS
cal street sensibilities, car fetishism, and gang and punk
Pacific Ocean Blue: Tales of L.A’s Past/Tales of 00
he makes the argument by identifying and connecting all the myriad dots, compiling a aesthetics into the earliest version of what would later
L.A. Today—is focused on the art, culture, and SS
thorough, vivid history. With a supple perspective, focusing here, pulling back there, become the “Lowbrow” art movement; the subversive
history of Southern California. Fallon studied art II NN TT HH EE 11 99 77 00 SS
Fallon promulgates the sense that L.A. and its environs constituted one of the most co-opting, in full view of Pop Art, of the values, aesthet-
at UC Berkeley and in the graduate program at
challenging and exciting places to make art throughout the latter half of the ics, and imagery of Tinseltown by a number of young
Cal State Fullerton, and completed a Master’s
in Arts Management at Carnegie Mellon Uni- 20th century, ‘me decade’ or no.” —PETER FRANK, Fabrik magazine and innovative local artists who would go on to greater
national renown; and a number of independent voices
versity in Pittsburgh, where, while spearhead-
who, lacking the support structures of an art movement
ing a comprehensive study of the nation’s aging “[A] lively history of artistic pluralism and dissidence. Fallon casts a wide net over avant-
or artist cohort, pursued their brilliant artistic visions in
artists, he interviewed California luminaries like garde and populist art movements to demonstrate that Angelino art in the 70s remained MM II CC HH AA EE LL
near-isolation.
Llyn Foulkes and George Herms. Please visit as fresh, radical, and influential as ever, if not more so.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
FF AA LL LL OO NN
www.writermichaelfallon.com. Despite the lack of attention, these artists would lat-
er reemerge as visionary signposts to many later trends
in art. Their work would prove more interesting, more
ISBN: 978-1-61902-343-7
Cover Art: Four Level Interchange, Intersection lastingly influential, and vastly more important than ever
of Arroyo Seco Parkway & Harbor, Hollywood and 52800 MM II CC HH AA EE LL FF AA LL LL OO NN
imagined or expected by those who saw it or even by
Santa Ana Freeways (milepost 23.69), Los Angeles,
Los Angeles County, CA. Courtesy of the Library of COUNTERPOINT those who created it in 1970s Los Angeles. Creating the
Congress Prints and Photographs Division. www.counterpointpress.com Future is a visionary work that seeks to recapture this
Jacket design by Maren Fox Distributed by Publishers Group West important decade and its influence on today’s generation
Author photo by Carrie Thompson 9 781619 023437
of artists.
CREATING THE FUTURE

C R E A T I N G
T H E
F U T U R E
MICHAEL FALLON
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
ISBN 978-1-61902-343-7 (hardback)
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 978-1-61902-343-7
Cover design by Maren Fox
Interior Design by Megan Jones Design
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
www.counterpointpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Nicole & Eleanor

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Confusion, Uncertainty, and the Southern Californian Origins
of Art’s Postmodern Plurality 1
CHAPTER I. A DEW Line for the Old Culture
1971, the “Art and Technology” Exhibition, and the End of L.A.’s
Modernist Daydreams 9
CHAPTER II. The Long March
The Rise of Women Artists 27
CHAPTER III. Viva Mi Raza!
The Rise of Chicano Artists 49
CHAPTER IV. A Laminar Flow at the Edges
Or, Anger and Dissent in the Early 1970s Art Scene 75
CHAPTER V. Not an Energy Crisis
L.A.’s Explosion in Conceptual and Performance Art 107
CHAPTER VI. “Devil With a Hammer and Hell With a Torch”
How L.A.’s Street Culture Inspired a New “Lowbrow” Art Movement 153
CHAPTER VII. The Horizontal City
Public Art in the Landscape of L.A. 191
CHAPTER VIII. The Mongols in the West
A Trio of Outsiders Quietly Subvert the L.A. Art World 221
CHAPTER IX. Future Shock
The Birth of L.A.’s Young Romantics 251
CHAPTER X. A Last Look at the “L.A. Look” 285
EPILOGUE
The Lingering Afterimage of L.A.’s Art of the 1970s 309
END NOTES 347
INDEX 389

INTRODUCTION
Confusion, Uncertainty, and the
Southern Californian Origins of Art’s
Postmodern Plurality
LOS ANGELES’ EMERGENCE AS A NATIONAL ART
capital in the mid-twentieth century owes as much to circum-
stance and timing as it does to the artists of the era. Beginning
in the 1950s, after a half-century of intensive polish,1 the far Western
outpost region known as Southern California emerged as America’s
shining beacon of hope—a forward-looking, golden Shangri-La by the
Pacific Ocean.
Los Angeles—which had grown by mid-century to become
California’s cultural and demographic capital—was 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 time—in 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
1