California History Volume 90 Number 2 2013 the Journal of the California Historical Society Volume 90 / Number

californi a history california history volume 90 number 2 2013 The Journal of the California Historical Society volume 90 / number 2 / 2013 90_2_cover.indd 1 6/18/13 11:21 AM reviews Edited by James J. Rawls STATE OF MIND: NEW CALIFORNIA ART CIRCA 1970 By Constance M. Lewallen and Karen Moss, with essays by Julia Bryan-Wilson and Anne Rorimer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012, 296 pp., $39.95 cloth) tury. The success and significance of Conceptual Art and demonstrate that PHENOMENAL: the books is the degree to which they it foreshadowed much of the work CALIFORNIA LIGHT, enlighten readers about the collective being created by young artists today.” SPACE, AND SURFACE work and, even more important, the Contemporary art of the early years of Edited by Robin Clark with essays ways in which it can be seen as result- the twentieth century is unimaginable by Michael Auping, Robin Clark, ing from and contributing to not just without the rich history that goes back Stephanie Hanor, Adrian Kohn, California history but an expanded way to Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) and and Dawna Schuld (Berkeley: of looking at art itself. his best-known historic beneficiary, Andy Warhol (1928–1987). The single University of California Press The books are considered here together basis for the Conceptual “movement,” with the assistance of the Getty for several reasons. First, they come if one agrees to that unified descrip- Foundation, 2012, 240 pp., from the same publisher at the same tion, is Duchamp’s oft-quoted dictum $39.95 cloth) time, the occasion of the hugely ambi- that the idea and process involved in REVIEWED BY PAUL J. KARLSTROM, FORMER tious multivenue exhibition “Pacific WEST COAST REGIONAL DIRECTOR, art making is the art act itself, not Standard Time,” sponsored by the ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART, SMITHSONIAN the object that may or may not result. INSTITUTION, AND AUTHOR OF PETER SELZ: J. Paul Getty Museum, on the subject SKETCHES OF A LIFE IN ART Also, Duchamp held that the artwork of California art in and around 1970. is unfinished, incomplete, without This historic event recognized and These two books accompanied the viewer (or audience). These ideas celebrated the critical coming of age of art exhibitions now long gone. The inform virtually all avant-garde art of California as a major participant in late- first purpose of such publications is the twentieth century. modernist art. to throw further light on specific dis- Throughout this extraordinarily dense, plays of art and to serve as a document Perhaps the most important exhibi- layered, and detailed account—an when the actual exhibition is history. tions were those under consideration effort to bring together in a meaning- This, however, is a limited goal. These here. And that status carries a consid- ful way a plethora of disparate forms, books present two important California erable burden of responsibility. The content, and expressions—the four “movements”—Conceptual Art and the greatest challenge falls to the curators authors bring impressively informed more specific southern California ver- of State of Mind. In the introduction to and intelligent commentary to a sub- sions of minimalism grouped under her essay “A Larger Stage,” Constance ject that really cannot be forced into a the sobriquet Light and Space—that Lewallen states the authors’ approach single clarifying definition. The term could be viewed as dominant during to an almost unmanageable subject: Conceptualism, in this respect, is more a particularly fertile creative period in “I believe that a thematic approach a “branding” than a movement. This the second half of the twentieth cen- will afford a fresh look at this semi- book is a noble effort that, through no nal period [circa 1970] in California California History • volume 90 number 2 2013 90_2_working pages.indd 78 6/18/13 11:24 AM fault of the authors, cannot entirely the innovations of minimal and pop The threat of danger and injury was succeed. But they have managed, art by turning away from “medium- reified. Burden later told curator Tom through impressive detail about art- specific” painting and sculpture. Garver that he wanted to create an ists and art projects, to provide guide- “instant and evanescent sculpture.” This guiding notion is put even more posts for an exciting and intellectually Smith was resolute in her determina- succinctly by artist Tom Marioni, rewarding roller-coaster ride. tion to remove any distinction between quoted by Moss, when he described public and private acts, including The truth is that the problem we con- his project as “idea oriented situations sexual intercourse. In Feed Me (per- front in thinking about Conceptualism not directed at the production of static formed at Marioni’s MOCA in 1973), is the concept itself. If, as some of us objects.” Less familiar than some of the she invited “visitors” one at a time ironically point out, Conceptualism can other leading California figures associ- to enter a small room where she sat, be anything at all as long as an artist ated with the movement—for example, naked and vulnerable, a tape repeating, declares it is art, then the term is all- Eleanor Antin, Michael Asher, John “Feed me, feed me.” With mostly male embracing and possibly worthless. If Baldessari, Chris Burden, Bruce Nau- participants, some of the potential everything is art, then why talk or write man, Allan Kaprow (Happenings), and consequences for her were foreseeable. about it? What impresses about the Ed Ruscha—Marioni’s name nonethe- The meaning of this openly trans- treatment of that difficulty by Lewallen less appears throughout these essays gressive performance, and its status and her colleague Karen Moss is that as a significant force—as curator at as art, inevitably would be debated, they understand that the phenomenon the Richmond Museum and founder especially among feminists. Appar- needs somehow to be communicated, of his own Museum of Conceptual Art ently Smith saw her role as passive, not just through definitions but in (MOCA) in San Francisco—in creat- with the audience being responsible for the experience of its great variety and ing a vital Conceptualist community what happened. According to Garver, serious goals. Definitions begin with in San Francisco. His provocative per- who saw the 1973 performance, there Lewallen’s big statement that the formances (e.g., “Piss Piece” of 1970, was a small peephole through which “movement” emerged in the 1960s in which he stood on a ladder and observers (voyeurs, of which there was among groups of young artists, in this urinated in a galvanized laundry tub) a long line) could observe Smith and country and abroad, who rejected “tra- partake of the body art branch of the whomever she was with. This served ditional modes of art making in the movement, in which the artist literally to “protect” her in her passivity, mak- context of enormous cultural and social becomes the work of art. In 1973, he ing her “visitor” subject to social and changes in the society at large.” There was handcuffed for seventy-two hours psychological consequences. This idea we have one definition. Moss tells us to Linda Mary Montano for one of of discovery through social interaction that through new ideas of place and her famous performances (ephemeral (artist and viewer/participant) goes to site, Conceptualism “redefined the idea except for photo documentation). Mari- the heart of much conceptual activity. of an art object and the notion of repre- oni and Montano saw art as a social And always in the background lies the sentation.” In her essay, Ann Rorimer experience, as did the influential Euro- key question: what are the limits of proposes that California Conceptualists pean Joseph Beuys. art? The cover of this richly illustrated “belong together . not solely by virtue This iteration of Conceptualism had volume (64 color and 123 black and of their geographical place of residence the potential to be the most unsettling, white) was an inspired choice in terms at the outset of their careers, but even as carried to extremes by artists such as of an introduction to the subject and more so by their shared pursuit of Burden and Barbara T. Smith. Burden the book’s contents. Robert Kinmont is a wide range of aesthetic strategies was notorious for Shoot (1973), a radi- depicted doing a handstand on the very devoted to reinvigorating worn-out cal piece in which he had himself shot edge of a sheer cliff. This is one photo practices of art making.” She goes on in the arm by a young artist friend in from a series entitled 8 Natural Hand- to remind us that these artists extended front of a small group of witnesses. stands (1969/2009) in which the artist 90_2_working pages.indd 79 6/18/13 11:24 AM reviews is literally at the center of the artwork, of Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s, and many of which Smith saw in an his individual human presence domi- and several are art superstars. Though exhausting five-day visit, she wrote with nating nature. In a sense, it subverts the scope is smaller and the focus almost giddy admiration, “Pacific Stan- the long tradition of landscape art, but, much tighter, the approach is similar dard Time has been touted as rewriting more important, it introduces the ele- to that of State of Mind, with a team history. It seems equally plausible to ment of personal risk, imminent dan- of five highly qualified contributors say that it simply explodes it, revealing ger of bodily injury, and even death— examining different aspects of a south- the immensity of art before the nar- real world, real time.

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