A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture
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A Beautiful Deep Dive Into Our Worldwide Arts + Culture |
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AN INTERVIEW Anarchy, Artist Sandow Birk, and His Art Drops Edition "Los Angeles County Museum On Fire (After Ed Ruscha)" by Gordy Grundy
Art Report Today is about to debut a new program, Art Drops Editions, which is designed to give everyone, not just the One Percent, the chance to experience the many thrills of collecting art. With a philosophy of 'Blue Chip Artists at Blue Collar Prices,' we aim to bring new audiences to our fine art world. Our first Art Drop needed to be larger than life. A standalone. A sharp stick edged with humor. Something centric to L.A. would be nice... It all came together with Sandow Birk's epic painting "Los Angeles County Museum On Fire (after Ed Ruscha)." It was our great pleasure to sit with the artist to ask, "What were you thinking?"
Art Report Today: Other than you, I cannot think of anyone who represents Los Angeles as beautifully as Ed Ruscha. You have both nailed the subtleties and the many complexities of our great city by the sea. Sandow Birk: I’ve always liked Ed Ruscha’s work since I went to art school [Otis/Parson's Art Institute]. Maybe because in the early ‘80s, there wasn’t much contemporary figurative painting going on in general. It was out of fashion to paint figuratively, and I thought Ruscha was so clever and witty and I admired him for both his figuration, but also sticking to L.A. themes and being an unashamedly L.A. artist throughout his career. So I always liked his work and I’ve known it and seen it whenever I can.
ART: Ruscha, our L.A. Lion in Winter, has been having a spectacular few years of love and applause. One piece at LACMA's 'ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN' garnered the most attention. His "The Los Angeles County Museum on Fire" (1968) was always mobbed. It drew the most crowds. SB: I have seen his painting of LACMA on fire, at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. I can’t remember the very first time I saw it, but I remember seeing it again in 2007, when I spent three months as Artist-in-Residence at the Smithsonian museums. I knew the painting, but had forgotten it was there, and to stumble on it in the galleries made me smile and miss L.A. It’s such a clever painting and it’s a real stick in the eye to LACMA – both in the subject matter (imagining their museum burning) and in that they don’t own it. ART: Yeah. That's always bothered me. The Hirshhorn don't surf! SB: And it’s big! 10 feet wide, so it’s impressive to see it. Almost like a one-liner joke or a New Yorker cartoon panel, but done on this monumental scale so you have to take it more seriously. So I’ve known his painting for decades and it’s been in the back of my mind. ART: Do you have a relationship with Ed? I ask with a little jealousy. I love the guy, but we've always been 'nodders.' At an opening or a shindig, we'd nod at each other, but I've never had a conversation. SB: I’ve only met Ed Ruscha once, I think, or once that I can remember clearly. I might have met him at L.A. art parties, probably at [gallerist] Earl McGrath’s parties if I did. Remember those blowouts? But I remember clearly meeting him around 1989 or 1990. I had recently graduated from Otis and I was trying to become an artist, and for a couple few years, I worked part time at L.A. Packing and Crating to pay the rent. We used to go out in trucks, all around L.A., and move art around, to museums and galleries, to collector's houses, to the airport, hang stuff for people, pack it up. It was a cool job in that you got to see a lot of the behind the scenes of the art world and meet lots of people. Anyway, one day we got sent to his studio in Venice, to pick up a painting and he met us at the door, two guys with a clipboard and truck. I went into his studio briefly and of course as a young, broke artist living in a dumpy storefront studio in the Crenshaw District, seeing his massive, spotless art studio, by the beach, with assistants and everything, was really impressive. He was nice and straightforward, but there wasn’t much conversation. It just made an impression on me.
ART: Was Ruscha an influence? SB: Of course his works have been influential to me over the years. As I said, his determination to be “L.A.” was very influential, because I was determined to stay in L.A. too. Being a surfer, not moving to New York was very important to me, and I always wanted to make L.A. an important art city through my own work. And also his sense of humor in his work. I’ve always tried to have some humor in my work too, even the most dour urban pieces. Humor is underrated and underused in Art. ART: Amen! What inspired you? Was it for a show? Or whimsy? Was it a slow burn or a fast spark of an idea? SB: I’ve been following the whole decision to tear down LACMA and rebuild it over the years, and to tell the truth, I’m not against it. I have a more of a wait and see attitude. But it’s a shitload of money they are spending, that’s for sure. And the design is so reviled in general, that I knew I had to paint. It was sort of a one-off spark that I wanted to get to doing for a long time... And to tell the truth, I’m surprised Ruscha himself didn’t beat me to it. It seems sort of an obvious idea. I had a show scheduled of new paintings at Track 16 Gallery in DTLA and I wanted it to be the centerpiece of ['Sandow Birk: Los Angeles and Her Surroundings'.] I was getting ready for the show and that was what made me get to it. I did a lot of research into his LACMA work... ART: Of course, you charged in! SB: I probably did a week of research and gathering reference stuff from Ruscha, and then from the new architectural renderings that were available. (There actually aren’t that many. [Atelier Peter Zumthor] seems to be really keeping it under wraps to minimize pushback.) His drawings, his sketches for the painting, the source material he used, the scale, the format for all his stuff... And then I took all that info, and recreated it with my works. I redid all the drawings at the same scale. And then the painting at the same huge scale as his. I wanted it all to be very obvious, very on the nose, that my work was intentionally playing off his. It makes my work more interesting, to know that there is the connection, to know that LACMA was mocked originally, and now do it again, to connect my work to his work, 50 years later. It adds depth, I think.
ART: Spot on! How long did it take to paint? SB: Probably about 2 weeks to paint it... After building the stretcher bars and all that stuff, which I always do myself. ART: What about your color choices? SB: The color decisions were intentional, to make the work as much like a Ruscha as possible, using colors he would use. ART: It seems more stylized and minimized that your other works, do you agree? SB: Ruscha’s a sparse painter. His works are pretty simple. That’s the power to them, I think. So I wanted to capture that feeling. ART: Where are you painting now? SB: In my studio in downtown Long Beach, where I do all my work. I live in a loft. I paint there. If I do sculptural works with [artist] Elyse Pignolet, we work in her ceramic studio in San Pedro, at Angels Gate Cultural Center. She’s had a studio there for more than a decade. ART: Any challenges? SB: None really. Transporting it to the show was a hassle, but no biggie. ART: What was the reaction of your colleagues? SB: It seems like it went over well. The drawings sold. I wish LACMA would snatch it up before it gets sold to the Hirshhorn! ART: That is a conundrum. Ruscha's painting, and now yours, are a stick in the eye of a very elite group. Where do you want to see this painting go? It has to be a public piece. Not hidden by a private collector. SB: I always want my work to be seen. If it were to go to an institution would be the best thing I can imagine. Obviously LACMA or the Hirshhorn would be ideal… ART: In Nathaniel West’s novel ‘Day of the Locust,’ the main character Tod Hackett paints a huge piece "The Burning of Los Angeles”… SB: I know, I’ve read the book and have long pondered actually doing that painting. But I’ve done so many similar paintings over my time, so many images of Los Angeles on fire. There's “The Truce between The Crips and The Bloods,” from 1992. A scene from the 1992 riots. "The Great Battle of Los Angeles" is a huge oil and acrylic on canvas. And there's the “The Course of Empire: Destruction” (after Thomas Cole). [See the 'fire'vartworks below.] ART: It's gotta be fun to paint fire. Ruscha once said that it's fun. SB: I don’t remember having difficulty with the fire. I just enjoy painting all the time.
Art Drops is a fundraiser for Art Report Today, to keep our newsroom running and subscriptions free for all. Sandow Birk has made this work affordable for you.
Birk's Representation: Track 16 Gallery (LA), Koplin Del Rio Gallery (Seattle) and Catharine Clark Gallery (SF)
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