Michael Bowen (artist) - Early Career in Los Angeles

Early Career in Los Angeles

Michael Bowen was born December 8, 1937, in Beverly Hills to Grace and Sterling Bowen, a Hollywood dentist. His mother's lover, Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, affectionately known as Uncle Benjie to Michael, would often take the youthful Bowen to not only the Flamingo Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada that he created, but also to the Sir Francis Drake Hotel near Union Square in downtown San Francisco. Bowen's early romance with San Francisco established this city as his home base from which he would frequently travel to other places in the world. He started his art career at age 17, when he joined the American installation artist Ed Kienholz in his Los Angeles studio. There he met and joined with other influential Beat Generation artists including Wallace Berman, John Altoon, and Dennis Hopper. Bowen participated in the construction of the Ferus Gallery and Now Gallery created by Ed Kienholz and curated by Walter Hopps. Bowen attended the Chouinard Art Institute for several years during his formative artistic experiences in Los Angeles.

Read more about this topic:  Michael Bowen (artist)

Famous quotes containing the words los angeles, early, career, los and/or angeles:

    Local television shows do not, in general, supply make-up artists. The exception to this is Los Angeles, an unusually generous city in this regard, since they also provide this service for radio appearances.
    Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)

    We are living now, not in the delicious intoxication induced by the early successes of science, but in a rather grisly morning-after, when it has become apparent that what triumphant science has done hitherto is to improve the means for achieving unimproved or actually deteriorated ends.
    Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.
    Arlie Hochschild (20th century)

    Just because you live in LA it doesn’t mean you have to dress that way.
    —Advertising billboard campaign in Los Angeles, mounted by New York fashion house Charivari.

    In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.
    Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)