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Parrish Art Museum opens EST–3. Southern California in New York Los Angeles Art from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection

The Parrish Art Museum presents EST–3. Southern California in New York Los Angeles Art from the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, an exhibition on view March 4-June 17, 2012.


Frederick Hammersley (American, 1919–2009), Same difference, 1959. Oil on linen, 24 x 22 inches. Collection of Beth DeWoody, New York. Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA © 2011 Frederick Hammersley Foundation

EST–3 focuses on Los Angeles art in the New York collection of Beth Rudin DeWoody. Its title (Eastern Standard Time Minus Three) is a playful rejoinder to Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, a Getty-initiated series of more than 60 exhibitions across Southern California that examines the emergence of Los Angeles as an art center. Starting on the opposite end of the country, and looking across three time zones, EST–3 avoids the tempestuousness of local dramas and the hyperbole of hometown boosterism to present a cool, wide-ranging view of art made in Los Angeles over a 40-year period of unprecedented development.

Beth Rudin DeWoody is a voracious collector known for her energy, generosity, passion, and commitment. She began collecting early, growing up in a household where interest and engagement in the visual and performing arts was encouraged. A defining moment was seeing Henry Geldzahler’s landmark exhibition New York Painting and Sculpture: 1940-1970 while she was in high school. California has a special draw for her. “I got interested in the California scene from visiting there and from my mother and stepfather, who collected California artists like Joe Goode, Ed Ruscha, John McCracken, and John MacLaughlin.” Over the years DeWoody has amassed a remarkable group of works in all media created by many of the Golden State’s most important artists.

Working closely with DeWoody, the Parrish’s Los Angeles-based adjunct curator David Pagel has selected works created during an especially fertile period of exploration and production. From a 1948 lithograph by the critically acclaimed abstractionist Frederick Hammersley, to paintings from the 1960s by the pioneering minimalist John McLaughlin, from signature works by Pop painter Ed Ruscha, to portraits by David Hockney, EST-3 surveys the early development of what has since grown into one of the most exciting contemporary art scenes in the world. While the individual works in the exhibition are complex, nuanced, and sophisticated, Pagel has approached this wide ranging investigation through a series of clear and basic categories—people, places, and things—to provide a framework for this lively and possibly uncategorizable compendium of objects.

Artists represented in the exhibition include Eleanor Antin, John Baldessari, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Vija Celmins, Guy de Cointet, Robert Colescott, Bruce Conner, Jack Goldstein, Robert Graham, David Hockney, Dennis Hopper, Douglas Huebler, Ed Kienholz, Lee Mullican, Helen Pashgian, Ed Ruscha, and Beatrice Wood. – www.parrishart.org

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