At the corner of Melrose Avenue and Kings Road in West Hollywood sits a skyscraper designed by Frank Gehry in the 1970s. Incorporating deconstructivist “LA School” elements such as an exposed frame of wooden poles, skylights and airy spaces ideal for creating art, the long-standing work of Gemini GEL, one of the most prominent print studios in North America since 1966.
“That’s a lot of generations of artists,” curator Susan Dackerman told the Observer about the LA-themed show, “Impressions of Los Angeles: 60 Years of Printmaking at Gemini GEL,” until May 1. “This exhibition can be done many times with different images. When I looked at the prints I saw that there was a large group of images, re-sunlighting of LAmo artists trying to re-illuminate the conditions of the sun in LAmo. fog, fog, LA exuberance, LA magic hours, from the harsh lighting of Ken Price to the magic hour shot by Tacita Dean.”
In addition to the above, there are works by people such as David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Ann Hamilton, John Baldessari, Richard Tuttle, Analia Saban, Frank Gehry, Ed Ruscha, Claes Oldenburg, William Crutchfield, Joe Goode, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Diebenkoni and Viebenkodoor.
“One of the things that Gemini did very well was to match artists with a talent that would allow them to realize their ideas no matter how difficult,” said Dackerman, a professor of art history at UCLA who specializes in western print culture. “Some artists work closely with professional printers, and there are printers here who can solve their problems. When the artist says I want 75 color grades, the printer gets it. The artist has an idea, the printer has the technical ability.
Lithography has not changed much since 1796 when the German playwright Alois Senefelder came up with the idea of reproducing his writings by writing them with an oil crayon on limestone slabs and then printing them with rolled ink. Although limestone is still sometimes used, the modern equivalent is the manageable aluminum plate, with each color and shade requiring a different one. The first step is to make a sign, put the design on the aluminum, followed by printing, fixing the image on top. Every time a plate is printed it must be re-inked.
For example, multi-hued Lichtenstein Sunlight Through Clouds (1985) required 27 colors in 23 runs from five aluminum plates, three Finnish birch woodblocks and 15 screens. “When people look at paintings, which are also complicated to make, I don’t think they get involved in a technical way. What kind of paint? Is it canvas? Is it linen?” Dackerman says, distinguishing between these two approaches and how they are perceived. “I think prints help with complex analysis. And sometimes what gets lost is what happens when all that technical skill ends up on paper and you have a beautiful image.”
This is Tacita Dean’s place LA Exuberance 2 (2016), a deceptively simple sky of clouds with blue stripes, the necessary plates of every shade of blue and white. “It looks like a picture but it’s not,” said Dackerman. “He drew it and he used chalk and he sprayed the chalk and he drew it and I think he did a really good job of replicating the LA sky. Then, after he made the blue sky he realized that the sky turns other colors an hour before sunset,” explains Dean’s second clip in the game. LA Magic Hour 13 (2021).
A longtime LA resident now living in London, David Hockney has created prints that involve a wide range of media and techniques from mylar drawings to the iPad. His weather series since 1973 includes The sun (1973), 8-colour lithograph/silkscreen, The fog5-color lithograph, and The rain6 color lithograph/silkscreen.
“I think this is one of the best series he’s done,” Dackerman said, nodding. The rain. Once you put the paint down, you could make scratches on it, and that allowed him to get the raindrops by jumping a little underneath. He allowed the ink to drip and the ridges resembled pools of water. You get a very clean line.”
Richard Diebenkorn Twelve (1985) is made in his typical style of beige, brown and green colored blocks, bordered in blue, like a bird’s eye view of an empty lot. A 14-color lithograph, it appears to use a dark watercolor texture. “He allows the elements of printmaking to frame the scene such as using paints to put the scene on those canvases, wet wash markings that are more common in lithography,” notes Dackerman. “In this writing, that’s what he’s emphasizing. He lets it happen when he puts the ink down on the stone. And the way he goes, he leaves it there.”
Claes Oldenburg, best known for his pop art portraits, has four pieces in the exhibition, including Floor Lace in Landscape – Red (1991), based on one of his photographs. The ankle high sneaker blends into the white background leaving only the lace visible, resembling a bright red palm tree, a bow like leaves. He arrived in the city in 1968 and spent two months writing and drawing before creating a series of 12 pictures based on his notes and presented in his playful style.
This is Analia Saban’s place Wood Flooring (Horizontal) (2017) is a seemingly simple technical work depicting the textured floor of his West Adams home, one example of the challenges presented by the medium. Made from an image transferred to an etching plate, it was then used by the artist to emphasize the lines and incisions. Dackerman explains: “On the plate is an emulsion, partly a photo emulsion, shining on the plate.” But then the plate needs to be cut so that the ink stays in those lines and the plate is pressed, which creates an impression on the wood.”
Of Robert Rauschenberg’s seven prints, two of them are snowflakes made in 1982, combining photographic elements and commenting on the “flawless” Angelenos. Others, they like A chronosaur (1993) features familiar landmarks such as a dinosaur with a clock in its mouth above Ripley’s Hollywood Boulevard Believe it or Not! The museum. His 1998 LA Uncovered series is a collage of familiar places taken from storefront photos, the Watts Tower and the Marlboro man who used to stand on the Sunset Strip, it reads, “Earthquakes, fires and real riots.”
“It turns out that’s true,” joked Dackerman. “They were all collected and published. He gave a real taste of what LA is.” Images of Sid Vicious, James Dean, Marlon Brando and Bob Marley included Marmont Flair (1991), with a red curtain representing a famous West Hollywood hotel.
Starting with Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz’s Ferus Gallery in 1957, LA has evolved into a modern art mecca, being the first to exhibit Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans and celebrating Marcel Duchamp with his first retrospective in 1963. Turrell, Robert Irwin and Larry Bell, as well as pioneering pop artists such as Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston have called the city home for decades.
With the opening of MOCA in 1986, the addition of The Getty in 1997, the Broad in 2015 and the expansion of LACMA (opening next month), the city has become home to titans old and new, and Gemini GEL artists from all corners of the country. “LA can be portrayed in so many different ways, and you can capture so many different aspects of it,” Dackerman assures us. “It appears as a subject in a work of art in such a literal way that we don’t often think of the city as a subject. But LA is.”
More show updates
