John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha highlight LA`s truest and brightest
Transcription
John Baldessari and Ed Ruscha highlight LA`s truest and brightest
;+ I LA$tories A*rgelino :art patriarchs John Baldessarl and Ed Ruscha pick out their honre city's : truest voices and brightest new talent PHOTOGRAPHY: CEIr*lC BfrClCr ..:. : : .. Al.ll ul^]nf s,vHfsnu rv Nl oronrs 5102 AuvnNvr M =t :a. ..:i : ! 1 I NO o3HdVU9otOHd VHISnU ONV IUVSS]O]VS NHOi Ol : -,=, I ernllnf, :- I I 'Los Angeles is just a bunch of nerve endingsl begins Ed Ruscha. The artist is sitting at a rectangular table in his a generously sized warehouse library r00m in his Culver City studio dtat houses his extensive collection of artist catalogues and monographs, and other books, fiction and non'fiction, that he's gathered over time, subiects indude poetry, {t criticismind history, literature, pop culture, fil*, fashion, politics and, of course, LA. A lot ofthese nerve endings happen to be artists, and they're the ones that I listen to. I keep myselfopen to that, so that's how I've met these people or know about them,'he says. 'A11 are completely different from one another and yet they all have the same kind ofpotency and drive that makes you wake up and smell the roses.' Take, for instance, Ariel Pink, pioneer oflo-fi sound 'he's way out therei notes Ruscha. Ruscha caught an early-career Pink set at a nice dinner, a'theatrical, disjointed performancej that was so 'edgy and challenging', Ruscha recalls that payment was temporarily withheld. 'A11 share the same kinds of quirkiness in the idea of living here,'he goes on. 'They're all pretty much doing their own thing.' Some are friends, a few he has encountered briefly, several he doesn't know directly but collects. (The studio walls proffei pieces by so many other artists, one is hard pressed to find a Ruscha) 'I've nevet met him but have a couple of his works. He uses text in funny ways,' says Ruscha, picking up a )on Pylypchuk collage in which stream-of-consciousness dialogue is scrawled primitively, attached to a smallish character costumed in a swatch ofapplied fabric. Near the Pylypchuk are two Dani Tull watercolours. Setting offone are variations ofa loosely rendered line, refractions ofa shape in the body. Ruscha also talks about novelist Mark Z Danielewski, who arranges his words into distinct shapes and form. Again, he isn't personally acquainted but reads him, if that is what you do with Danielewski. Ruscha first met Daniel foseph Martinez when Martinez was a teenage photographer and he was the assignment. In the decades since, he has tracked this particular nerve ending, whose conceptual, printed and performance work marches into'artist-activist' territories.'He's got something to say,'states Ruscha. Ruscha, ofcourse, has his own renditions ofthe city, including Hollywood, Sunseq Santa Monica, Vine (1998), The Back ofHollywood (1977), and The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire (t965-68). Ruscha does black and white and colour but now thinks ofthe city in monochrome.'When I dream about this place, I picture it very much like ablack and white movie,'he says. Not that he's disengaged.'Thirteen thousand people ry6 wallpaper* arrive daily to live here. The mayor came by and I told him that and he kind of changed the subiect,' mentions Ruscha with an easygoing laugh. Even Sunset Boulevard, the subiect of Ruscha's seminal z5ft Every Buildingon the Sunser Srrip (1966), is to be deluged with'recently approved skyscrapers.' 'They're on a real rush to develop this city out and maximise the density,'says Ruscha. 'It's getting to be claustrophobic.' His respite from the density is twofold - the solitude of his Mof ave Desert home, and his warehouse studio.'I've always had this lovehate relationship with LA. I've lived here for 6o years or so and I still find it inspiring but I can't say why.' )ohn Baldessari is another artist with an intense relationship with the city. So much so that when Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was struggling to find anyone that could deliver a new logo for the museum, he turned to Baldessari. Several days later, the artist invited Govan to his studio to see the imagery: an iPhone-photograph palm tree, chumb, pencil - that replicated an image originally used by the artist in the I96os. 'Palm trees are omnipresent in LA. The pencil and thumb are a device for drawing students to use to get perspective right,' Baldessari explains. It could be his logo too. In the catalogue for the Hammer Museum's biennial'Made in LA zor4' exhibition, which focuses on emerging and under-recognised LA artists, the museum's chief curator Connie Butler wrote: 'In New York, it ll'as said, an artist knew she had made it when she could quir her teaching iob; in California, an artist knerr she had made it when she landed a teaching job.' \\'ith an I8-r ear-run at CalArts, begun in l97o and follor' ed :r nearlv a dozen more at UCLA, Baldessari exemol:i:s :he rradition. He remained a teacher even as in:e::a::o:ai recognition grew. His laidback style anc :..::.:,:: ',r.:e a stark contrast to the viciousness oi:h. :-.::::., ar:'school-crit. 'He didn't resist younger ge:l.::::::-: -. o:k.' one former student remembers. 'H. .... ,:-:::.aiened by it.' Instead, more than four tie:.::,,. ::::. :istudents have been through cj:s..s ::..: l.-:essari taught, creating a sort ofLA at:.':: : -:.::::r:r of'six degrees ofBaldessari' i:: :, r: : -- . -':-, : :-e -ieems to connect back to |ohn' ffi sroz NVr 'cooM^ttoH rsl^ '3UVMOUVH NOI1VUO-tS3l ro NlouvD do1-ioo fH-L NO OlHdVU3010H .-LNOUJ NMOO-fOtSdn 01))VB 'SdIU-LS Nl ONl SNni 'sulSvNll-t ssSllrv o rno€v Auols dtu-L-ovou slH 9002'sNoun70Ala ATN{ 'uoH-Lnv lH-L s,^vs .'-Llldssl, s,-Lt J lnoHIM, lnl8' 'n 182 INO-LNVd Nl ClUVfdd' SAVM-IV,]'\OH, CUOM ] 'tlnoN -Ln8lc slH oooz'szAvll lolsnol f. { 'xyu eqr ol sqde.rSorogd tulppe s; aq ''rrl2upl2q. .rog'd;ors aql;o Eugpuersrepun qq uadeep slnodt eldures a,rlleurellB allq^a'sluarutsn{pe eddl o4nb erloa s.relf,ereqJ e ol suoperellv iuolletuerul.rad 3o slead 1e.ra,res, tuplel'sdes eq.'8u1qllo(eur e eJloqf, ruoJ arl;, 'sace;od{r o oo'lz 1o 1,rctq71e r1t7 parlcols'ut1saqu1 6u1sn seqrm eq'.ralndtuor srJlqs plsn alepeq uaqr!\ ie{!I {ool III,ra rorreleqf, tBrli ro luerue^oru aql 'Ifheuo oql tet ot 8u/rr ru. 'sJelrereq) tuasa,rda.r-suopelueFo tuerejglP su,reped pue soqJled 'salPnls.slsltrJ8 ol ul{e selPoo ouH-{rlrlr}o IInJ s{ooqerou slrods eruoq poo,udlol tsa A sIH 'sBupr,rerp au11.ro sloqurds 'seq:le,r,rs tur 'etEP PalnqlJluof,-JePeeJ uoaa ro'sruaod eu 'seronb rsJalJereq, Jo pasodtuor sa.rglerJeu'sPIJo uelrF,ia s.Plsn eIaIuB( uJ'rrllluD a 2ry1 l"^o eurnlo -Illnu 'Sulurordn sgg roJ eullPeeP er ,noqe EuPIFt s.eH 'plsn altlue(I z {TEIAI lslle sq8nel ,'lse,r.re osnoq rePun rru seq Iooq eqJ 3Ep*sx $sgEp"&#Es IlpaePIuB( u {rB ernlln) Culture Berman ffB*eremgx.eg,:Eaer Molly Berman, daughter of Star Trek producer Rick Berman, attended a private school As a teenager, in Los Angeles but felt a distance from her peers. LA seemed vapid, misunderstood by those attracted to it, a glamorous surface with little beneath. Returning from Bard College, a small New York State liberal arts institution, 'I realised how wrong I was. When you get out of a place, you can start to see new parts ofit,' says the z4-year-old photographer. On a road trip across America, taken iust after graduating, Berman became transfixed by decrepit buildings in decaying towns or on stretches of withering roads between them. She took photographs of them and, in doing so, wondered,'Is it elitist to find beaury in them?' Her current series of imagei of comfortable Angelenos, living in highly sought-after zip codes, considers that same question. Posed with a set of their belongings, the images have the tinge of a luxury advertisement. 'But I try and add a little bit of emPtiness to them,' she says. ,ORDINARY COMBUSTIBLES' ,I TAKE PHOTOCRAPHS AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR MY TENDENCY TO STARE. IVY SHOW'S TITLE DERIVES FROI\4 THE FACT THAT I PHOTOCRAPH Greg EVERYDAY OBJECTS WITH THE HOPES OF BRINCINC NEW LIFE TO THEN,4 AND ALTERINC THE WAY THEY ARE VIEWED' PHOTOCRAPHED AT HON,1E IN I\IIRACLE N,1ILE, 9 ]ANUARY 2OI5 Wilken' eld scLgcT$ ,ON THE ROAD OF A THOUSAND TiVONDERS" 2OII WILKEN TRACES WALKINC TRAILS tN CALIFORNIA, INCLUDINC THE CA]\,4INO REAL, THAT BECAN,4E RAIL LINES THENROADS'PALIMPSESTS OFFERINC TRACES OF MAN'S IVlOVEI\,4ENT ACROSS THE LAND', ,ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF JUAN FERNANDEZ', 2006 THIS TOOK WILKEN TO AN ISLAND OFF CHILE WHERE A SCOTTISH SAILOR LANCUISHED FOR FOUR POST.SHIPWRECK YEARS IN THE 17OOS. HE WOULD LATER BECOME THE INSPIRATION FOR DANIEL DEFOE'S ROBINSON CRUSOE. PHOTOGRAPHED ON HIS SAILBOAT IN I\4ARINA DEL REY, 8 JANUARY 2015 'Art is a great excuse to be curious about the rvorld and, while doing so, live a pretty interesting life,' says Greg Wilken, a graduate of LA's Otis College of Art and Design, who now lives on a sailboat he restored in Marina del Rey. His large-format photoeraphs and self-published books are in-the-field erplorations of extraordinary history and geograph,v' \\'ilken's most recent excursion is his most far-flung: ren months in the Republic of I(iribati, a remote nation of tiny arolls in rhe equatorial Pacific rhat s at risk oi disappearing because ofsea level rise. The trip, funded by a Fulbright grant, also took him to a ne\{ creative place - working with moving image and sound. In this case, he collected footage lor an inscallation that uses che impact of global rr'armrng on iand to explore 'the mental space thar opens u hen viewers are confronted by the friction benteen different ideas' or scales, of time'. He says, 'The concept that during one lifetime an entire nation could disappear is akin to someone relling me the sun \1on r rise tomorrow'' n € .*€ # '*. =t. ffi.= * € -i5 €*, ..._ ry# Lk #i * I 6tt *leded;1e41 s1 to No18 1S nOH -Ung f Htuuvllnf lH-L \)Vdr slcnlf oloz'Avoot Nl laollg SI HU lUrSUnN V SNl9NlS SIIVM l/\]O] UO NOSIIM NVIUB SNIUfAO] SCI) fI.LSI.LNV )NIHJ, SV WNBIV ourHl s.)Ntd olEtEfsro ulMltnlu )uolHf-Lld lNo nooz'sfinaoloq lHl sxuonA a3!33"t3$ 'uerJrsnur eqt sJlrasqo ,'tm se uaes eq Lpo plno r , 'lerfrJluruoJun os sElrr tL 'ssII{ pEI{ IIIts lErlt sex[u q]1.. . s8urp:ora: auoq U-ol eqt uo ruerunrrsur d;ra.,ra pa ir'; pue ',{1r:eluarurpnr uauo 'punos d;a,te parnpo:d :r 'rrqder8 s,pu€q raqroue uo persed e8erur s.1-;i Suue.rod.rocur saurrteruos 'aBe1loc Jo u,lre;p puer{ Jr. .. ur ;adoo3 sIuuJC ruou JIuEJ -\\al.\:tsrg sn{'ssarord s,tsrtrt uE palalertd os surnqp i1::: . slelo)'wn)of i;y srq.ro; sarSolopogtrru aqt puy'e8eloc rl{r rp lrjE aug parpnts )urd uaqt rng 'srrVIEf pnrdecuo: o:o.u ' .., -.::jr ssel JrE'Jf,EJ s.{urd ruo4 tsef, s)seru r:-- - _ I -ri srJt)ereqf, JleloseP stauo) 2J/! 41ru)\I : - - : :;.. :rdorsip leuonoure s,auoq4 lq ur nqwn51 . :. , ' . -:r-rsnru JrIt setou ,'(oq,lo1 tP1up1ry d.ran, :, - - r.: -:- _ rJ?snu aloru E e{rJts 'ra8ur5 rut.r9 rotf,erlp --:: ,.- :. -,..r,.oEllor 'tunqlE JrIt roj Paf,nPo.rd soaprrr eqr : : -J: ! rJerJqnxa sr punos-uool-pJp,{\orJ 'anbtun l:.i :. -rnqTE 3'r'l lirod lrod ulnqlB qlual slq PasEalrl lsn( seq arl pue. rlrliry pua punog rc18uo8 Suos dot s,1-ro;qrtr4 rurElr ol :sa16 e.(uey prplno {urd IJuV 'oloz ul s-otr.$o raqleJpos 3I{"r " {uld lrlrY i #.ii; @-., M. .#' ffi ; rF i ; ; . ::IB .:-'is r, i ,{ .. }, ,: I Culture ,GAWDHEAD AND THE CAVE MIND" 2OO9 POST.PSYCHEDELIA, TAKING IN CAVE MEN, CREATION, PSYCHOACTIVE DRUCS AND ANCIENT TOTEIVS, ,ODD ARK" 2OO6 LINE DRAWINCS OF HEAVYLIDDED CARTOON STONERS AND MOCK.UPS FOR A N/ACAZINE TITLED MY F LU O R ESC EN T B EAT I TU D E- PHOTOCRAPHED AT HIS STUDIO IN HICHLAND PARK, IO JANUARY 2OI5 sSLg{fE& We${Kg > MAPS TO THE STARS WACNER'S SCREENPLAY FOR "!.ff&6. ",:eq ' .t I *.F "*ih6* -{ru THE FILM, D!RECTED BY DAVID CRONENBERC, SECURED A COLDEN CLOBE NOMINATION FOR JULIANNE IVOORE, WILD PALMS FIVE.HOUR ORWELLIAN I\IINISERIES, SCREENED IN 1993 AND BASED ON WACNER'S CON1IC STRIP OF THE SAI!1E NAIVE, FIRST PUBLISHED IN DET,A/LS I\,4ACAZINE PHOTOCRAPHED AT A PRIVATE RESIDENCE NEAR SUNSET BOULEVARD, 9 JANUARY 2015 tL'"q ! Dani Tull ^ Third generation artisc and musician Dani Tull possesses serious LA cultural pedigree. His grandfather, Sam Cherry, photographed Charles Bukowski, while his parents - both artists - founded pioneering vintage clothing store Aardvark's on Melrose Avenue. Early-career solo outings, such as a show at Blum & Poe, had a PoMo bent, while more recently, he's been known for pieces that tap into the mystical and subconscious. His latest show, at LAM Gallery, features hand-built sculptures that reflect in'the analogue'. Web tendrils are etched into rhe incandescent wax surface ofirregularly shaped rripodal forms, then inlaid with paint. 'l could easilr- ser :hese fabricated or 1D printed buc I want my hand inr oli'ed. he says. 'The work I am making, and a lor oi och.l rrork rhat I see being made right now, is a re sp:n.e ro social media and the way technology is so cee: r :nreqraced into our lives. There is a natural respo:!i ::: -.s ro seek out things that are handmade.' Tul1's ners interest T 't .'urq)r tuJuIP e ro SuFII tgt sI sePguv so'I lsBf, 'ruoorPaq eqr s! qr8eq arf,L, 'euroq B se rIJo $Iulql eq 'uFI ol TBIIIETeJ os st aqr;o ule.uer aqI'IorIrE A dpuy puu H ,bge sellril\ uosro;o ser;;1 eqr 8ugfura;',re,r1.rp ou4l leroq E sE ueql'JeAlrP eruBlnqurE ue se ts.ry {peas aqr pue lrlls eql uo elErlueruor or lootps qtlg qpt i(pe,reg,(qreau eqt go rno peddorp dlsnoure;.reu8e11 (ipqr1 ,(1sse1l1ne;, e.re'srnuap eq'Jers aql)'sergo dgeru,royul sq e.raq,u'esno11 oqogyo tsodrno y.J eqr re uroor e u1i(1qer.ro;uor Equls 'sppe eq,'u,noleurog dru s.r1 'poo,w(11o113o snonldrualuof, lou ur.J lng'af,uePuecsuBJl d1p;adogpue erqge; pue a18trurs ueunfi.* pue qqntue lnoqe sg 1,ro,n d1,r1n 'a1qs p.rel 'ri se ealspug se 8u11ar-rlrnrr rlrl^a uoq.rdu paqoleur'1seo, nqIIEIAI eq, go $IJo,raf,rg Ipl;o qrf e41; sdod pue sreruru;;8 reqr txel qrl A urslsslrrBu sJy'I PeJe^arIs taeq 'slelou'd11euos,rod rsour'pue sdelduee.rcs 'saplue q.reu8Eil\ errug'stPereP JoJ q3 E c.eE$F.Cr.?,te 3 i qi 33v {isf*a# 0rnJ[ &. \*" Y Cultui.e .: '.t '.-': , 1r.,. l.,ti.[!ii] i,- e!' ,,1, ,: :'. : _{: : l;..'-..,.1..,i i:-;{,';: -l l ' -t.:-.*1': ''-T,', 'fd'i ritr #@ Delia Brown PHOTOCRAPHED AT HER HOI\IE ]N SAN IA N,4ONI(A O ]ANUARY )OI\ ^ t., A few years ago, the painter Delia Brown returned from a spell in New York to a single-family home neigl-rbourhood a few blocks north of Venice. The buzz ofher 'Sex in rhe Ciry phase'was over, replaced by open water swims in the Pacific. Brown first earned crirical attention, not all ofit friendly, for her'Gueri1la Lounging'series, paintings ofher girlfriends in the homes ofwealthy collectors, arranged in decadent tableaux to create Monet-tinged portraits, drenched in fine r,.n= r:.:.ck and luxuries. Televisual glamour remainei a . :,.-rn. and the artist's current obsession is 7Lr,l.,;. :, :, ,:, :; ;-i series. Brown's original idea was to ger -::: ., : :::useryife tl-rat painted'but she has scale: ::=, -.:, .r pastoral portraits. In the first tobe 'LAST EXIT: PUNTA JUNTA" 2OI2 A CLAMOROUS FEN,IALE PARTY ON ST BARTHS -, - :..s LuAnn, of theTheRealHousewives of,\,, :' - . ==:es lrom a private dock, languid in a.l,:= -., :-:.. as sheenjoyshermorningcoffee. Ir is ::.. , . . ,.::es that could run and run. 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