22/03/2025
Since forever, LA has been about risk. We tell big stories on big screens about success against all odds. Our stars come from nowhere, move here on hayseed budgets with bindles full of aspiration and little else. Our freeways host the most spine-shearing car chases in the world; our sports are considered extreme, our politics radical, our drugs potent; and, recently, we’ve been reminded that we all essentially live in one big pile of kindling that’s oh by the way right along the San Andreas Fault.
LA’s art is no different, at least historically. In the ’70s—amid Nixon, Vietnam, assassinations, moon landings and riots—Chris Burden had himself shot and crucified (Shoot, 1971; Trans-Fixed, 1974), Barbara T. Smith had s*x with three men in one performance (Feed Me, 1973), Pippa Garner flipped a Chevy’s chassis and drove it backwards across the Golden Gate Bridge (Backwards Car, 1974), and Paul McCarthy fu**ed a bunch of raw hamburger meat with a hotdog up his ass, and videotaped it for everyone to see (Sailor’s Meat (Sailor’s Delight), 1975). At the same time, CalArts, as we know it, opened, and counted among its faculty one artist who burned all his paintings (John Baldessari), one who called twenty minutes of blank film a finished film (Nam June Paik), and another who believed that artists should stop making art altogether (Allan Kaprow). The history of LA art, of course, is far more complex and diverse, but this is the genesis of its popular spirit, one that plumbs the depths of taboo and skewers convention.
That spirit, however, has faded. LA art is staid now. Maybe all art is.“ …. Read the entire feature online on artillerymag.com (link in stories)
