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J. Paul Getty Museum Opens Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970

J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center, presents Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970 on view October 1, 2011–February 5, 2012.


Standard Station, Amarillo, Texas, 1963, Ed Ruscha. Oil on canvas. 64 1/2 x 121 3/4 in. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; gift of James Meeker, Class of 1958, in memory of Lee English, Class of 1958, scholar, poet, athlete and friend to all. © Ed Ruscha

This exhibition charts the abundant artistic innovation in post-World War II Los Angeles. During this period, Los Angeles artists looked for new approaches, subjects, and techniques for art making, including experimenting with the materials and processes of the pioneering industries in the region and the local surf and car cultures. The exhibition leads viewers on a dynamic tour from the emergence of an indigenous strain of modernism evident in the hard-edge paintings, assemblage sculpture, and large-scale ceramics of the 1950s, to the subsequent development of iconic Pop images of the city in the 1960s, and the conceptual and material contributions of Light and Space art and process painting that fostered the advanced art of the 1970s.

Organized by the Getty Research Institute, with the J. Paul Getty Museum, this exhibition is part of the region-wide Pacific Standard Time initiative.

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