The Getty's focusing on LA this summer with a couple of exhibitions and a screening:
How the city was made Modern:
Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940–1990
April 9–July 21, 2013
During the period 1940 to 1990, Los Angeles rapidly evolved into one of the most populous and influential industrial, economic, and creative capitals in the world. This dynamic exhibition provides an engaging view of the region's diverse urban landscape, including its ambitious freeway network, sleek corporate towers, whimsical coffee shops, popular shopping malls, refined steel-and-glass residences, and eclectic cultural institutions. Drawings, photographs, models, films, animations, oral histories, and ephemera illustrate the complex dimensions of L.A.'s rich and often underappreciated built environment, revealing this metropolis's global impact as a vibrant laboratory for cutting-edge design. Co-organized by the Getty Research Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum, this exhibition is part of the initiative Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.
Highways 5, 10, 60, and 101 Looking West, L.A. River and Downtown Beyond, 2004, Michael Light. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of and © Michael Light and Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica
http://www.pacificstandardtimepresen...ure-1940-1990/
Also, the inestimable Ed Rucha celebrates the blandness:
In Focus: Ed Ruscha
April 9–September 29, 2013
Photography has played a central role in Ed Ruscha's artistic practice, most notably in the photobooks he began publishing in 1963. Highlighting important recent acquisitions by the Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute, this exhibition features a selection of prints and materials related to Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963), Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965), and Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966). Also on view for the first time are contact sheets from his shoot of the Pacific Coast Highway (1974–75), one of the many streets he has documented extensively since 1965. The exhibition offers a concentrated look at Ruscha's engagement with vernacular architecture, the urban landscape, and car culture. Co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute, this exhibition is part of the initiative Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.
Pacific Standard Time Presents:
http://www.pacificstandardtimepresents.org/ More info on the above and other PSTP exhibitions around Southern California.
There's also to be a screening of "Smog" (1962)
Thusday June 13, 7pm
Per the Getty's blurb:
The laconic and moody
Smog (1962, 35mm 88 min) is a little known film from director Franco Rossi that presents a compelling outsider's perspective following an Italian attorney through two days in the City of Angels, from LAX and Pierre Koenig's Stahl house (both newly built) to the oil wells of Culver city.
A couple of 'then and nows' of Ruscha's work:
Edward Ruscha (American, b. 1937)
Bronson Tropics, 1965
Graphite powder and graphite wash, with point of brush and graphite wash, on cream wove paper
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1998.114
1323 N Bronson, Hollywood
gsv
Norm's La Cienega on Fire (1964)
oil on canvas
http://artobserved.com/2010/09/ao-on...mber-5th-2010/
Norm's, 470 N La Cienega
gsv