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| LOS ANGELES IS MANY THINGS TO MANY PEOPLE. IT IS A CITY OF DIVERSITY, FROM ITS DEMOGRAPHICS to its politics to its architecture. From its earliest days as an arid pueblo to its current incarnation as a major metropolis, the city is constantly evolving. Fueled by its temperate climate, relative youth, and major industries—film and, until recently, aerospace—it is often idealized as a place for growth, innovation, and unlimited possibilities. There are multiple ways to present our city’s history and many stories to tell. This curriculum traces the history of midcentury L.A. as seen through works of art dating from 1930 to 1965. During this period, the city’s residents experienced several unprecedented historical events, including the Depression and World War II, which significantly changed how people lived. By examining the material culture of the city during this period— architecture, furnishings, fashion, as well as works on paper and photographs—we can learn more about the Angelenos who furnished modern homes and read magazines that provided models for “living in a modern way.” What do these objects tell us about California history and technology? About L.A. as a site for creativity, innovation, and individuality? “California is America, only more so,” author established in 1781 as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Wallace Stegner declared in 1959. Throughout la Reina de Los Ángeles, in what is now downtown most of the twentieth century, the state symbol- L.A. (in the area near Olvera Street), became a major ized the good life in America. Thanks to carefully metropolis. The population of Los Angeles County crafted booster images, or images that perpetuated more than doubled in the 1920s, from little more popular perceptions, California was considered a than 900,000 to more than two million by the end of place of excitement, leisure, and abundant health. the decade. The county also expanded its boundaries The thriving economy of the 1920s led its and, with the demand for subdivided land, assumed extraordinary population growth. New residents its characteristic sprawl. The enclosed aerial views flocked to urban areas, dramatically altering the of the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax landscape and changing forever the image of the Avenue (now the mid-Wilshire district of the city) state as a bucolic Eden of relatively uninhabited illustrates this rapid growth. The population boom mountains, deserts, and shorelines. continued unabated throughout the Great Depression Los Angeles in particular exemplified this and World War II, resulting in a critical need for development: the small agricultural township housing and an attendant need for goods and services. During this period, California became the In 1951 designer Greta Magnusson Grossman country’s most important center for progressive described California design as “not a super- architecture and furnishings. Artists’ and imposed style but an answer to present designers’ imaginative applications of war- conditions . It has developed out of our own developed materials and production methods preferences for living in a modern way.” Part applied to peacetime uses significantly altered of living in a modern way meant that well- the way people lived. By the onset of World War designed objects could function as art in everyday II, the area’s newly developed homes and their life. This ideal was promoted by Los Angeles– furnishings were characterized by a particular based artist Alvin Lustig, a teacher and mentor to kind of modernism rooted in California culture a generation of designers through his instruction and conditions. The general qualities associated at Art Center School (now Art Center College of with the state (optimism and democracy, fearless Design in Pasadena) and the short-lived California experimentation and a love of new technology) School of Art in Los Angeles. He inspired his as well as those specific to design (an affinity for students to think broadly about their impact on light and brilliant color, an openness to Asian and the world and argued for a “wider social role for Latin influences, an advocacy of fluid spaces and, art that would bring it closer to each and every cross-disciplinary approaches) made California’s one of us, out of the museums, into our homes best products distinctive. “The California Look” and offices, closer to everything we use and see.”1 became synonymous with a modern way of life, Although not active in the modern-design and, as a 1951 article in the Los Angeles Times community, Italian immigrant Simon Rodia, Home Magazine pointed out, a symbol of “The who lived most of his adult years in the Watts willingness to experiment and be different, to district of L.A., certainly embodied Lustig’s solve problems in California’s way.” Famously message and blurred the boundaries between art characterized by open floor plans and indoor/ and everyday life in his extraordinary sculpture, outdoor living, the California home became a Watts Towers. Created out of concrete and hugely influential model for the rest of the appropriated objects, such as plates and bottles, country and, indeed, the world. this collection of seventeen interconnected structures, constructed between 1921 and 1954, form an iconic monument in the city of L.A. Watts Towers challenges traditional definitions of art and design, and encourages us to see the artistic potential in everyday objects. Over the years, the landmark has become a magnet for artists and created a sense of pride within the community. The Towers are a soaring reminder that art is a part of our surroundings. And just as community can affect design, design, in turn, can affect community. Installation view of California Design, 1930–1965: “Living in a Modern Way,” October 1, 2011–June 3, 2012, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, photo © 2011 Museum Associates/LACMA Views of Wilshire and Fairfax, Los Angeles, 1922 AND 1929 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Spence Air Photos (Los Angeles, c. 1918–1971), View of Wilshire and Fairfax, Los Angeles, 1922, Gelatin silver print, LACMA, Decorative Arts and Design Deaccession Fund (M.2010.32.1) © Spence Air Photos Spence Air Photos (Los Angeles, c. 1918–1971), View of Wilshire and Fairfax, Los Angeles, 1929, printed 1930, Gelatin silver print. LACMA, Decorative Arts and Design Deaccession Fund (M.2010.32.2) © Spence Air Photos tube. Visit www.curating thecity.org to learn These aerial views of the intersection of Wilshire more about the variety of architectural styles Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue date from 1922 and that exist on the Wilshire Boulevard corridor. 1929. Open land and a scattering of structures Or visit www.laconservancy.org to view mark the 1922 photo. In contrast, the 1929 photo- neighborhood guides to other parts of the city. graph is filled with new streets and a variety of buildings as far as the eye can see. What a remarkable change! Since 1900 Southern California has been a magnet for enormous population movements—both from Past and Present—Use a thinking map to other parts of the United States and from other compare and contrast the photographs, listing parts of the world. Bringing with them a passion the similarities and differences. Do a Google for experimentation and progressive design “earth” map search for the intersection of training, the early émigrés who came from Central Wilshire and Fairfax today and compare and Europe in the teens and 1920s (for example, Kem contrast contemporary views with these Weber, R. M. Schindler, and Richard Neutra) were archival images. What has changed in nearly critical to the formation of California modern one hundred years? What remains the same? — a loose but recognizable group of ideas. These In the twentieth century, as expanding rail lines seekers of new professional opportunities were and, later, cars and the area’s ubiquitous freeways joined in the 1930s by other, equally influential allowed people to quickly travel greater distances, émigrés who had fled Nazi persecution. And, L.A. grew its characteristic sprawl. The develop- particularly in Southern California, they often ment of Wilshire Boulevard, which spans nearly found patrons for their work in other émigrés. sixteen miles from downtown to the beach, is an While the influence of these émigrés was example of this growth. In the early twentieth enormous, designers and arts patrons native to the century, the northwest corner of Wilshire and state, as well as transplants from other parts of the Fairfax served as an airfield for director Cecil B. country, also were key figures in shaping California DeMille, then for Rogers Aircraft. As the automobile modern. For example, architect and painter Millard displaced the airfields, the area was subdivided and Sheets was director of the Federal Art Project (FAP) developed. In the 1930s, this corner housed one of for Southern California, the visual arts branch of the city’s earliest drive-in restaurants. the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which gave employment to artists from 1935 to 1943. The FAP/WPA, a component of President Franklin Mapping Your City—Think of a major inter- Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal government-spending section in your community. Compare what program, was instrumental in pulling California exists there today with what you know about out of the Great Depression. Like every other state your community’s history and landscape. (View in the country, California was impacted profoundly archival photos in the photo database at the by the worldwide economic downturn, although it’s Los Angeles Public Library, www.lapl.org.) still prosperous oil, agriculture, and film industries Then reimagine today’s intersection and what ensured that it fared better than most regions. it might look like in the future. Draw your What finally succeeded in ending the Depression prediction of your community in the year 2111! in Southern California was the huge government investment in the airplane industry, which brought Architectural Diversity—The May Company thousands of skilled workers to the region.