She Wanted Adventure 11

if fleetingly, but how could one be She Wanted expected to know? Artist Maxwell Hendler, who showed with Eugenia Butler Gallery Feature Adventure in 1969, has theories about why Ferus Gallery outstripped the others Dwan, Butler, at the time in terms of its presence in the historical record: Ferus front Mizuno, Copley man, Irving Blum, “is probably the greatest marketer of art the world “Everyone wanted to show at Riko has ever seen” and Ferus artists were Mizuno,” artist Jack Goldstein the first in L.A. to treat art making recounted, reminiscing in 2003 about “as a career.”2 It helped, too, that the early Los Angeles scene. But when Artforum began, it shared Ferus’ he found the collective reverence building, and its initial editor, Philip for Mizuno somewhat baffling—he Leider, championed the gallery (“it “could never figure her out[…] She seemed every month we had a Ferus never did anything; she just sat in guy on the cover,” said Leider in the the back and drank coffee.”1 That she 1990s).3 If history is written by winner “never did anything” seems highly publicists, Blum won. And then his unlikely: she stayed in the business model took off, becoming its own from 1966 into the 1980s, hosted streamlined monster, in which hype performances that resulted in arrests and calculation are paramount. (Chris Burden), and helped artists When Virginia Dwan opened cut holes in her walls and ceilings (Ed her gallery in Westwood in 1959, “it Moses, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin). was very scary,” said Blum, in a 1977 More plausibly, Goldstein interview.4 “But I simply held my doesn’t remember what she did, just ground and didn’t permit her any as most official histories don’t account excess…” He worried she might steal for it. The legacies of Mizuno, along away his artists as well as the few with three other risk-welcoming collectors buying contemporary art female gallerists at the time— at the time—the art fairs and over- Eugenia Butler, Claire Copley, and, text-message sales that now liberate until recently, their predecessor certain local spaces from such fears Virginia Dwan—have largely been were still far away. preserved by comments like these, In contrast to Blum, Dwan has dredged up from oral histories, the rarely given interviews si nce she evidence of their influence more absented herself from the gallery anecdotal than formal. business in the 1970s. She talks about The catalogue for the Getty’s art, not usually herself, when she does 2011 Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. talk. When she spoke on the stage 1945–1980 showcase of noteworthy at LACMA in March of this year, she SoCal art mentions Ferus and its said, “I have a real distaste for talking operations 68 times, compared to 20 about art. I like the gestalt of the work, mentions for Dwan, Copley, Mizuno, the whole experience of the thing.”5 and Butler combined. One of the Since history, and herstory, is a narrative, problems with this is that it deprives bowing out of the talking part can those looking now for more experi- mental, nurturing kinds of art worlds Catherine Wagley writes about art and or models—such worlds have existed, visual culture in Los Angeles. 11 Catherine Wagley mean bowing out of the whole thing. Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Women were working “in the shadow Tinguely used illustrated postcards of men,” said the poet Aya Tarlow of to plot the work they would do upon 1950s and 1960s Los Angeles, adding arrival in Los Angeles from Paris in that certain ambitious women emu- 1963. “I will make you lots of beautiful lated men in an effort to emerge from [monsters] for the show,” wrote Saint said shadows. Those who didn’t were Phalle, on a delicate drawing of a less likely to succeed, their behavior T-Rex.8 Then, when they arrived, Dwan too at odds with extant formulas.6 found them a warehouse in which to Dwan used her portion of her work and accompanied them to scrap grandfather’s $3 million fortune to yards. Besides Dwan’s swimming open her space. The first show was of pool, Saint Phalle installed a wall paintings by lesser-known abstrac- she’d made in the Malibu hills, in the tionist Shim Grudin, but by 1961, her way she made all her walls: covering gallery had become an incubator of an assemblage of found objects with sorts—she brought French artist Yves paint-filled balloons, then shooting Klein to Los Angeles in 1961, where he at the balloons with a rifle. Tinguely explored Malibu and experimented chained a cannon he’d built to Saint with torches as painting tools on the Phalle’s wall, and, in Dwan’s words, beach. He had just had a show of only once “gleefully” fired it into the his IKB (International Yves Klein Blue) sea. “For me, it was a grand adven- monochromes at Leo Castelli Gallery ture,” Dwan wrote in 1990. “I did not in New York. Dwan pushed him to approach this art as a movement.”9 exhibit everything: monochromes, fire Since she did not approach art paintings, body prints, performance as a movement, she didn’t promote it documentation.7 She seemed disinter- as such. She commissioned an essay ested in streamlined products. for her pop art show My Country ’Tis 1. Richard Hertz, Jack Goldstein and the CalArts mafia 3. Amy Newman, Challenging art: Artforum (Ojai: Minneola Press, 2003), 27-28. 1962–1974 (New York: Soho, 2004), 118. 2. Corazon del Sol and Leila Hamidi, Interview with 4. Oral history interview with Irving Blum, Max Hendler (conducted 2011, unpublished). May 31–June 23, 1977, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. of Thee in 1962, that emphasized his- but then had to reschedule after her torical continuity: “The ‘new patriots business partner, Francois Lambert, of American art’ are not ignoring abruptly left the fledgling gallery. Her the poetry and structure of the last letters back and forth with Lamelas hundred years, though they may seem are about trying to make it work any- to be,” wrote Gerald Nordland.10 “Like way, to fund and produce something every generation, they must find their beyond her means.12 Many of her own idiom.” As critic Jessica Dawson letters to artists are like this, negoti- pointed out in her 2011 essay, “What- ating logistics that push her resources ever Happened to Virginia Dwan?”, to their limit. As part of his 1977 Dwan’s peers—specifically Ferus exhibition, Exchange, Michael Asher co-directors Irving Blum and Walter proposed that Copley and Morgan Hopps—positioned the pop art they Thomas, who also had an eponymous exhibited as a radical break from space, switch locations for a month; the past.11 But downplaying historical the two gallerists kept track of and hierarchies, as Dwan did, made the corresponded about their expenses playing field seem more lateral and (Copley made some international spacious, full of room for experiment calls on Thomas’ line). But the cost with our without advancement. consciousness felt like a negotiation There’s no recorded proof that rather than impediment. Bas Jan Ader Dwan inspired Eugenia Butler to push exhibited his ambitious In Search of the gallery-as-laboratory model even the Miraculous (1975) before he disap- further. But Butler, who shared a peared on his ill-fated voyage across space with Mizuno before opening her the Atlantic; William Leavitt showed own gallery, certainly did push, and his theatrical tableaux. When Copley the lives of two of these women tak- closed, unable to continue shoulder- ing the most risks as gallerists in the ing the expense, Terry Allen wrote late 1960s significantly overlapped. to her, “I Kiss You On Your Perfect Butler’s granddaughter, Corazon Writing Hand,”13 spreading the few del Sol, discovered that Butler had words out across four typed pages. worked for Dwan at the beginning Affection is palpable throughout the of the 1960s when she found in her correspondence, the gallerist and her grandmother’s limited archive a artists friends trying together to beat drawing by Tinguely and Saint Phalle. inhospitable economics. Butler, like Dwan (and unlike others Where Copley’s archive still in the city: Ferus, Rolf Nelson, or Nick has formality—letters on letterhead, Wilder), had an international roster transactions documented in typed from the start. The health department pages—Riko Mizuno’s archives, also tried to shut down Bulter’s 1970 show at the Getty, consist almost entirely of of Icelandic artist Dieter Roth, Staple postcards. “Fucking naked in the sand Cheese (A Race), in which cheese 10 feet from the water with gin and transported overseas in suitcases tonics balanced on our head,” wrote bred flies in the gallery. As part of his Jud Fine, in a holiday greeting sent 1969 exhibition Shutting up Genie, the from a beach vacation. Vija Celmins itinerate artist James Lee Byars forbid also wrote to report on her vacations, Butler from entering her own gallery and shows in other cities, the weather, for a five-day period. or her health. “The gallery was When Claire Copley opened in part of life,” said Celmins in 2012.14 1973, she planned an ambitious show Mizuno, who lived upstairs, famously with Argentinian artist David Lamelas, let Ed Moses remove much of the 5. "Virginia Dwan in conversation with James Mayer 7. James Meyer, with Paige Rozanski and Virginia Dwan, and Stephanie Barron” (lecture, LACMA, Los Angeles, Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959-1971 March 16, 2017). (Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 20160).

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