Green-Red, 1965, acrylic lacquer on vacuum formed plastic, 89 ½ x 45 ¾ x 5 ½ inches.

Cover of Art in America, July-August 1966.

During the years 1965 to 1973, Craig Kauffman was represented by Pace Gallery in New York. The early plastic works were very well received and the gallery placed Kauffman’s paintings in major public and private collections.  By the summer of 1966, Kauffman’s acrylic plastic wall relief paintings were featured on the cover of Art in America. Kauffman continued to exhibit at Pace in New York, and by 1967 his work had been acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art. Also in 1967, historian and critic Barbara Rose included Kauffman in the exhibit “A New Aesthetic” at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art, along with Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Kauffman’s colleagues Larry Bell, Ron Davis and John McCracken. As Rose noted in her catalogue essay, “Shaping the brittle sheet plastic into a series of voluptuous curves, Kauffman achieves a kind of abstract eroticism that is purely visual.”

Installation view of Craig Kauffman exhibition at Pace Gallery in 1967. Photograph by Ferdinand Boesch, courtesy Pace Gallery.

Cover of A New Aesthetic. Washington Gallery of Modern Art, 1967 exhibition catalogue.

Art in the Digital Age: Part 2

I try to keep up with technology, but things keep rapidly accelerating. I am way behind, as the pace of change seems to be exponential, not just doubling every couple of years. It’s Moore’s law all over again (often cited, Gordon Moore’s observation that, over the history of computers, everything doubles every two years). Honestly, I rely on journalists and my young employees to keep me (even slightly) up to date.

Yesterday’s news that Facebook acquired WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars has me wondering: mobile computing is incredibly pervasive, and if everyone is on their phone, how does the use of mobile devices affect the way that people interact with art? Questions have been floating around in my head for years now, as I try to get a grip on how people are viewing and interacting with art. That’s because we try in every way to reach our audience: website, blog, videos, and online publications.

My gallery uses a lot of technology, though personally, I prefer art to be a direct, living and sensual experience. Is this working? And is it good for the artists? Is it good for the art? When we present an exhibition, far more people view it online than in person. We know this from the website data. We also know it anecdotally: “Oh, I saw your show online. What are you doing next?” is pretty much what I hear.

I wonder, and hear others asking questions: How does mobile computing affect the way that the public interacts with museum shows? How does the rise of corporate-owned news aggregators in the arts affect the perception of art and the way that people see exhibitions? When people “share” art on social media, is that an effective way to communicate? What media translate the best in the new digital age? What does not?

I missed out on the Whitney’s recent symposium and event about how the museum experience has been transformed by digital media, and wish I could know more about the ways that curators and art critics are viewing the topic. By the way, a tip of the hat to our friend Dan Phiffer, who developed a site-specific network that was used for the Whitney event.

Carnival!

I’m happy to announce the opening of Larry Bell’s second solo exhibition with White Cube Gallery, in São Paulo, Brazil. Bell first exhibited with White Cube London in the fall of 2013, with great success. Now, he’s been invited to participate in another exhibition, titled The Carnival Series, in São Paulo. On view from February 18 – March 22, 2014, this show is scheduled to coincide with the Brazilian Carnival season.

This exhibition will feature a selection of works dating from the 1980s to the present. This includes ten Mirage Works, composed of layers of found papers, films and applied acrylic paint, which play on the artist’s persistent interest in spatial ambiguity and perception. The show will also feature a recent series of colorful collages that reference the female form. Three Light Knots will round out the presentation, their graceful forms suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition space. Made of Mylar, these sculptures are multi-dimensional, kinetic works that reflect, refract, and transmit light.

It’s great to see Larry Bell continue to get such international exposure. One of the most prominent artists to have come out of the 1960s Los Angeles art scene, Bell’s work is featured in major museums collections around the world, including: the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum Ludwig, Cologne; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

John Mason in Museums

It’s always gratifying to learn that an artist is receiving deserved recognition. Especially when the work has been a key part of the history of American ceramic sculpture. This year, John Mason will be appearing in the Whitney Biennial, curated by Stuart Comer, Anthony Elms, and Michelle Grabner, on view March 7 – May 25, 2014. Of course, this isn’t Mason’s first time at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where Mason has a fifty year record of shows. His work has been included in exhibitions such as Fifty California Artists, 1962; the 1964 Annual Exhibition: Contemporary American Sculpture; the 1973 Biennial Exhibition: Contemporary American Art; 200 Years of American Sculpture, 1976; and Ceramic Sculpture, Six Artists, 1981.

The Frank Lloyd Gallery has a long history with Mason – we had the honor of representing him for sixteen years, and exhibited his work in nine solo shows. Mason was a key part of the gallery’s primary mission to re-contextualize the achievements of the major figures of West Coast Art. In addition to that recorded history, we also worked to place Mason’s work in major museum collections and private art foundations. Looking back, we facilitated the placement of fifteen artworks in seven institutions, including the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Kaneko Foundation, the Anderson Collection, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Buck Collection, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Some of these works, such as the Untitled Wall Relief, 1960, donated by W.D. Fletcher to LACMA in 2007, are on display now!

Vindication for PST

In the New York Times this morning, I found some unprecedented news. The above-the-fold story by Holland Cotter, “The East Coast of California,” included his phrase “…an unheard-of convergence here of major California shows.” Below the fold, Mr. Cotter reviewed the Ken Price retrospective at the Metropolitan, while Roberta Smith addressed James Turrell at the Guggenheim, and Ken Johnson wrote about the Llyn Foulkes show at the New Museum.

Unprecedented, indeed—and also amazing that the curatorial work of LACMA’s Stephanie Barron and the Hammer’s Ali Subotnick are again recognized. Not just the artists from the West Coast, but the curatorial vision. Mr. Cotter’s leading line was, “The project [Pacific Standard Time] was a big success and continues to generate energy.”

How vindicated do the PST folks at the Getty Research Institute feel? Pretty strongly justified, if you look at Project Specialist Glenn Phillips’ Facebook post. The Yale-trained art historian noted “Many people claimed that Pacific Standard Time would never have more than local impact, particularly in relation to New York,” and goes on to cite the three exhibits of Price, Turrell, and Foulkes as well as the current “State of Mind” show at PS1, the Paul McCarthy installation at the Armory, and the upcoming full-floor installation by Robert Irwin at the Whitney. (Let’s not forget about Jay DeFeo, the San Francisco painter whose Whitney retrospective just closed earlier this month.)

I don’t want this post to seem like a laundry list, but it’s also a matter of record that “Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980” appeared at MoMA’s PS1 last year, and that “Asco: Elite of the Obscure, a Retrospective, 1972-1987” had a run at Williams College (alma mater of many U.S. museum curators and directors). “California Design, 1930-1965: ‘Living in a Modern Way,” continues its worldwide tour, and Wendy Kaplan’s publication is now in its 4^th printing. PST is having a lasting effect.

Back in October 13, 2011, the Wall Street Journal’s critic Peter Plagens (who is a former Angeleno) questioned, “isn’t PST preaching to the choir?” It’s obvious that’s just not true.