VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 N HIGHLAND VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

3 / 09 / 19 “Ed Ruscha & on art, friendship and their new show in South Korea” by Michael Slenske

and gunpowder works on paper (“Oily”, “Lisp”, “1984”) and Bengston’s “Dentos” (lacquered paintings on dented aluminum panels) with Wright’s “mousetrap” design. “But our show did look really sexy with that circular staircase,” he says. “I think Billy would agree with me that we do this stuff for the sport of it first.”

“‘Three Modern Masters’ was a commercial gallery show, one of many in the world, and it certainly would have been lost to time if a historian or curator or another interested party—like us—had not taken the initiative to bring it back,” says Esther Kim Varet, who is launching VSF Seoul, a South Korean outpost of her Hollywood gallery, Various Small Fires, with a fiftieth-anniversary reprisal of the show, “Three Modern Masters: Reunited.” (Varet’s gallery represents Bengston in Los Angeles and is named after the seminal 1964 Ruscha photography book “Various Small Fires and Milk”).

For this inaugural exhibition Bengston is contributing new “Chevron” paintings while Ruscha is recontextualizing some early work. Since the gallery is located in a former nail salon In the spring of 1969—two years after Los in a nondescript building in the buzzy Hannam- Angeles’s pioneering shuttered— dong neighborhood, Wright’s contribution will two icons from that scene, Billy Al Bengston come in the form of two armchairs and a bench and Ed Ruscha, opened the conceptual survey he designed, both of which Varet sourced on show “Three Modern Masters” at the Reese 1stdibs. Palley Gallery in San Francisco. Housed inside a red-brick building just off Union Square that “At this point in their lives, Ed and Billy don’t do Frank Lloyd Wright had redesigned in the 1940s, anything unless it gives them pleasure,” adds the two-story skylit space—with its spiraling Varet. “I promised them that this show will be ramp wrapping circular walls—was a test case driven by the pleasure principle. It will be driven for the architect’s interior for the Solomon R. by us looking back on their friendship over the Guggenheim Museum. past fifty years and really celebrating that.” “I think what we were really doing was Though Bengston, now 84, probably spends more overworking an idea,” admits Ruscha, with a time in Hawaii than he does in his beloved Venice laugh, about pairing his early text-based paintings compound, and Ruscha, at 81, is still recovering VSF

from a partial knee replacement, they agreed to was motorcycling. I thought, What a perfect sit down with “DesignLA” and look back on the combination, that is, making art out of something long, strange trip that’s brought them from the you’re really in tune with. Later on Billy got me epicenter of the early L.A. art scene to a joint into motorcycling, which diverted my attention venture in Asia’s budding new art capital. away from making art. We went to Baja, all points north and south, a lot on motorcycles. When did you two first actually meet? So how exactly was Billy an influence on you, Ed Ruscha: It was maybe ‘62 or ‘63 but possibly Ed? in ‘61. ER: He’s a senior. I’m newly 81, so that makes Billy Al Bengston: That’s when you were driving a you 84, Billy? ‘39 Ford, right? BAB: I’m 84 years old? I should be dead. Did you ER: That’s right. Billy was a mentor to me before ever know anybody as old as me? I even knew him. I knew of Billy’s artwork three years before I met him. I remember he was doing ER: What do they say, getting older is not the kiss the verboten thing of putting an object in the of death, at least not until the very end. smack middle of a canvas, and that was really frowned upon. BAB: I knew I’d get a good quote out of you. That’s good, Ed. BAB: I’ve been doing that ever since year one, ever since I learned you shouldn’t do it. So what was the initial bond between you two? ER: You should have known better, Billy, you just never knew better, did you? ER: Ferus was a real hotspot, a tiny hotspot, in a city that really had no artwork at all. But there BAB: You know when I started doing that, Ed? was a community of artists, many of whom lived Remember when I had the apartment upstairs in Venice, like Billy, Larry Bell and John Altoon. It behind the Ferus Gallery? That’s where I first did was the only artist community that was happening that. at that time.

And you’d seen all of his early shows at Ferus But you were in Hollywood, right? before you two met? BAB: Yeah, he was a Hollywood boy with Joe ER: Let’s see, I saw Billy’s B.S.A. Motorcycle Goode. parts show, and that was 1961, right, Billy? ER: I was over on Western Avenue for years, and BAB: I don’t know, Ed, I’m not a chronicler of my Echo Park and Silver Lake. own work. I just dissected the motorcycle. I guess it was my Gold Star. It was Skinny’s 21, and it Why didn’t you move to Venice? was the love of my life for a long time. I haven’t seen a motorcycle yet I’d wanted to buy since ER: It was just the happenstance of living that. I wish I still had it today. conditions. There I am and I don’t mind it and why change? I can drive to Venice if I want to see ER: I was very impressed with Billy painting some friends. I never had the urge to settle there. something he seemingly loved to do, which But Billy, you didn’t come out here to go to art VSF

school, did you? of the art world—it was out there.

BAB: I was brought out here by my parents. My But things sort of came into focus when dad was working in the Douglas Aircraft factory, put you in the “New Painting and before that he was working in the shipyards. of Common Objects” show with Warhol and My Uncle Ed was out here playing in jazz bands. Lichtenstein at the Pasadena Art Museum in 1962, which led to the first show at Ferus. Ed, you left Oklahoma specifically to go to art school? ER: I think it was ’63, and then I did one in ‘65. When was the show at Reese Palley? ER: Yeah, I wanted to be a sign painter and I thought, well, there’s art schools out there so Michael Slenske: That was 1969. I’ll try one of those. I settled on this idea that Art Center was the hot place to go, and then it turned ER: Oh boy, we were already getting old by then out there was no more room on their roster, so I weren’t we? had to go to Chouinard. It also turned out to be the best of all opportunities. Art Center had this How did the “Three Modern Masters” show dress code and you could not have facial hair, come about? Reese Palley seemed like a P.T. you could not wear a beret, you could not wear Barnum-type of gallerist, and maybe a bit of sandals, you couldn’t carry bongo drums. an odd choice for the two of you coming out of the more avant-garde scene at Ferus. What BAB: I did all that. made you want to show there?

ER: All those things were prohibited at Art BAB: Money. He paid me a salary. Center, so the renegade school turned out to be Chouinard, and that turned out alright. I got out of ER: He was a P.T. Barnum type, you’re right. At school around 1960, went to Europe for a year, his gallery on Maiden Lane in San Francisco he came back, didn’t know what I was doing. I used showed this artist Edward Marshall Boehm, who to design books and got some jobs doing that and made ceramic birds. typography and sign painting. How did this “Three Modern Masters” concept Where were you painting signs? come about?

BAB: Any place they’d hire him. BAB: Well, the gallery was in a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. ER: I also did a lot of personalizing of gift items. I’d put kids’ names on gift items at this place ER: With all those years that have passed, called Sunset House over on South La Cienega. memory is kind of fuzzy, but Billy and I were in They had all these gift items and you could have New York and somehow got this brilliant idea to them personalized and I would do hundreds be photographed in front of the Guggenheim with of these things in a day’s time—four cents for that floor plate [it reads “Let Each Man Exercise one, five cents for another, that sort of thing. I the Art He Knows”] that is still in place. could work September, October, November for Christmas and sorta stay alive for the following Were you there for a show? year. That became a habit for about five years. I was able to then work on my own art, but things ER: I don’t think so, but I do remember one thing. were really slow then. L.A. was like the Indonesia It was very cold, and Billy, I don’t know how you VSF

found this, but you found this guy selling earmuffs on the street, and the earmuffs were not those big ER: Is it Dizzy Gillespie who said that in order to puffy kind you normally associate with earmuffs, be up to date with yourself, you have to put one they were very flat and made of felt. They were foot in the past and one foot in the future? just this skinny membrane that fit right around your ears, and they were the best earmuffs I’ve MS: Well it seems like you’ve both projected ever had in my life. You remember those? yourselves here.

BAB: I remember now that we were freezing our BAB: Where are we? asses off and those made a big difference. ER: (laughing) I will say I’m glad it’s being shown So basically you guys took this photo and outside the U.S. spun it forward into the catalogue for this show because Frank Lloyd Wright designed BAB: Ed, are you going to Korea? both buildings? ER: I don’t have that on my dance card. I can’t BAB: Well, Ed and I were in New York and we just travel. thought we’d have some fun. Was that fun, Ed? BAB: I became a draft dodger so I didn’t have ER: Yeah, and the world is not as scary as it to go to Korea. I started taking peyote so I didn’t looks, and fun can be had. have to go to Korea.

How do you remember the show turning out in How are you approaching this show differently that Frank Lloyd Wright space? from the 1969 show?

BAB: We had the show and we left. BAB: Avoiding it the same way.

ER: We did have an opening, and I have faint ER: It’s kind of ad hoc. I have quite a bit of my memories of that, but I’m not even sure if we even work, and now is an opportunity to jiggle it and put sold anything. Was anything for sale? some things together. What are we doing, Billy?

BAB: Everything was for sale, Ed. Reese Palley BAB: Ed, I don’t know, and I’m not going over was a salesman. there to find out. The best day of my life was when I was told I was 4F. I was living at this place on ER: I don’t think it was a lasting relationship with Bonnie Brae with Ken Price, and the fellows from either Billy or myself and Reese Palley. That was the draft board came to visit me and they looked kind of a one-night stand. at the place said, “Where do you live?” I said, “This is where I live.” They said, “Where’s your Looking back, did it ever occur to you at the bed?” I took them out to the front porch and they time that you would possibly revisit that show said, “You live out here?” I said, “I sure do.” I said, 50 years later? “You guys want a cup of coffee?” Those guys looked at me and said, “We’ll be going now.” BAB: Sure. ER: And you won’t be going. ER: You thought “sure” back then? BAB: I weighed 135 pounds in those days, what BAB: Ed, it’s taken too long. did you weigh, Ed? VSF

ER: Oh, probably 115. Remember it was Larry ER: Yeah, then people will say, “Boy, that Bell who had an appointment with the draft board, Bengston-Ruscha combination really offers us a and he put on his father’s boots and walked from way to sell Frank Lloyd Wright furniture.” his studio in downtown L.A. and didn’t eat for three days and arrived there and fell flat on his MS: Your paintings can just decorate the furniture. face, and they said, “Go home.” BAB: That’s usually what it’s about. What do If you’re not going to Korea, what exactly people buy paintings for? So they have something are you two taking? From the looks of the to hang above the sofa. studio in the next room, it appears that Billy is showing a bunch of these new blue paintings You’ve always talked about that, and that was in Seoul. why you and Frank Gehry incorporated all of that furniture in your LACMA retrospective. BAB: I am? This idea of “looking” seems to be a huge component in both of your work, just slowing MS: That’s what your wife says. people down to look.

BAB: That’s just because they haven’t sold yet. BAB: The problem with Ed’s work is that you have Ed, have you got a theme? to know how to read.

ER: Not really, it’s just my way of shouting out no ER: You have to know how to read, but I’m sort particular information. It all just gathers around of a linguistic kleptomaniac anyway, so I use together and I make something out of it. I’m glad whatever is out there. A painting is only a picture I’m not around to hang my own show, because made with paint. What more do you want? I’m a terrible hanger of shows. Usually what I do is go in and take the best wall and take the best I think a lot of people try to read too much work that I have and hang it all on that best wall into the symbols and metaphors, whether it’s and then everything else falls apart. So I need with the chevrons or the wordplay. In a certain somebody else to come in and arrange. sense you’re making these paintings not just to look at but to really push the boundaries of I’ve also heard that in the absence of a Frank what paintings can be. Lloyd Wright building, you guys will be squaring off with Frank Lloyd Wright furniture ER: Yeah, I think someone else will come along at the gallery in Seoul. and say, “That’s serious nonsense.” And I guess they’re right. ER: Someone has arranged for that beyond our knowledge. BAB: How about semi-serious nonsense?

BAB: Why don’t we offer them $500 for all of it MS: Perhaps, but you have long said you were and then use it in every show? premeditated in your approach to painting, Ed.

Maybe you could do “Three Modern Masters” BAB: Pre-medicated? as an annual from here on out. ER: (laughs) To face a blank canvas, I have to BAB: I like to think of it as “Three Modern Half- have some thought about what’s going to go Masters.” on it before I work on it, before I even think of VSF

rolling my sleeves up, and that was counter to unlike you two in their approach, but they everything I was taught in school. At Chouinard were all very much idols of yours. Do you you were taught to paint the picture on the floor, think what they taught you was how to be light up a cigarette, keep it moving, don’t quit on artists? it, fill in that little area over here, and don’t forget the bottom over there. I started out making art ER: Yes, that’s what they did. Each one of them that way, but it just never worked for me. I had to had his own voice, and they really were not have some sort of premeditated idea. affected by each other on a personality level. We were influenced by the way Kenny Price or Ed Didn’t Herbert Jepson tell you something Moses talked, but our work was totally different. similar when you were at Otis, Billy? BAB: Ed, did you start showing when it was the BAB: Jepson was full of shit. He was a fiddler. first Ferus? The most important quote I ever heard was, “You can’t put your subject in the center.” ER: No, I only knew the one at 723 North La Cienega. ER: That was a license for takeoff. MS: That’s when Irving Blum was there. Back then you really looked up to John Altoon, didn’t you, Billy? ER: Chico [Walter Hopps] was still there for a little while. BAB: I still do. BAB: Walter was a savant. And Ed, Bob Irwin was a mentor to you? ER: He could put everything into words because ER: Yeah, beside Billy and Irwin, who was my he was a word man. He had a way of reaching watercolor teacher, but also Altoon, because he people. Irving was always into who was the most would suck up all the air in the room. famous and who was making money. Walter was the opposite. He gave as much respect to BAB: He was a genius. obscure, forgotten people as he did to anyone who was famous. ER: When he entered a room, he didn’t even need to say anything. He was just total sunshine, So if L.A. was the Indonesia of the art world and you wanted to break up laughing or you were back then, what do you think about it now? awestruck. BAB: Do you know anything about it, Ed? BAB: If he didn’t have three girls chasing him all the time it was a bad day. ER: Well I know there’s a whole lot of it, whatever it is. You know people have asked me, “What do MS: It seems like Altoon and Craig Kaufman led you think the most beautiful city in the world is?” the way early on. And right off, and I really believe this, it’s San Francisco. There’s something mysterious about BAB: Craig was easily the most advanced artist it, and I don’t want to live there—and I never have in 1956, I would say, and he was the biggest lived there—but I still find it the most mysterious, asshole, so I got along fine with him. beautiful city in the world. I always loved driving around L.A., but man it’s changing so fast. They’re Altoon, Kaufman and Ed Kienholz were so putting mini skyscrapers up all over Hollywood, VSF

and we’re going to have less sunshine and more shadows. ER: It’s never too late, I guess. You’ll do something to blow our hair back, Billy. MS: Maybe that’s why you’re in the desert a lot these days and why, Billy, you’re in Hawaii so BAB: We don’t have any hair to blow back. much. ER: That was a lead-in for you to say that, Billy. BAB: We’re done. Aren’t we done, Ed? What are you working on, Ed? ER: Well, I guess so, but we can’t badmouth this place, Billy, because we keep coming back here. ER: I’m working on the same things I did when I was twenty years old. BAB: Oh, I like it, but I think we’re done. It’s hard now because the first thing anyone does is start MS: Back when you guys were just doing it for talking about money. Remember when nobody each other. talked about money, Ed? ER: That’s close to the truth. You weren’t doing ER: There wasn’t enough to go around. it for money, because there wasn’t a lot of that. We wanted to impress each other. I don’t know, What made you both want to stay in L.A. and we all just want to open the gates to heaven with not go to New York? whatever we do.

ER: Everything here was just so swank. You had BAB: Well, you’re a Christian. Ed, I just like it if progressive jazz and Central Avenue, all these you or any of my friends come in from anywhere things at the edge of our knowledge, and it was and they see things and they laugh. so tasty it just seemed like it was never going to end. What do you call it? The central casting of ER: Getting a chuckle is something. cities? I think that’s something both of you got early BAB: That’s a good one, Ed. This place is great— on, that something serious could also be it’s got Ruscha. humorous. Do you still feel like this is fun?

Are you working on anything else besides BAB: No, I know too much. your blue paintings, Billy? ER: That doesn’t mean you’re not having fun ER: Sounds to me like a Blue Period. doing it, Billy. I get up every morning and I feel like a hot piece of Kryptonite and then I say, Let’s go. BAB: Can I tell you, that’s all the paint I had at the time. I painted a lot of blue backgrounds, BAB: I wish my wife felt that way about me. But I and I said, “Shit, I’ve got all this blue paint lying still love Ed’s work. around.” And then I thought about it and I realized blue paintings sell. Did you know that, Ed? MS: I’m sure you guys still have lots of love for each other, too. ER: Never knew that. ER: We’ve got some of that for each other. We’ve BAB: Well that’s because you’ve never painted logged in the time and we’re still here. blue paintings. VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND LOS ANGELES 90038 VSFBilly Al Bengston LALA Fall 2017.qxp_Layout 1 9/22/17 7:51 PM Page 152 [email protected] / 310.426.8040

10 / 01 / 2017 Billy“Howlin’ Al Bengston At LALA The Fall Moon 2017.qxp_Layout Doggie” 1 9/22/17 7:51 PM Page 152 by Michael Slenske HOWLIN’ AT THE MOONDOGGIE For 60 years, BHOWilly Al BengstoLIN’n has mai nATtained h isTHE larger than life rep as the bad boy of the L.A. art world, but this fall he’s offering a glimpse into the softer, celestial side of his ever-soulful practice at Various Small Fires. BY MMICHAEOONDOGL SLENSKE PHOTOGRAPHY BY STGEVE IEPERILLOUX For 60 years, Billy Al Bengston has maintained his larger than life rep as the bad boy of the L.A. art world, but this fall he’s offering a glimpse into the softer, celestial side of his ever-soulful practice at Various Small Fires. BY MICHAEL SLENSKE PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE PERILLOUX

AS HE WAS PREPARING FOR “VENICE IN with his famous band of brothers—the renegade Cool School group Venice,” a satellite exhibition to the 2011 Venice Biennale featuring of Angeleno artists including Larry Bell, John Altoon, Ken Price, works by a broad group of art legends from Venice, , Billy Don Bachardy, , Ed Ruscha, Ed Moses, and Robert Al Bengston and I had a long-winding (and gut-busting) Irwin—that comprised the pioneering Ferus Gallery of Walter conversation. We talked about the glaring similarities (and Hopps and Ed Keinholz in the 1950s and ’60s. Whatever the case, differences) between the two cities’ canal cultures, old legends of this gauntlet of Bengston’s always stuck with me over the years. ASC aHliforEn iaW surAfS a ndP REurEopPAeaRn ImNotorGs pForOt hisRtor “yV aEndN theIC mEan IwNho wPirtobh haibsly fa bmeocuauss bea nhed mof ebarntot hit.e rAs—ndt hperob reanbelyga bdec Causooel faScr htooo lm graonyup Veinsnicpeir,”e ad shisate lsllicitek e cxontrhibiibtioutionsn to th toe 2the01 1s hoVewn,i cIeta Bliaienn MnaotoGle feaPtu rraincegr oafr tAisntsg tehlesneo d ayrtsi—stst yipnicclauldlyi nthge L caormrym Beerlcli,a Jlloyh snu cAcletsosofunl,, eKmener gPirnicge- , to-mid-career set—attempt to maintain some PR-managed image worVakles bntinoy a b rRoaosds i.g roup of art legends from Venice, California, Billy Don Bachardy, Craig Kauffman, Ed Ruscha, Ed Moses, and Robert Invoking some of his earliest fetish finish tropes—and of themselves that doesn’t allow for any interpretation, introspection, Al Bengston and I had a long-winding (and gut-busting) Irwin—that comprised the pioneering Ferus Gallery of Walter borrowing the iconic sergeant stripe chevrons he famously painted or, god forbid, fun. Surely not the type of fun that might come in conversation. We talked about the glaring similarities (and Hopps and Ed Keinholz in the 1950s and ’60s. Whatever the case, on masonite and aluminum sheets with auto lacquer in the ’60s (and the form of a writer they just met weaving fictions about their life differences) between the two cities’ canal cultures, old legends of this gauntlet of Bengston’s always stuck with me over the years. on countless other surfaces in the decades thereafter)—Bengston and art. But here’s the thing about Billy Al Bengston: fun is (and California surf and European motorsport history and the man who Probably because he meant it. And probably because far too many embellished a pair of traditionally black Italian gondolas in day-glo always has been) his raison d’être. inspired his slick contributions to the show, Italian MotoGP racer artists these days—typically the commercially successful, emerging- hues to mimic the leather suits worn by Rossi and American “I don’t think I made a living doing this until I was at least 50, Valentino Rossi. to-mid-career set—attempt to maintain some PR-managed image motorcycle racer Nicky Hayden. As he told me at the time, “By and a living back then was making $50 at a time,” explains Bengston, Invoking some of his earliest fetish finish tropes—and of themselves that doesn’t allow for any interpretation, introspection, turning this slug in the water into something that’s not now 82, who was born in Dodge City, Kansas to a tailor father who borrowing the iconic sergeant stripe chevrons he famously painted or, god forbid, fun. Surely not the type of fun that might come in camouflaged… I’m hoping what I bring to this is a new sensation, owned a dry cleaning business and a musical mother, who once sang on masonite and aluminum sheets with auto lacquer in the ’60s (and the form of a writer they just met weaving fictions about their life not an advertisement for myself.” for the San Francisco Opera. Raised with a sartorialist savvy and and art. But here’s the thing about Billy Al Bengston: fun is (and on couSontl ewhenss oth theer scururfatorces infor in thmeed de himcad ethas tht etherea Iftateliar)—n aButhorengsitieston Midwestern work ethic, after moving permanently to California emwouldn’tbellishe da llowa pa irthe of ves trasdelsitiona intolly the b lacacnak Ilsta alias an r esgondult ofola theirs in dDaucay-gloti- aBlwenagyss thaons wbeoerkn)ed his as rais bonea cdh’ê tratet.e ndant by day at Doheny State huinvokinges to m ipamintic tjobshe ,l eBengsatherton su ididn’tts wo rtan keb yit Rsittingossi a down.nd Am “Peutric thean Beac“hI dinon’t Da thinkna Po Ii nmt aCdael iaf olivingrnia— dwoingher ethis he until met IP wriacse —at alenads t b50,y mofuckertorcy cinle therac ewar terNi cakndy Hleta ythemden. Aarsr eshet you,”told mhee sahott th bae ck,tim aedding,, “By annigdht a lheivi nstudg baiecdk (ti.ehe.n m wixeas dm tonsakin gof $ c5la0 ya tin a btirmeaed,” m exixeplarsin) sw Bithen Pgestteorn, tur“nIfi nyou’rg teh igoings slu tog aictn likethe a Vwenatice,er Cinatliforo snoiamne tthahint’sg whathatt you’s n do.ot noVowu l82,kos watho O wtisa sC boorlleng ine o Df Aodrtg &e C Dityes,i gKna.ns Saosm toe taim taeilors he fa mtheanrn wehod camThouflaen youge dw…on I’t’m have hop toing com weha btack I b againring to an thisd you is ’lla nebe wh apsepnsy.a Yoution,’ll othewn higed ah dlaryd dcelera onnin cgons butrsiucnetionss an sdite as mwuithsi cEadl mKoietnholzher, w,h otheo onrc time saensg notbe a nper admveanentlyrtisem ebantnned!” for myself.” fhoer tthaeu gShatn pFarrat-nticmisec oa Ot paretr as.c Rhoaoisles d( swtriethtc ha isnagr tofrroiamli stU sCavLvAy atnod SoT whenhe go nthedo lcuras eavtorent inforually mmedad ehim it in thato tth thee ca Intaallias ann da uthorBengitiesston, MNoridmweasn,te rOnk wlaohomrk eat)h toic ,m aaftkeer emndovs imnge ept.e r“mI daidnen’tnt lgyive to aC shit,alif”o rhenia wouldn’tever the a llowprovoca theteur vess, elsgoa intoded theme caat nathels conclus as a resultion of of theirour inter Ducaviewti- Breecnagllsst.o “nI waosr kjusedt haasving a b efunach s uratfingtend,”a nt by day at Doheny State invokingto “Just pawrintite wjobshat,e vBengser youton wa ndidn’tt, Mi ctahakeel .it” Psittingaying ldown.ittle m i“nPdut to the the BeachA si ny oDua mnai gPhot inimt aCgainliefo, rtnhiea —chwahlleerneg eh ei nm eemt bPerilcliesh—inagn dh ibsy fuckercomment, in the Iwa blithelyter and replied, let them “Sure, arres t Billy,you,” Ihe plan shot on ba it.”ck, Then adding, he noutsightiz hee life stud—aiesd Be (i.eng. smtonixe wde tonsll kno ofw cs—islay in da buntingread m inixe thers) s wensithe Pthaetet r “Ifs toppedyou’re going me cold, to a ct“No, like I am Veaennice, ma keC asliforomen siahitn thaup.”t’s what you do. Vaonuy lmkoyst ha ot rO ctoins sCpiorallceyg yeo ouf mAirgt h&t t hDineksi tgon a. dSdo tmo ehtiism CeVs haes malraenandeyd Then youPer whaonps’t iht avewas toh icoms praen bkackster againpast r eansudr fyouacin’llg boer hjuapstp ay. c Youhee’llky the“be higen thh elarde,d deor none tchonsat” trbyuc thtione ar tsiitest—s wditheca Ededs Kagieonholz. Whe,n othe he wr atimsn’et s bec perhalmlenanentlyge from ba a nned!”stubborn Kansan who was notoriously competitive hred tlinauingght hispa rBSAt-tim me otorat caycrt lescs haot othels (oldstr eAtcschotin gP arfrko smpe eUdCwaLyA on to The gondolas eventually made it into the canals and Bengston, Norman, Oklahoma) to make ends meet. “I didn’t give a shit,” he ever the provocateur, goaded me at the conclusion of our interview recalls. “I was just having fun surfing,” to “Just write whatever you want, Michael.” Paying little mind to the As you might imagine, the challenge in embellishing his 152 LALAmag.com comment, I blithely replied, “Sure, Billy, I plan on it.” Then he outsize life—as Bengston well knows—is daunting in the sense that stopped me cold, “No, I mean make some shit up.” any myth or conspiracy you might think to add to his CV has already Perhaps it was his prankster past resurfacing or just a cheeky “been there, done that” by the artist—decades ago. When he wasn’t challenge from a stubborn Kansan who was notoriously competitive red lining his BSA motorcycles at the old Ascot Park speedway on

152 LALAmag.com Billy Al Bengston LALA Fall 2017.qxp_Layout 1 9/22/17 7:51 PM Page 153

VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

Billy Al Bengston standing before his 1989 moon painting, Difourdi, inside his Venich Beach studio.

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“I just hate the way museum shows look. When I’m looking at a painting, I like the outside element.” — Billy Al Bengston

Friday nights with Bell as his one-man pit crew he was making naïve, people, models, fancy hookers, who liked to come over. He knew pop abstractions of his 350cc Gold Star—and its sculptural parts— ’em all.” for a seminal show at Ferus (reprised last year at Venus Over Ruscha, a frequent reveler at the Mildred building, who Manhattan). When his nomme de surf, Moondoggie (after the New famously collaborated with Bengston on his sandpaper covered 1968 York street performer), wasn’t inspiring a character in “Gidget”— monograph, “Billy,” considers the space one of his friend’s longest novelist Frederick Kohner’s daughter Kathy was one of countless running works. “The building was kept up as a sort of Winchester surf legends who considered Bengston a dear friend—he was Mystery House-South. Sarah Winchester believed she would live creating poetic watercolor paintings of the flora, fauna and fruity forever if she always constructed and added new rooms to her drinks native to his beach haunts in California and Oahu, his second house,” says Ruscha. “Bengston has managed to do the same, always (if not spiritual) home. (They presage the work of Jonas Wood by remodeling, adding this or that, moving a wall three inches, building nearly four decades.) And when his ever-evolving live-work space lofts and half-lofts, partitioning blind spots—no part of that building on Venice’s Mildred Avenue, a block from Muscle Beach, wasn’t escaped his face lifts. And, like the storyline, Billy lives on to do more playing home/studio to the likes of Moses, Price and Irwin, it served sawing and hammering. It is in his eternal bloodline.” as a backdrop—with some help from his old pal and neighbor Frank Of course, as a place where so many creative forces converged, Gehry—for his 1968 painting survey at LACMA. In other words, for Bengston also clashed, famously, with many of his cohorts. Bengston, living is an art form (and great living yields the greatest “There was a lot of arguments about girls and spaces,” recalls art). Moses, who hilariously traded barbs with Bengston during the LA “Whatever he got himself into he put a lot of passion in it, Legends artist talk at Stage with Bell and Ruscha in whether it was motorcycles, bicycles, running,” says Bell, who would February. This summer Bengston showed alongside Moses and scour thrift stores with Bengston for natty threads to maintain the Ruscha as part of the “California Dreaming” survey at Connecticut’s aristo alter-egos—Bengston was known as Dingy Bingy and famously New Britain Museum of American Art. At 91, Moses doesn’t nicknamed the cigar-puffing, tuxedo-wearing Bell, Lux—which they remember every detail of his Mildred days, but claims back then his inhabited at art openings and late night revels at Frank & Musso’s. old pal was “sort of an asshole.” That is to say, they didn’t always see “For a long time he was running everywhere,” adds Bell. “He ran eye to eye. “You said up, he said down. We got close to a lot of fights” miles and miles every day and if he had an opening to go to he didn’t Moses says. “But he was a very talented, very inventive guy and very get in his car, he got into his running shorts and went running to competitive. That’s the thing we all had in common.” downtown L.A. He’d be all obnoxious and sweaty when he got there, Indeed, the art and architectural saga of Mildred is a but he’d look very cool. The guy just had impeccable taste and total complicated layer cake, one which Bengston has been smart to mine style.” for various exhibitions over the years. In fact, it was supposed to be That incomparable style trickled over into the Mildred Avenue the focus of his September solo debut at Various Small Fires, the building, which was previously home to a bank, a dentist and a budding Hollywood gallery run by Esther Kim Varet that was newspaper before Bengston took over and filled it with countless named, fittingly, after Ruscha’s 1964 photo series turned artist book. artworks and furniture pieces—be it original Paul Frankl rattan As one who considers her gallery’s role to be “a revisionist voice chairs sourced from a thrift store or a resin table made from one of for a new generation”—one that has given contemporary platforms his Chevron paintings—that charted an eclectic trajectory over the for the works of pioneering eco-artists Newton and Helen Mayer years. Harrison, Mernet Larsen, and Jessie Homer French, whose “I started in the basement in 1962 and then I got the kitchen, paintings and rugs (including ones that read “Billy Al’s Eats” and which was a full apartment at that time,” says Bengston. “There has “Don’t Shit Where You Eat”) can be found in nearly every room of never been a master lease. This is a handshake, month-to-month the Mildred building—Varet was intrigued by the possibility of deal.” recreating Bengston’s funky milieu in her gallery after spending a It turned out to be the deal of a lifetime: just as Bengston was long, martini-soaked afternoon at his Venice digs two years ago. becoming “the social director of the scene,” according to Bell, “We became friends and what kept me going back was that I Mildred became the hotspot for the L.A. cognoscenti—as well as was doing all this research on the ’60s and I was reading about Billy’s New York counterparts like and Divine—who would participation in the ’65 Sao Paulo Biennial, where Walter Hopps trek out to the then-wasteland of Venice for Bengston’s famous brought his work with Larry Bell and Robert Irwin and that’s the parties. move that put L.A. on the map internationally,” explains Varet. “I “Billy liked to entertain in his own scene more than he liked think he’s one of the most central characters from that time and it going out,” explains Bell. “He was a very good cook, he made very feels fresh again.” stylish dinner parties and invited great people. He had a lot of fancy When Bengston learned that he couldn’t demolish Varet’s people in the film and fashion business, record producers, theater skylit, Johnston Marklee-designed space to make windows for an

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installation of his furniture, they opted instead to present a selection of his bright, multimedia Moon Paintings—originally shown four decades ago and conceived after he and Ruscha took a moonlit motorcycle ride along the Sea of Cortez and Bengston called dibs on painting the moon. At VSF new and old examples are installed in idiosyncratic positions on the walls for a show that is now titled “It is the Moon Doggie” (open through October 28). “I just hate the way museum shows look. When I’m looking at a painting, I like the outside element,” says Bengston, who built a sitting room for the guards at LACMA during his 1968 survey so that he could work (and stay) overnight in the museum to insure his Billy Al, Wendy Al, and their dog, Pappy Raku, installation with Gehry was a success. Short of demolition, Bengston enjoying happy hour in painted strips of sea green into the recessed skylights at VSF—“To the glass elevator. alter the perception of light,” says Varet—and added pieces of rust- colored carpet cut into moon shapes throughout the space to create the works when he’s on the road. (A selection of Dentos from 1965- a decidedly Bengstonian mise en scène for the works, many of which 1970 will be on view at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery this fall.) The haven’t been exhibited since he originally completed them. popcorn ceiling—a geometry of intersecting trenches—bares the A 1989 review by a Los Angeles Times critic compared these scars of countless walls (and studio configurations) toppled to make lunar compositions to “Barcalounger art” and “fancy gift-wrap next room for this sprawling rumpus room. to the amazing freshness and devil-may-care delight of his “The lines on the ceiling are from various reconfigurations of experiments of the early 1960s” and went on to say that, “although the space based on his whims. He’s always needing change,” says in other hands the image might serve as a meditation on the cosmos Wendy. “In fact, at the moment, I think he is contemplating another or the mutability of time, Bengston seizes it simply as another way major floor plan.” to fill a canvas with luminous color and pleasing pattern. As relaxed “Aloha,” says Billy as I step out of the chamber. Dressed in a and cheerful as happy hour on the lanai, Bengston’s work has lost customized Hawaiian shirt, lime green wide wale cords, and some all its bite.” Varet simply calls that assessment “a dumb and cheap Birkenstocks, his island greeting is carried by an undertow of fluted analysis.” country twang betraying his Kansas roots. These days he doesn’t “It totally missed the point that these works are a return to concern himself with too much studio time—at least not in Venice; nature, composition, subjectivity—a new political horizon that he prefers to make watercolors in Oahu—but keeps a pretty solid moved beyond the machinic logic of the ’60s,” she says. routine of an early morning coffee on a lavender velvet sofa in a “Why don’t you take the elevator,” says Wendy Al, Billy’s light-and-art-filled corner room (off Bachardy Hall, which is filled second wife who chose to take his middle name when they were with Don Bachardy drawings of the Cool School). He follows this married in 1982, as I enter the voluminous foyer for a peek at his with a family style lunch with Wendy and his aide de camp, Luis, half-century-in-the-making gesamtwerk this summer. Struck by her in the living room, then a short afternoon nap before a round of radiant blue aloha shirt and precision coiffed, salt-and-pepper bowl happy hour martinis in pink crystal glasses to close out the day. cut, it takes me a minute to realize Wendy is serious about the offer “You know what it’s like being 83 fucking years old? I wake up until she gestures toward a pneumatic vacuum-powered glass every morning and say, ‘Again?’” says Bengston just before he heads elevator resembling those deposit tubes employed at drive-thru bank into the kitchen to make a pitcher of cocktails for today’s crowd, tellers. Once I’m secured inside the tight chamber, Wendy presses which includes Wendy, Varet and her gallery director, Sara a button and I’m lifted (albeit leisurely) off the checkered floor, past Hantman, both of whom stay way past their one drink maximums. a couple flags of Bengston’s design hanging from the double height While it may not be the rollicking scene of yore, with ceiling. Suddenly, a hazy flood of California beach light rushes Moondoggie entertaining a steady stream of icons at wild Oscar through all sides of the glass tube and I’m surrounded by a gallery parties, between the Pilates, a retired fighter “laying hands” on him of Bengston’s moon paintings that appear to trace a lunar cycle from and Wendy taking the reins of his robust exhibition schedule, he a set of windows overlooking Mildred Avenue to a windowless still manages to cut an athletic figure that is once again looming sanctuary that Wendy asked Bengston to build for her on her 51st large over the contemporary art world. Probably because he just birthday in 2013. A John Altoon abstract resides on the wall behind doesn’t give a damn whether it happens or not. the elevator, and a few tables are topped with beguiling “travel art”— As his old friend Bell, puts it, “Billy Al Bengston has never done miniature versions of Bengston’s chevron Dentos on Tijuana a fucking thing that he didn’t want to do, ever, and he’s my hero aluminum—that sit on sheets of velvet intended to wrap and display because of it.”

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07 / 01 / 2017 “Billy Al Bengston: A Conversation with the legendary Los Angeles-based Finish Fetishist” by Oliver Maxwell Kupper VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

10 / 01 / 2014 “Billy Al Bengston” by Prudence Peiffer VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

05 / 18 / 2001 “ART IN REVIEW; Billy Al Bengston -- ‘Dentos and Draculas, 1968-1973’ ” by Grace Glueck

Danese

41 East 57th Street, Manhattan

Through next Friday

The painter Billy Al Bengston, one of the Los Angeles ''car culture'' stars of the 1960's and 70's, was among the first to ditch traditional oil paint on canvas, opting instead for sprayed layers of automobile lacquer on aluminum in soft colors, achieving a highly reflective, translucent surface. He was also among the first to assert an artistic identity in terms of the ''low'' pursuit of macho sports. (He was once a semi-professional motorcycle racer.)

His Pop-ish icons combined Color Field abstraction with commonplace and commercial imagery. In his first exhibition in New York in 18 years, Mr. Bengston shows a small group of works from 1968 through 1973 to which he gave the titles ''Dentos'' and ''Draculas.'' In the ''Dentos,'' a military chevron takes dead center place; in the ''Draculas,'' the central motif is the silhouetted shape of an iris, lifted from the logo on Iris brand sugar packets. Its petals, apparently, fancifully evoked the image of Count Dracula in flight.

Some of the paintings bear marks from a hammer beating, a rough touch of the street imposed on the dreamy, shiny surfaces built up of layered colors. In ''Flying Leatherneck'' (1969), for example, a brilliant white chevron sits on a ground composed of glossy diagonal brown bands edged in gray. But the well- mannered surface is roiled by a short row of rivetlike indentations beneath the chevron.

A few of the paintings depart from the rather rigid format of the centered icon: in ''Rio Grande'' (1969), four streamlined orange shapes converge on a cross-shaped delta of watery green. It's a winner. The show reminds you that Mr. Bengston's works, though slightly over the hill, have hung on to their virility. VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

02 / 04 / 2016 “Decorative Arts: Billy Al Bengston and Frank Gehry discuss their 1968 collaboration at LACMA” by Aram Moshayedi

On the occasion of a ten-year survey of his paintings at Frank’s exhibition design was dominant and central to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1968, artist the execution of the show. How did the idea for this Billy Al Bengston enlisted the help of architect Frank collaboration come about? Gehry to design the exhibition’s scenography and create an architectural armature upon which the show FRANK GEHRY: To start, there was no budget. We could hang. Complemented by a now rare and coveted had a museum director, Ken Donahue, who was a nice, catalog by Ed Ruscha, Bengston’s presentation at bumbly guy but a dinosaur in terms of the art stuff that LACMA proved to be the most substantial articulation was going on. His curator was none other than Maurice to date of the painter’s commitment to the context Tuchman. I think probably Billy proposed me to them. of display as a form of mediation and experience. The exhibition design included reused discarded BILLY AL BENGSTON: No, I didn’t propose wall fragments from the museum’s past exhibitions, anything. I said, “He’s doing it.” borrowed furniture and home accents, posters from the Black Power movement, and a life-size wax figure FG: I was a hanger-on to the art scene because the made in Bengston’s likeness by the nearby Hollywood architects that I was collegiate with at the time thought Wax Museum. In retrospect, the paintings appear to I was nuts. Even my friends at the time and those who almost be an afterthought in an installation conceived are still my friends—some of them are dead—thought and executed by two friends and collaborators, one I was weird, but I didn’t know I was weird. And when that privileged the conditions under which pictures are the art guys embraced me, I was declared weird by viewed, and sometimes overlooked, in the conventions association probably. of museology. AM: Did the architecture world not offer the same kind of support network that the art world seemed to provide?

FG: Well, I probably could have found the support, but it probably would have been a disaster for my life if I had gotten it. This way, I became somebody that was freer. They didn’t know they were opening these paths for me, and I didn’t know it at the time. I was like a blotter, and I was just picking up on the kind of willingness to experiment, to go where nobody went, to try things and not be able to explain them.

AM: Billy, for this project at LACMA, what was the attraction you had toward collaborating with an architect, Frank, rather than another artist?

ARAM MOSHAYEDI: Let’s talk about your BAB: Well, let’s put this in perspective. I can tell you, collaboration at the Los Angeles County Museum of it was a very small world, and Frank is only telling you Art in 1968. Although the exhibition was billed as about what happened in his world. In our world at that a ten-year survey of Billy’s paintings, it’s clear that time, I shared a studio with Ken Price, and we worked VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 and we smoked cigarettes and drank black coffee. That Walsh was close friends with the curator of Asian art. was it. For lunch, he’d have a Heath bar and I’d have AM: Did the success of that project lend some a Snickers bar. That was it. Then we got a ping-pong credibility to the idea of collaborating on Billy’s show? table, so we’d surf, play ping-pong, and work, smoke and drink black coffee. That’s it. That was what we did FG: The curators at LACMA knew I could get it done, for three or four years. That’s all we could afford to but they were worried because at the time I was using do. It was a very small world. At that time, there were plywood, chain-link, corrugated materials, and things so few interesting people that there was a gravitational like that in my designs. They said there was no budget pull, and Frank was part of the interesting people. to buy materials and that I had to work pretty much None of us knew at the time that he thought anything in the norm. So I asked them to take me down to their of us. And we didn’t know that Frank was going to storeroom, where they had piles of plywood with become the foremost artist of our time. AM: Tuchman paint on them. I asked what they were doing with the once mentioned another exhibition that you worked plywood and they didn’t know, so I took it and made on at LACMA called “Art Treasures from Japan.” Did his exhibition. you do exhibition design for many of the shows there? AM: So the colors throughout the installation were entirely inherited from the recycled materials?

BAB: Yes, they were all random and placed randomly. At that time, the museum would put up temporary plywood walls, which would be painted depending on the show. There was a lot of leftover paint in powder blue, as I recall. Quite a bit of rust, a little bit of yellow, and then some natural. So Frank designed this thing, but when the museum started putting up these used walls, they said to me, “Don’t worry, we’re going to paint them.” But I said no, and then Frank showed up.

FG: They thought I was going to want them painted, but I didn’t. The day that [LACMA director] Donahue finally came in to see it, I think he almost had a heart attack.

BAB: He did a lot of exhibitions at LACMA, and they AM: You mentioned Maurice Tuchman before as the were all very conservative until he got to me. curator, but didn’t James Monte also play a part in the curation of the exhibition? FG: I’ve told this story a million times, but the architecture teachers at USC in the 1950s were BAB: Monte was the curator that was called on, but returning GIs—architecture graduates but who had actually Tuchman did it. He was the head curator. But been in the army. They saw Japan and all those as far as I’m concerned, nobody curated the show. beautiful temples in Nara and Kyoto. And the language was transportable, so they had an aesthetic that they FG: No, there was nobody. We did the show ourselves, could transport and build here quickly. Greg Walsh, and it was super. It was serendipitous that I went down, who became my partner, had lived in Japan during his found the goddamn plywood, and pulled it up; and it navy tenure and was totally a Japanophile, so when was cheap so they couldn’t deny it. They didn’t have the LA County Museum was given “Art Treasures any money to do anything new, and I said we would of Japan” to do, they asked us to do the installation. use the old materials. I guess maybe I told them we’d VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 paint it, but then when it got up it looked so great that AM: From what I’ve read about the installation, it we kept it up. It scared Tuchman a bit, but at the time seems that there was an issue about the furniture. Was he was pretty willing to try things. there a disagreement between the two of you about the function of the furniture in the show? BAB: I didn’t have any problem with Tuchman at all. FG: The biggest and only real issue happened with FG: No, he was open to stuff, and he knew artists. the furniture. I assumed Billy would help me get the He knew how artists worked, so he was relatively furniture for the installation, but he didn’t at first. He supportive. said he didn’t want to be any part of it and that he didn’t even want to hang the show. But Tuchman said AM: The idea of creating a space that resembled a that he had to finish the installation, and we still hadn’t studio or a domestic space in the context of a museum brought in the furniture we said we would. I didn’t seemed to be a radical gesture, but also, Billy, in terms know where to find the furniture, so somebody in my of how your paintings are understood and discussed, office suggested that we rent it, and that’s what we the exhibition at LACMA seems to stand out as an did. We called a rental place and asked for four living attempt to control the reception of your paintings, to rooms. I just said to bring whatever kind of furniture define the space in which they were viewed. Did you was popular at the time. consider this gesture as a response to the conventions around the display of paintings within the museum?

BAB: It wasn’t radical at all. The point is that at the time nobody walked around a museum with earphones, and there was no definition of what everything was or meant. Today, everything is spoon-fed, but in those days you had to look. Today, nobody looks. They just listen and walk around and bump into other people. But even then, nobody actually got close enough to see anything. They’ve always just stood back at a certain distance to look at something on the wall. That’s the reason I wanted to install my work in the way that we did. The experience of going to a museum is a totally synthetic situation—walking around, looking at things, standing on your feet. The best a museum does is to put in one these uncomfortable benches in the middle where they don’t belong. BAB: I assumed you said whatever was the cheapest. AM: You mentioned before that there was no real curatorial oversight at any point in the exhibition, FG: I didn’t pick the furniture; they just sent four but it also seems like you were both taking liberties living rooms and put it all in the museum. Tuchman that weren’t necessarily consensual or that Billy, in called me and said that I had made the greatest artwork particular, wasn’t even aware were happening despite ever but by accident and that it wasn’t relevant to the fact that it was his paintings that were the intended this show. At that point, there were still no paintings objects to display. installed, so to take average furniture like that, put it in a museum, and set up living rooms—it looked like FG: It wasn’t that Billy wasn’t in control. If he said some kind of tableau that I don’t know who would’ve no, it wouldn’t have happened. done. By accident it was very powerful but also very irritating. The furniture was in your face. VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

AM: Would it have potentially outdone the paintings? BAB: I borrowed all the furniture.

FG: It was just this funny plywood environment with FG: He did what we wanted to do in the first place, funny carpet and then this furniture. and it was great. I had spent all those years at Billy’s studio, and every month he would change the decor. The biggest tragedy is that we didn’t photograph all of his stuff. Talk about a decorator— I wouldn’t want him to be considered a decorator, but that’s where I learned a lot about my own aesthetic, by watching him change his studio all the time.

AM: Was the objective of the installation to turn Billy’s paintings into a form of decoration? Billy, do you have problems with your painting practice being described as decoration?

BAB: I don’t have a problem with that.

AM: It’s obvious that you consider the paintings as secondary objects.

BAB: The paintings are secondary until you sit down and look at them. When I was younger, I thought I AM: Ed Ruscha later said that it felt too much like was making something new, but the only thing I was home. doing was reinterpreting the materials and making a decorative object that didn’t have a specific meaning. FG: That was in regard to the installation after. He Paintings are primarily decoration until you sit down didn’t see the first sets of furniture. Nobody saw it and look at them, and most paintings, if you put them except for Tuchman, who was freaked on two levels in the wrong light, don’t look how they were intended. because it did something by accident—I didn’t design If a painting needs a light fixture or if it needs a certain it—and it made a statement other than what we wall or something, then it is another thing entirely. So intended to make. We tried to get it out of there before my thinking was to make something that does not need Billy saw it, but we weren’t so lucky. Billy saw it and any specific kind of light. didn’t get an explanation that it was a mistake, so he thought it was my idea to do the furniture in that way. AM: Where did the idea of including a life-size wax He started yelling at me and calling me all kinds of model of Billy come into the plan for the exhibition? things. It freaked me out because, as you can imagine, I loved Billy. I wanted to make this the best thing ever FG: Just by accident one night at some party in for him. I was worried about bombing in their world Hollywood with John Altoon, I met this guy named because of this thing. If I bombed, they wouldn’t let Spoony Singh, who owned the Hollywood Wax me in anymore. There was a lot riding on it for me. Museum. We all got drunk, and I told him about the It was a heavy thing. And when he came and started show, and I told him about Billy. In my mind, Billy yelling, I just— was a big thing—I thought everybody knew who he was—but this guy didn’t have a clue who Billy was. BAB: I just said, “Get this shit out of here.” He did it anyway, though.

FG: Then he just did it on his own. AM: Did Spoony Singh see any significance to a show VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 at LACMA even if he didn’t know who the artist was? BAB: They were responsive in part because a little section in the exhibition included a lot of Eldridge FG: No, not at all. I told him after the show he could Cleaver posters and stuff like that. But I also had full put it in the Hollywood Wax Museum, but he just run of the museum, which is entirely different from looked at me. I assumed he would be interested, but he today. I could come in at midnight and do everything wasn’t. He just made the wax figure, and that was it. myself without needing to ask anyone for anything. I would come in at any hour of the day and night AM: What was the little figure placed right next to the because I got access without having to go through wax figure of Billy? the curators or anybody, and I could do damn near anything I wanted to.

AM: Even though it would be contrived to situate this project within the context of institutional critique, it seems as if there was an attempt to address the specific context and conditions of museum display. The exhibition seems inherently antagonistic and self-critical, perhaps even foreshadowing a brand of work that came of age in the 1970s. Would that seem accurate now in retrospect?

BAB: That’s interpretation.

AM: It’s also a historical fact.

BAB: Of course, but really what we were trying to do was to make chicken salad out of chicken shit because we were forced to do so. Studios function that way. A BAB: A friend of mine who was an acolyte racer gave studio is a place where you can take a piece of shit and it to me at the show’s opening, so I put it down there. think of how to fix it. I have no idea what it is. It’s a little sculpture of me going into a turn on a motorcycle; it was his concept. I AM: But, specifically, what you are describing with don’t even think Frank knew about it. this exhibition is an engagement with the conditions of painting, rather than the history of painting itself— FG: That’s the first time I’ve seen it. describing your paintings as though they are almost a byproduct of the way you consider museum lighting, BAB: Frank hasn’t yet mentioned the foremost part for example. of the exhibition—the guards, who inevitably were a pain in the ass in those days. I happened to be very BAB: In a way, they are. involved with the Black Power movement so I made decisions that were based on my relationship with the FG: It seems that they could have been painted guards, who at the time were mostly black. I put in a anywhere because Billy realized at an early moment comfortable couch, a television set, and where some how Hollywood and the media had overpowered the of the walls were not open, I took out the plywood so whole world and changed the lives of everyone. He they could see everything in the exhibition without got into it for a minute and couldn’t take it. He realized having to move off the couch. what it was, so he slammed the door on the whole thing. Some of us knew how to manage it, but Billy AM: And how did the guards respond to this? just wanted to be left alone. He couldn’t deal with it. VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040

AM: Do you think the fact that LACMA had a relatively short history by 1968—that it had been in that location for only three years—had anything to do with your ambivalence? Did this new institution afford you both the opportunity to think about what the display of culture meant in a way that had never existed in the city before then?

FG: Sure, putting the work in LACMA gave it credibility.

BAB: You have to think that way when you walk into a place that looks like that.

AM: Do you mean that it is a place that’s not made for you, not set up, say, how a studio is set up?

AM: Do you think part of this was about undermining FG: In the case of the Guggenheim in Bilbao, I some kind of significance that a ten-year survey was worked with a brilliant director and it was always meant to imply? I remember you once saying that your about making a place with the art in mind. But after original idea was to make your paintings available in it opened, there was a museum directors’ meeting bins for visitors to rummage through, for instance. That in London where they passed a resolution to never idea and what you ended up doing at LACMA seem build museums like that because it was architecture like a withdrawal from participation or an attempt to competing with the art. I didn’t get another museum not play the game. Is it that you weren’t really even for a long time after. People like Glenn Lowry would interested in doing a show with the museum? say publicly: We don’t want another Frank Gehry. But artists like Cy Twombly would call me from BAB: Well, showing didn’t mean anything. It really Bilbao and say that their show there was the best didn’t, I don’t think. The things that mattered to me they’d ever had. Hockney sent me a nice note about was that Ruscha did the catalog and got paid for it and it, and Rauschenberg liked it, so there was a kind of Frank did the installation and got paid for it. disconnect from what the museum directors said. The artists always told me that they didn’t want sterile AM: Frank, do you remember what you were paid?

FG: Maybe $2,000.

AM: And, Billy, did you get paid for your part?

BAB: No, and the museum didn’t buy anything. At the time, there was really nothing to be accomplished in the art world. If you go back and look at the financial records, you’ll see that nobody was making any money and nobody had fancy studios.

FG: I think all of us had tendencies to be self- destructive because of our insecurities about what we were doing. We didn’t know what we were doing. VARIOUS SMALL FIRES 812 NORTH HIGHLAND AVENUE LOS ANGELES 90038 VSF [email protected] / 310.426.8040 white rooms; they wanted something to work against. But museum curators and directors just want the white cube because it’s easy to do and they don’t have to think. They just go and put it up and get out, and it’s cheap to change from show to show. Some stuff just dies in that environment.

BAB: The only thing that doesn’t die in that environment is stuff that’s designed for it, and that is no good.

AM: You mean that a kind of work that is made with its presentation in mind?

FG: I was on Charlie Rose a few years ago with Renzo Piano, and Charlie was trying to figure out the difference between Renzo’s work and mine as far as museums. He said the rap on me is that my museums compete with the art and, of course, the other two architects on the show came to my defense and said, oh no. But Charlie still pressed, so I said the marketplace decides. And he looked at me and he said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, I did Bilbao, and I never got another museum.” So he turns to Renzo, and Renzo kind of shrugs on camera, and I say, “The defense rests.” That’s on camera. Then Charlie asks, “What about the artists? Don’t they weigh in?” And I said, “Look, if you’re an artist and the is going to give you a show, you’re not going to complain.” When the taping of the show ended, guess who is sitting in the front row? . And he came up to me and said, “You’re goddamn right. I hate MoMA.”