Arts and Culture of Los Angeles - Art

Art

The plein air movement of impressionistic landscape painting found early adherents in the Los Angeles area, and became a signature style of California art. In the 1960s, Corita Kent, then known as Sister Mary Corita of Immaculate Heart College, created bright, bold serigraphs carrying the messages of love and peace.

Los Angeles is known for its mural art, and its thousands of examples of wall art are believe to outnumber those in every other city in the world. Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco all created murals in the area.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Chicano art movement took a strong hold in Los Angeles. Much of the work produced followed the Mexican muralist tradition of sending potent social messages. Works produced in this era by the East Los Streetscapers are still extantnt in East Los Angeles and at the Estrada Courts, and works by Judy Baca and the Social and Public Art Resource Center are found citywide. Chicano arts in Los Angeles also gave rise to the internationally renowned Self Help Graphics & Art, known for its Corita Kent-influenced serigraphs and its annual Día de los Muertos festival.

Much of the energy in the city's art scene in the 1945 to 1980 stretch came from private collectors, artists' collectives, print shops, art schools and especially from commercial galleries. In 1943, a community-run arts association in Pasadena merged with the better funded Pasadena Art Institute and moved into what is now the home of the Pacific Asia Museum. Renamed the Pasadena Art Museum, it organized some of the most adventurous and cutting edge shows of contemporary art in the region, notably, an early Pop art show in 1962, and a Marcel Duchamp retrospective in 1963. Although the city had a long tradition of visual arts supported by private collectors and galleries, Los Angeles did not have a comprehensive museum of art until 1965, when LACMA opened its doors. At about the same time, La Cienega Boulevard became home to many art galleries, most notably Ferus, featuring works by artists who lived in the area, Dwan Gallery, and Riko Mizuno Gallery. Although Andy Warhol was New York based, the famous "soup cans" were first exhibited at Ferus. A local exponent of pop art was Ed Ruscha, some of whose work was representational, others consisted of simple slogans or mottoes which were usually humorous, being so far out of the context where such statements would normally appear. An example of this is Nice Hot Vegetables Larry Bell, for example, explored the interaction of a sculpture to its environment, demonstrating that the boundaries are usually not entirely clear. David Hockney, an English immigrant, produced figurative paintings set in idyllic Southern California locales, such as swimming pools in the bright sunlight, belonging to modernist houses. Although these paintings are representational, they seem to be composed of small color patches, somewhat like collages. Finish Fetish—a style that emphasized gleaming surfaces—and Light and Space—art about perception—were other Ferus-bred styles that allowed L.A. to distinguish itself from the rest of the art world. It was during this period that the contemporary arts scene in Los Angeles began to command the attention of collectors and museum directors internationally.

Some of the most respected art museums in the world can be found in Los Angeles. They include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Norton Simon Museum, the Huntington Library art collection and botanical gardens, and the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. Los Angeles is known for its expansive collections of contemporary art- the Museum of Contemporary Art has three separate incarnations: the Geffen Contemporary, for larger installation pieces by more renown artists, the MOCA Downtown, its standard collection, and the Pacific Palisades, a large, multi-purpose building in modernist style that houses offices as well as stores and showrooms for contemporary graphic design, architecture, and interior design. Other smaller art museums in the city include the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the California African American Museum, and many sculpture gardens throughout the city, including those at the American Jewish University and the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden. Private art collections that are open to the public are the ones by Eli Broad and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.

In 1989 the City passed a law which requires developers to contribute one percent of the cost of construction of new buildings to a public art fund. The growth of Los Angeles as an art capital was first comprehensively documented in a series of exhibitions partially funded and spearheade by the Getty, but held at all major museums during the Fall of 2011. "The exhibitions, and the events that accompanied them as part of "Pacific Standard Time" demonstrated the pivotal role played by Southern California in national and international artistic movements since the middle of the twentieth century. Art institutions from Santa Barbara to San Diego are joining together to create programs that highlighted the region's vibrant artistic scene."

Los Angeles is home to two professional art colleges, Otis College of Art and Design, which was founded in 1917 as Otis Art Institute, and California Institute of the Arts, founded in 1961 as successor of the Chouinard Art Institute.

Culver City's La Cienega Boulevard features one of the highest concentrations of fine art galleries and studios in Southern California. The trendy bohemian neighborhoods of Silver Lake and Los Feliz are home to numerous smaller galleries, showcasing local or underground art. Gallery Row downtown is known for its small DIY galleries, such as The Smell, which doubles as a punk and noise music venue.

As the trend continues to expand eastbound, the local neighborhoods surrounding the Los Angeles River such as Lincoln Heights, Montecito Heights, and of course Boyle Heights are beginning to show the positive effects of the recent Metro system, but most importantly gentrification of the warehouse district on the outskirts of Little Tokyo—known as the Arts District.

The flourishing Thursday Art Walk started roughly 6 years ago has morphed into a weekly showcasing of eclectic pop art, eccentric musicians, and the best taste of Taratinoesque cabaret. With the Bordello, and East Side Luv's commodification of burlesque acts, the contemporary art scene has adapted this—colloquial art-style—as a staple of Los Angeles Art Cultura.