Creating the Future

June 30, 2014
While the closure of the Ferus Gallery in 1966 and subsequent events such as Artforum’s move to New York City in 1967 seemed like crushing setbacks to Los Angeles’s art scene at the time, Fallon proves the contrary in this lively history of artistic pluralism and dissidence. Fallon, an arts and culture writer based in Minneapolis, casts a wide net over avant-garde and populist art movements to demonstrate that Angelino art in the ’70s remained as fresh, radical, and influential as ever, if not more so. He emphasizes the rise of the feminist and Chicano art movements, the leaps represented by John Baldessari’s Cremation Project, James Turrell’s investigations into “perceptual reality,” and Chris Burden’s performance Shoot. He discusses graffiti in the barrios, African-American muralists such as Elliot Pinkney, and Allan Kaprow’s tenure at CalArts. He also provides an overview of Lowbrow artist Robert Williams’s relationship to the cultures of cars, punk rock, surfing, and skateboarding. From Vija Celmins to Paul McCarthy, the scope of subjects accurately conveys the complex, diverse nature of L.A. art across the decade. Though the book has little in the way original analysis of the artworks and the narrative is loosely assembled, it still satisfies. Agent: Lyn DelliQuadri, Lahr & Partners

July 1, 2014
The story of how, despite great odds, a viable art scene bloomed in Southern California.When the notable Ferus Gallery closed in 1966, Los Angeles lost its most prominent champion of contemporary art. However, as Fallon (How to Analyze the Works of Andy Warhol, 2010, etc.) shows in this panoramic survey, local artists continued to innovate and thrive throughout the next decade. The art that "percolated up from the streets of L.A." did not adhere to any one school or ideology but instead arose "out of a public need for life-affirming culture and aesthetics." Women, Chicanos and African-Americans enlivened the art scene by moving outside of the studio and into public spaces with performance art, graffiti and murals. Many artists, writes the author, "rejected commercialism, commodification, and formalism," producing work that was often outrageous, provocative and "occasionally revolutionary." The image of the artist, too, underwent radical change from "a maker of objects" and "a presence in the studio" to someone who enacted an idea intended to shock, or at least unsettle, viewers. In Five Day Locker Piece, for example, artist Chris Burden immured himself in a locker; in another piece, he lay under a pane of glass, in a museum, for several days. Kustom Kulture-the culture of hot rods-influenced many LA artists who came to be known as the Cool School; captivated by cars' speed and freedom, they transposed the automobile's slick finishes and "muscularity of form" into their works. Among the artists featured in this populous study are the feisty Judy Chicago, leader of feminist art; "wily, fast-talking" Allan Kaprow and "laconic" John Baldessari, both acclaimed teachers who inspired acolytes; and Dutch-born Bastian Jan Ader, who died in one ill-fated piece of performance art. With little money and rare critical support, the disparate LA community, Fallon argues, set the stage for the future of art.A well-researched, wide-ranging history that amply captures the confusion, contradictions and enormous energy of one triumphant decade.

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Starred review from September 15, 2014
Los Angeles' sunny, surf's-up, paradise dreamscape gave way in the 1970s to the harsh realities of urban poverty, racism, the war in Vietnam, and growing skepticism about the technological promise of the space age. The city's artists responded to this atmosphere of despair, anger, and cynicism with private quests for new modes of expression and bold new forms of community action, and arts and culture writer Fallon chronicles it all in a fresh, kinetic narrative, the perfect companion to Hunter Drohojowska-Philp's 1960s L.A. arts inquiry, Rebels in Paradise (2011). Fallon begins by profiling Judy Chicago, who brought the struggle for women's rights to art and arts education, and Chicano artists Salvador Torres and Judith Baca, who delivered art to the streets in powerful, forward-thinking murals. Fallon incisively portrays Los Angeles' provocative conceptual artists and astutely decodes their revolutionary fearlessness, from James Turrell, who reconfigured buildings to channel light, to risk-taking performance artist Chris Burden, who had a friend shoot him in the arm. Fallon traces the influence of L. A.'s hot-rod mania, surfing and skateboarding cultures, and punk rock and zine worlds on such radical painters as Vija Celmins, Charles Garabedian, and Llyn Foulkes. Fallon's delving insights into Los Angeles' artistic synergy within an adept synthesis of place, biography, art, technology, and social movements makes for exciting and invaluable fill-in-the-gaps art history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)