Many of you who will attend MOCA’s concert featuring X, the Dead Kennedys, and the Avengers on Saturday likely experienced, as participants or witnesses, the germination of the punk scene in Los Angeles. Photographer Gary Leonard was there, too, capturing the musicians, artists, raucous club scenes, seminal concerts, and late nights that turned into mornings. Leonard’s lifework is recording the story of Los Angeles, and while he was passionate about punk, his interest in the scene was driven by his love for the city. “I was talking about Los Angeles,“ he says. “I was moved to document it as much because of the music as anything else, but it has always been about Los Angeles. I have this connection to this city. I was born here, I was raised here, I stayed here. I don’t have any interest in being anywhere else. If I’m away, I’m thinking, how is this different from Los Angeles?“ His archives provide a timeline for the rise of punk in L.A.—there are images of Exene Cervenka in Tijuana for Top Jimmy’s wedding, Keith Haring painting models at Power Tools in downtown L.A. for Richard Duardo, Raymond Pettibon at Eddie Nash’s West Hollywood club, The Starwood, John Doe playing with Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs at Al’s Bar downtown.

READ THE REST OF THIS POST, AND SEE A GALLERY OF GARY LEONARD’S PHOTOS FROM L.A.’S PUNK SCENE AT The Curve>>

Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories demos the De-Manufacturing Machine, 1979, on the opening night of Under The Big Black Sun.

Artist Kim Jones as Mudman

In advance of their Art Talks, MOCA has asked the artists of Under The Big Black Sun to reflect on living and working in California from 1974-1981. Join San Bernardino-born artist Kim Jones for a discussion of his work in the context of Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981.

ART TALK WITH KIM JONES
Sunday October 16, 2011
3pm
THE GEFFEN CONTEMPORARY AT MOCA

MOCA: When you think of the years 1974–1981, what imagery comes to mind?

Kim Jones: Judy, Lorna, Roberta, Ellen, Kathy (no, actually Kathy was before Judy), Nancy, Donna, Betsy, and one woman that I didn’t have sex with. A friend asked if the woman could stay over in my apartment. She flopped on the couch and lay on her side. Staring at me, she laughed for hours. I kept an eye on her all night.

MOCA: What/who were some of your most memorable influences during this period?

KJ: Blowing up model airplanes with Chris Burden, on his studio roof on the boardwalk in Venice. Wilshire Boulevard Walk performance: Drinking whiskey on the street with Bruce Nauman at 11 p.m. Gemini G.E.L on Melrose, where I worked as a nighttime janitor.

MOCA: What was life like in Southern California in the 1970s?

KJ: Easy.

Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974–1981 addresses the dynamic period in American art when modernism, characterized by a master narrative of progress and succession, reached a dead end, and a multiplicity of movements, forms, and genres began to take shape simultaneously. Indeed, the very notion of art history was called into question during this pluralistic period. As critic Arthur C. Danto explained, pluralism carried with it the “implication that there was no longer any historical direction. That meant that there was no longer a vector to art history, and no longer a basis in truth for the effort to spot the historically next thing.”1 This was partly the result of the individual artist’s own practice—including the spirit of questioning and experimentation occurring in and beyond the studio—taking precedence over affiliation with any group or movement.

In hindsight, pluralism can be seen as one of the most important developments to affect post war art. Moreover, as this exhibition argues vigorously, what cohered as postmodernism during the 1980s in New York effectively codified ideas and concepts evolving from art made in California between 1974 and 1981. Featuring 139 artists working in a wide array of mediums and styles, Under the Big Black Sun examines the exceptionally fertile and diverse production from all across California during this tumultuous transitional period in United States history, which was, incidentally, bracketed by two Presidents from California: Richard Nixon, who left the White House in 1974; and Ronald Reagan, who ascended to it in 1981. The exhibition borrows its title from an album by the Los Angeles–based punk band X to suggest that, during this post-Watergate, post-Vietnam era, disillusionment had eclipsed “California Dreamin’” and hippie optimism. The title also alludes to the plethora of individual art practices, both studio and poststudio, that flourished within this dystopian atmosphere, creating an artistic milieu in which “everything under the sun” was permitted and produced.

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Guest DJ Henry Rollins gave us this preview of his playlist for the Under The Big Black Sun Member’s Opening:

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