LA Art Through The Years

Stage II, 1958, by Karl Benjamin

	Andrew Perchuk
	8 Natural Handstands, 1969/2009, by Robert Kinmont

Perhaps there would be more anxiety in my work if I lived in New York,” quipped legendary Pop artist Ed Ruscha about choosing to live and work in LA. This coastal measure for measure has long existed in the milieu of postwar-art practice in the United States, where the Abstract Expressionism movement in New York has been regarded as the impetus and heart of the postwar American art movement.

But starting last month, Angelenos are showing the world Southern California has been just as critical within the canon of American art history as its rival coast. “Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945– 1980,” an expansive region-wide project initiated through $10 million in grants from The Getty Foundation along with sponsors including Bank of America, will present the artistic evolution of Los Angeles by way of more than 60 institutions in Southern California, hosting more than 60 exhibitions and public programs that explore every facet of the area’s rich contemporary art scene between 1945 and 1980.

Insider Insight
Andrew Perchuk, deputy director of The Getty Research Institute, codirector of “Pacific Standard Time” (with Joan Weinstein of The Getty Foundation) and cocurator of the exhibition “Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970” at The J. Paul Getty Museum, offers insight on four shows he feels represent a cross-section of the “PST” initiative.

“‘Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970’ covers the earlier part of this era of Los Angeles art,” says Perchuk, who cocurated the exhibition with Rani Singh, senior research associate at The Getty Research Institute. It offers a focused examination of painting and sculpture of the period between the 1940s and mid-’70s, when artists were exploring new approaches to art-making, new techniques and tackling subjects beyond the figure and narrative. This newfound freedom resulted in the assemblage sculpture, hard-edge paintings and large-scale ceramics of the 1950s; the development of iconic Pop images of the city in the 1960s; and the conceptual and material contributions of Light and Space art and process painting that was the art of the 1970s. The latter is represented in a body of works by pioneering artists of the time, including David Hockney, Vija Celmins, Bruce Nauman and Ruscha, as well as lesser-known (but equally important) artists such as DeWain Valentine, Wallace Berman and Betye Saar, among many others.

“The conceptual art show ‘State of Mind: New California Art Circa 1970’ picks up exactly where ‘Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970’ leaves off,” says Perchuk, moving on in the chronology of the Los Angeles art scene, “from the objects—paintings and sculptures—[included] in the ‘Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents’ show to types of non-objective art and conceptual art and related practices that followed.”