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The Riverside Art Museum is pleased to announce its major exhibition for the fall of 2006. Conceived and organized by RAM Senior Curator Peter Frank and RAM Associate Director Andi Campognone, “Driven to Abstraction: Southern California and the Non-Objective World, 1950-1980” provides a succinct but thorough survey of
non-objective painting in southern California during the postwar decades – the thirty years during which Los Angeles (and its surrounding region) came of age as a major American art center – and began its emergence into the international art scene. “Driven to Abstraction” goes on view on August 26, 2006. The gala reception, with many of the artists in attendance, will
be held on Thursday, September 7, from 6 to 9 p.m. The Museum is offering a free coach ride from Bergamot Station to Riverside and back for the night of the Gala on a first reserved basis. The exhibition will remain on view until October 14. Peter Frank describes “Driven to Abstraction” as a small but provocative contribution to the reassessment of southern California art history.
While most surveys of this period, in exhibition and in print, have focused on local artists’ innovations in the realms of assemblage, Pop, and light-and-space “perceptualism,” the distinctiveness of abstract painters’ achievements in the 1950's, 60's and 70's has not been so thoroughly examined. While signal developments such as “abstract classicism” and
individual figures such as Sam Francis and Ed Moses have been recognized internationally, the dynamically evolving discourse they grew out of and contributed to has barely been acknowledged as a significant and enduring tendency within the aesthetic and social context of artistic practice in Southern California. Featuring some forty artists active between 1950 and 1980, “Driven to Abstraction” fills
the entire Riverside Art Museum. ARTISTS FEATURED IN THE EXHIBITION INCLUDE LEE MULLICAN, OSKAR FISCHINGER, JOHN ALTOON, HANS BURKHARDT, BETTINA BRENDEL, RONALD DAVIS, LEONARD EDMONDSON, JULES ENGEL, JUNE HARWOOD, ELISE SEEDS CAVANNA, DON SORENSEN, KARL BENJAMIN, LORSER FEITELSON, JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, TOM WUDL, PETER VOULKOS, EMERSON WOELFFER, AND MANY OTHERS. The exhibition is accompanied by a
catalogue with an essay by Peter Frank, who has been critically and curatorially championing art from southern California for some thirty years – well before he left his native New York to resettle here. “Driven to Abstraction” exemplifies the Riverside Art Museum’s dedication to the art of California and to the investigation of its rich and complex history. |
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