[Editor’s Note: Sadly, the legendary Robert Rauschenberg passed away late Monday night at the age of 82. What follows is a piece from the current issue of Art and Living about the legacy of both Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. As Peter Frank explains below, Rauschenberg will forever be remembered for his innovative oeuvre and momentous contributions to the art world. Rest in peace.]
Fathers of the Future
By Peter Frank
If there had been no Jasper Johns and no Robert Rauschenberg, we would have had to invent both of them. Our art, our lives, our current sense of the world are all inconceivable without their accomplishments, their lessons, their demonstrations of art’s—and life’s—simultaneous availability and ineffability. Art, they showed, could be ordinary and mysterious at once—and, indeed, mysterious for its very ordinariness.
[Ed Moses at work in his Los Angeles studio. Courtesy of the artist]
Seminal artists Ed Moses and Larry Belltalk with Art and Living about the nows and thens of the Los Angeles art scene
Art and Living: What was it that kept you in L.A. during the 50s and 60s?
Ed Moses: I thought about traveling but in the 50s I was still in school until the late 50s. Then I joined the Ferus Gallery in December of ‘57 where I was in a group show and met all of the primary artists of the Ferus Gallery—Bob Irwin, Larry Bell, Ken Price, Ed Ruscha coming later in 1959. And there was a huge amount of camaraderie and competitiveness. We fed off of each other in terms of attitude, not imagery. Everybody seemed to have their own view. A lot of studio visits took place and we hung out at Barney’s Beanery. It was a strong motivator when you returned from these studio visits. And that was all very convenient because we all lived in Venice and Sawtelle.
[From left to right: Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Craig Kauffman, Ken Price, Billy Al Bengston, and Larry Bell. Photo by Howard Wise]
Ferus Gallery was the hotspot of the midcentury L.A. art scene. But it wasn’t the only one, writes art critic Peter Frank
Everything old is new again, especially in an art world that (literally) values its history but is always on the lookout for a good investment. So while bidding wars erupt over obscure contemporary artists because they come from the right school or gallery or country, whole movements and art scenes that hardly rated a footnote ten years ago are suddenly dug out of the basement, and artists whose phones haven’t rung since they were rotary suddenly have to get answering machines—and e-mail, and agents, and calendars. The cutting-edge artists of postwar Los Angeles, for instance, attracted much attention in their day, and not just locally; many Angelenos who emerged back then jumped from local group shows into Whitney Biennials and even enjoyed their first one-person exhibitions in New York galleries such as Pace and Castelli. Similarly, La Cienega Boulevard’s “gallery row” featured outlets vigorous, sophisticated, and well-supported enough to show the latest work from New York and San Francisco and even Europe.
Winston Churchill is best known for his leadership of Great Britain during WWII, and his historic speeches. Yet, few people realize his brilliance as a painter. Normally, Churchill paintings are not sold in the United States. They are usually reserved for sales in the United Kingdom. This Wednesday, April 23, 2008, a Winston Churchill original will be auctioned at Bonhams in New York City. To date this is the sixth Churchill painting sold in the United States over the past twenty years.
At first glance, Beverly Hills-based plastic surgeon Randal Haworth is unassuming. His office is modest yet inviting. His stature is average and void of the materialistic trappings of success. Yet, as he talks, the true duality of his being emerges: a dichotomy of limits and possibilities, a struggle between the rigid principles that guide him in medicine and the universal truths of an endless imagination. Read the rest of this entry »
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