Los Angeles Viewed from a New Yorker in Paris

Just remember one thing: everyone hates LA, right?  In my little place in the universe, that being Paris by way of New York, hatred of that west coast oasis (or cultural desert) seems to be the dogma.  Either people have tried living there and failed, or they enjoy saying how they never could or would live there (the only other city in the world that regularly garners the same baseless proclamations, in my experience, is New York).

Until recently, I had comparatively little opinion on LA, since I had only been there a handful of times and never with a car (which meant that for the most part, it could have been anywhere sunny).  So in this way I was quite happy to go last December to visit family friends, if for nothing else than to cut up what would turn out to be a brutal Parisian winter.  But I got much more than that.  Aside from reconnecting with my hosts, I was met with a happy helping of culture shock.  When I was on the Santa Monica Pier, I was struck by just how much a place like Paris, France and a place like Los Angeles, California exist as pure, polar opposites.

The Pier is the symbol of LA, or at least one of the most easily recognizable icons in an otherwise unremarkable landscape.  I say unremarkable because unless you happen to be driving through the Valley or past the Hollywood sign or straight down Sunset or Hollywood Boulevards, LA is rather spread out and flat, lacking in the gothamesque grooves and urban-historical markings of places like New York or Paris. This is a GOOD THING – it makes for change. The Pier, like the city, is open, public, and large.  (Of course, it’s on the ocean.)  So you can imagine my surprise when, wandering around the other side of the pier, around the back of the kiddie rides and restaurant-style stands, I came upon a small raised platform, tape laid diagonally all across it construction-style, that said “Smoking Allowed – in this immediate area only.”

Needless to say, coming from Paris I thought I had just teleported to another planet.  My mind made the mental leap and I imagined that if this small spot, practically suspended over the ocean, was set aside for smoking, then that meant that the rest of the pier, and beach, and city, was by contrast a no-smoking zone.  The idea was staggering.  And not true, since people smoke in LA like anywhere else, but that’s not the point: if a %100 smoke-free city were to exist, it would most probably be LA.

In modern LA people define their lives, their identities, by what they eat and how they eat it, how they work out, what group they go to (sun-eaters, underwater meditation, etc.); in essence, how healthily they live.  Here in Paris, it seems to be more our vices which define us.  Perhaps I’m being unfair, on both ends, but standing on that pier in the middle of the Pacific, thinking of the smoke-filled nooks of Parisian cafés (albeit charming ones), that was the only comparison that came to mind.  Steak et frites, cheese, wine and cigarettes.  All vices.  In LA, health is a vice.

New York, a sister city of Paris that lies closer to it on both the literal and figurative map, is filled with those people who have a sworn hatred for LA.  You need a car, people are sunbleached and vapid, etc.  But again, on that pier, and throughout my too-short stay, the only impression I had of LA was how goddamn warm and pleasant it was.  It was only a matter of time before the City of Angels would take on the flair of the underdog for me, which of course is a very French thing to do – to root for the underdog.  And so, LA still in mind, when I saw the poster for the LA Pompidou exhibit (Los Angeles 1955-1985: Birth of an Artistic Capital) I made notes – mental and on paper – to go.

That’s the thing about LA – it’s not as modern and surfboard-smooth as it looks.  It holds a history as varied and turbulent as many other places, and the exhibit at Beaubourg served to show me that which was behind a city that I was only getting to know, on a surface level, in the infant stages of the 21st century.  The exhibit looks at a certain part of that history, through the lens of the revolutionary art scene of 30 rather turbulent years, 1955-1985.

Upon entering, the exhibit makes no effort to avoid or deter from its expected allusions; an arresting study of the 20th Century Fox logo faces a video loop of the MGM Lion, roaring ad nauseum.  Film film film.  This reference is not brought up in quite the same way afterward, but the opening suffices to remind you what city’s art you’re examining.  One inference that does carry through, however, is how the narrative element of art, found predominantly in film and other dramatic expressions, resurfaces through the rest of the exhibit, both in relation to and in defiance of politics or the climate of the time.  Film and LA are inextricably linked, and so a painting by Hockney (his poppiest of pop paintings, Sunbather, for instance) can’t help but be viewed in a self-referential, story-suggestive light.  This adds to the experience of seeing the painting.

The second room is filled with what are called assemblages, which are at first fun, Rauschenberg-like conglomerations of found objects and, well, junk.  Junk amassed from the flat, gummy stretches of that open LA I imagine, but from a long time ago, a place that I soon realized was a lot more mysterious than film sets and sunshine.  This group of assemblages, resembling dilapidated people, speaks together of political movements and societal discontent, articulated especially in the centerpiece – Illegal Operation by Edward Kleinholz, which through inanimate objects tells of just after (or during) a botched abortion.

Then on to a room containing minimal art, made with sleek looking, artificial and chemical materials.  Representing what is called the ‘LA Look’, these very finished-looking pieces personally did nothing for me, except to remind me of that surfacy smooth feeling I get when I think of LA.  After this, I was confronted with Robert Jackson’s beautiful Untitled Wall Painting, dubiously dated 1972-2006, utilizing the wall itself.  This visually pleasing abstraction exits the confines of normal, dated art, since the artist must have had a personal hand in its installation at the Pompidou (it is splattered directly onto the wall).  Seeing no other alternative explanation, I took the work as a representation of this going-against-the-grain theme, which shows up again and again through the rest of the exhibit: there is a huge and smelly installation involving ketchup (more than 50 bottles’ worth) also dated until 2006.  The intended question “What is art?” becomes valid in all this.  But this question is still not yet completely crystallized.  Back in the abstract passage with the Robert Jackson, Sam Francis’s open and playful abstract pieces, framing negative spaces, serve as a nice complement.

The ‘pop’ room, where the David Hockney is found, contains as well what might be my favorite work of the exhibit.  Edward Ruscha’s panoramic depiction of The LA County Museum on Fire is, to me, tongue-in-cheek, somber, technically impressive and sexy all at once.  His controlled realism, set on a surreal background, becomes hypnotic in its finesse and LA-style surfaces, only to be burned in flames on one end of the canvas.  Quite a sight to take in.

Afterward that question of “What makes art art?” is reiterated in the conceptual works of a few jokers, namely John Baldessari.  I mean joker as a high form of complement, and I’m sure Mr. Baldessari would be happy to know he is still considered one.  We’ve all heard of the ‘I am making art’ video by now, or at least of the rather conceptual statement it makes: that ‘everything’ is art.  Most of the time, people’s eyes roll when they hear of a ‘conceptual artist’ lying in a bed for three weeks or going to the bathroom on a canvas.  But I must say, at least Baldessari’s video is definitely art.  Maybe only after all this time, the grainy video footage of the frumpy artist taking great pains to make gestures with his arms and repeat the mantra “I am making art” over and over managed to capture my attention and hold it.  The narrative found its way into this piece too – the agony of finding a new or original gesture, which seemed to be an unwritten rule for the artist, coupled with the obvious intended pressures he must be feeling (the natural struggle against boredom, the irrational desire to disrupt what he originally set out to do) makes you think and the video somehow becomes exceedingly bold and interesting.  This is because the piece plays with what it means to be creative – it shows in a charted and timed way the stop and flow of inspiration, and the inevitable complication of simplicity that we humans never fail to achieve.  The partner video Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, however, gets lost in the ‘gag’ and reminds you that Baldessari is also just a joker.

Then there is his Kiss-Panic, another favorite of mine, which features a ‘flower’ of guns blooming from two scenes, one of a kiss and one of street violence and panic.  The controlled logic of this piece, commenting on media and violence, reminded me of the narrative element first introduced in the exhibit: there was a story here.

Douglas Huebler also plays with what art is, using maps and humorously stating his artistic intentions right there in the piece itself.  Fun and amusing stuff, calling to mind this against-the-grain alternativeness that seems to be characteristic of the LA art scene.

There are some other very interesting pieces in this show:  Matt Mullican’s Essex, in fact, is not even a piece of art at all, but simply a life’s worth of moments listed on the wall in words and fragments.  For a writer, it is a truly original and thought-provoking suggestion on what writing can serve as or become.  Bas Jan Alder’s moody photographic night scenes of LA in In Search of the Miracle (One Night in LA) also held together with a faint narrative thread (this time with song lyrics), along with Dennis Hopper’s photos (! I didn’t know the actor harbored photographic talent), which successfully communicate moods and moments that seem right out of Hollywood ‘pictures’.  One of his images serves as the visual for the show’s poster.

Soon after, however, the exhibit gets to be a bit much, mainly as a result of the sheer mass and quantity of the work.  The Pompidou center is also not well-ventilated (a problem I find time and again in art museums) and therefore I was unable to sit for long in any of the darkened rooms showing various video and film projections (among them Bill Viola).

The rest is therefore up to you to explore.  Suffice it to say that the message communicated through the turbulent, subversive art of LA of the 20th Century feels like a message in a bottle, launched over to us across the ocean in 2006 Paris, which on the whole couldn’t feel any more different.  The show really feels like an examination of a foreign creature, more foreign than I ever would have guessed American art could manage.  Of course, with the recent student uprisings and harsh police reaction here in Paris, all that disparity might soon change…

Los Angeles 1955-1985: Birth of an Artistic Capital

Centre Pompidou

March 8 2006 – July 17 2006
11h00 – 21h00Closed Tuesdays and May 1.Admission: 10 euros full, 8 euros reduced (for whole museum plus exhibits)Coatroom free  Copyright © Dan Heching