by Gwen L. Allen on February 06, 2012
The emergence of Los Angeles as the “second city” of American art, as art historian Barbara Rose once called it, was witnessed by Artforum’s tenure here. Founded in San Francisco in 1962, the magazine focused almost exclusively on West Coast art during its first few years and sought to be an alternative to the mainstream New York–based art press. Yet Artforum’s short stint in Los Angeles, from 1965 to 1967, proved merely a stepping-stone on the way to New York, where it was soon lured by East Coast prestige and advertising revenue.
by Anne Ayres on January 11, 2012
In this interview, Rosamund Felsen describes engaging in the nascent 1960s Los Angeles art world; the founding of Gemini GEL with her husband, Sidney, and Stanley and Elyse Grinstein; working in the now-defunct Pasadena Art Museum and that museum’s downfall; starting a gallery to show younger artists making nontraditional forms of art; the financial difficulties of exhibiting Conceptual art; and the importance of art schools in forming a regional art scene.
by Moira Roth on December 15, 2011
In this interview Suzanne Lacy offers a thorough discussion of the development of feminism in California and the California art world in the early 1970s. She describes her introduction to Judy Chicago and her subsequent involvement in the Feminist Art Program at Fresno State and later at CalArts, as well as the development of her own performance-based work and the influence of other artists such as Faith Wilding and Allan Kaprow.
by Nick Stillman on December 07, 2011
Probably like most who are aware of her art, I’m an admirer of Senga Nengudi’s great RSVP series from the late 1970s. But for all the celebration of the RSVP installations as scrappier takes on formlessness in the manner of Louise Bourgeois and Lynda Benglis⎯and heavily filtered through assemblage art’s employment of freighted materials with a past life⎯it isn’t easy to find out much more about Nengudi’s other work.
by Paul Karlstrom on November 29, 2011
Artist and musician Terry Allen describes his friendship with Al Ruppersberg when they were students at Chouinard Art Institute and talks about Ruppersberg’s seminal environmental project, Al’s Café. While still students, he and Ruppersberg operated a storefront gallery, and he remembers late-night visits from Walter Hopps. He also talks about teachers like Emerson Woelffer and the day Marcel Duchamp visited his art history class.
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