MOCA Grand Avenue & The Temporary Contemporary
American Art Since 1950 from the Norton Simon Museum presented thirteen paintings and sculptures on long term loan from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. The exhibited works dated between 1962 and 1969 and roughly fell within two major art movements of the 1960s: Minimalism and Pop Art. Donald Judd’s untitled 1966 sculpture emblematized the former, using serialized, geometric forms to eliminate symbolic associations and stress the artwork as a physical object in space. Fluorescent light constructions by Dan Flavin (1966, 1969) and a mirrored cube by Larry Bell (1962) produced similar reconsiderations of the artwork’s relationship to its environment, while Robert Irwin, another Minimalist, was represented by No Title (1962–63), a square, colored canvas with faint, horizontal lines that examined the qualities of perception itself.
The Pop artworks in the show included Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (1969), an iconic installation of recreated commercial soap pad boxes, and Edward Ruscha’s Annie, Poured from Maple Syrup (1966), an oil painting of the word “Annie” in the typeface of the Little Orphan Annie comic strip, painted as if “poured from maple syrup” in trompe-l’oeil style. Two artists were framed as integrating elements of both Minimalism and Pop. Frank Stella’s Conway III (1966), from his “Irregular Polygons” series, and Damascus Gate I (1969), from his “Protractor Series,” combine minimal geometries with commercial advertising color schemes; Roy Lichtenstein’s Long Modern Sculpture (1969) is an Art Deco-like pattern presented as a simple, 2D brass sculpture.
American Art Since 1950 was installed first at The Temporary Contemporary and later at MOCA Grand Avenue. This second run coincided with another exhibition at MOCA Grand Avenue called The Decisive Years: 1945-1960, which included another loan from the Norton Simon Museum of fourteen gouache drawings by Richard Diebenkorn (1950).
The Temporary Contemporary is the original name of The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.