Channel Orange (fantastic L.A.)

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Outrageous, elusive, open, generous, indefinable — these are the descriptives that René-Julien Praz, curator of “Bloody Red Sun of Fantastic LA”, tonight’s sale at Piasa auction house, employs to describe the West Coast megalopolis.

"why see the world, when you got the beach?" Sweet Life, Frank Ocean, 2012

A city of contrasts where “glamour meets vulgarity, highbrow culture the mainstream; kitsch rubs shoulder with the sublime and seduction with repulsion” continues Praz. Los Angeles has seen its artistic scene develop plentifully since the 1960s. Long overshadowed by New York, in 2006 the Centre Pompidou paid homage to the importance of the fertile artistic landscape of the city with the exhibition “Los Angeles 1955-1985, birth of an artistic capital.”



Industrial, residential, commercial, some may say that LA is itself a consumer commodity. It’s a city with a real estate market that knows no bounds, where everything is an advert and everything is for sale. And it has some good selling points: the Pacific Ocean, a warm, sunny climate. But LA is not just the mythical city of Hollywood stars, surfing, and TV series.
 

E.J. Hill, I Still Believe in Anchors, 2015 © Xavier Defaix



A far cry from the fine art conventions of the East Coast, art from LA favors pop culture, sport and cutting-edge technology. Artists too are innovative. The Light and Space movement for example abandons the material aspect of conceptual art, using light as the primary material.
 

James Turrell, installation at the Gagosian Gallery, London, 2010


“Light constantly surrounds us, and we are almost unaware of this fact. The artist [James Turrell] creates pieces as a way of truly showing us light, that is for us to take note of our existence by awakening the senses,” says  Bruno Racine, president of the Centre Pompidou between 2002 and 2005.


Furthermore, the arrival of numerous museums and galleries, as well as the growing reputations of the region’s art schools — UCLA, CALarts, USC — have seen the presence of more and more emerging talent, fed by the sunshine. Reemploying the codes of mechanical reproduction, characterised by Pop Art, these artists create a totally new good. If Pop Art banalizes and standardizes images and objects of daily consumption, local artists get inspired to better sublimate them.

 



From an iconic LA look, or Finish Fetish, certain artists bring an almost obsessive attention to their works: simple and abstract forms, à la New York, brighter colors, shinier surfaces.

Got any Kitsch?
 

John Monn, Ammunition Painting XXVII (Migration), 2015 © Xavier Defaix

 


In opposition to the blasé spirit of New York, Los Angeles has learnt how to innovate and impose its style. From Californian hedonism, a sort of artificial light has emerged “reflecting the hypnotic shimmering surface of sun on water,” says Racine.

Almost like a Frank Ocean song, the new art scene in Los Angeles is at once disconcerting, unreal and superficial, yet profound. It is maybe this exact combination however which produces the success of fantastic LA. The uninhibited taste for all that shines.


The sale takes place tonight at Piasa auction house, Paris.