surfing culture, Hollywood glam, on-the-fly biography and the requisite
sex, drugs and rock and roll, Rebels in Paradise covers a varied terrain
while wearing its research lightly. This engaging look at the freewheeling
Los Angeles art world of the 1960s is both a compelling read and an
important record of a seminal, often overlooked moment in postwar
American art.
Of course, time and the international art market have validated the
singular artists who emerged from the period, among them Ed Ruscha,
John Baldessari, James Turrell, Bruce Nauman, David Hockney, Ed Moses,
Billy Al Bengston and Robert Irwin. But as a significant art scene, 1960s
Los Angeles has remained in the long shadow cast by New York and the
Abstract Expressionist painters of the late 1940s and 1950s. Buttressed
by the manifestos of critics Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg,
Abstract Expressionism was the dominant art narrative of the day, and
New York was its bully pulpit.
Los Angeles, in contrast, attracted artists who wanted to escape
the dictates of critics and the burden of art history itself. In this respect,
they had much in common with the great European Dadaist Marcel
Duchamp, whose first American retrospective was at the Pasadena
Museum of Art in 1963. Organized by the young curator Walter Hopps,
the show was a touchstone for many Los Angeles artists, who reveled in
their outsider status yet also aspired to legitimate art world success.
In 1957 the mercurial Hopps cofounded the Ferus Gallery, which
championed the diverse art of this young, rakish group. In 1962 Ferus also
