Page 20 - Studio International - May 1965

1
of having participated geographically in the origins of
the style-if only through the work of Still-was a
stumbling block to an understanding of the region's
failure to produce a viable Abstract Expressionist art.
A similar impasse was reached in Los Angeles. where a
somewhat later confrontation with Abstract Expres­
sionism incited the strongest of reactions. A number of
painters adopted the style, but soon reacted with des­
peration to the palpable inability of this area, as in San
Francisco, to produce an Abstract Expressionist art on a
level with the painting being done in New York.
There was. however, a major difference in the response
of the Los Angeles artists to the knowledge of their
doomed effort. They did not, like some of their San
Francisco counterparts. simply return to an examina­
tion of figurative possibilities which had been the con­
cern of American painting before the Abstract Expres­
sionist revolution. They took back to their studios a new
knowledge of what contemporary art was all about,
and commenced, throughout the decade of the fifties,
to work out a series of alternative possibilities which
would not leave them at the mercy of a geographical
accident. While the New York School took over the
world, an unsung and difficult labour in Los Angeles
studios produced a series of inventions in assemblage,
sculpture and painting, which was neither in reaction
against or a side-stepping of the impact of Abstract
Expressionism, but a direct continuation of the effort to
confront the problems of art on the highest possible
level.
During the past few years. the work of the Los Angeles
artists has come to wider and wider attention. If. at
times, it was from strangely incompatible sources that
these artists derived their insights, it has also led them
to find a sense of environmental identity very different
from that of New York painting. Also, once the way had
been cleared in Los Angeles, a number of San Francisco
artists dropped the dead investigations of moribund
forms. and joined the new direction.
A painter of interest whose crisp rectilinear abstract
style crystallized as early as 1948 is John McLaughlin.
Although none of the younger generation in Los
Angeles grow directly out of him. his work has been
the subject of their admiration; it is not so much that his
basic and simplistic approach, without mythopoetic
overtones. suggested an alternative direction, as much
as it affirmed their own intuitions. And, if in the light of
their subsequent development his work has assumed
greater relevance, it is of interest to note that it has
provoked a similar reaction elsewhere; specifically,
when it was shown (with Feitelson, Benjamin. and
Hammersley) in an exhibition entitled 'West Coast
Hard- Edge· at the London Institute of Contemporary
Arts in 1960. At this exhibition McLaughlin's work was
focused upon by a younger generation of British artists
who were consciously attempting to move British
1 painting into the main stream of modern art. Provoked
Larry Bell
Untitled Wall Construction 1964 by a similar inability to assimilate Abstract Expression­
Mirrored & Painted Wall Relief
36x36in. ism. McLaughlin's work suggested at that time the
Ferus Gallery melding of their own Constructivist tradition onto the
2 more rigorous wing of Abstract Expressionism. As a
John McLaughlin result they absorbed the term 'Hard-Edge'-originally
72 1961
42 X 60 in. coined by the Los Angeles art critic Jules Langsner­
Felix Landau Gallery and helped to circulate it into general usage.
3 The New Abstraction in California is only loosely con­
John McLaughlin nected with what is generally referred to as 'hard-edge·.
37 1952
Oil/Panel It is not near so pure an art of shape and colour. has less
32 X 38 In.
Felix Landau Gallery connection with Constructivism and geometry, and
194