Riot Material

Art. Word. Thought.

  • Home
  • Riot Material Magazine
    • About RM / Subscribe
    • Entering The Mind
      • 3-Part Podcast
    • Contributors
    • Categories >
      • Art
      • Artist
      • Books
      • Thought
      • Film
      • Cinema Disordinaire
      • Riot Sounds
      • Records
      • Jazz
      • Interview
      • More   >
        • Architecture
        • Image
        • The Line
        • The New Word
        • That Evening Sun
        • The Natural World
        • Video
    • Contact
    • Masthead
  • Art
    • Art Reviews
  • Books
    • Book Reviews
  • Film
    • Film Reviews
  • Records
    • Jazz Reviews
    • All Reviews
  • Riot Sounds
  • Cinema Disordinaire
    • Riot Cinema

Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1959–1971

May 3, 2017 By Riot Material Leave a Comment

at LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion, Los Angeles
Reviewed by Jonathan Griffin

There was no way it was ever not going to be a mess: eleven years of one of the most influential American art galleries, condensed into a 100,000 square foot section of LACMA’s Resnick Pavilion. Consider the fact that many of the artworks in the 134 exhibitions held over those eleven years turned out to be canonical Modernist masterpieces, and were acquired by museums or major private collections around the globe, many now unwilling or unable to lend them. Others were destroyed, or lost, or are too delicate to go on public display. Some – not all of them masterpieces – entered LACMA’s own collection, so of course they wound up in this show, whether they fully deserved to be there or not.

Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery 1959–1971, is the story, in exhibition form, of the gallery run by Virginia Dwan, located first in Los Angeles and later in New York. It moves from the gallery’s Abstract Expressionist beginnings, with great paintings by Philip Guston, Franz Kline and Matsumi Kanemitsu, through Dwan’s Nouveau Realiste phase, which included Yves Klein, Martial Raysse and Jean Tinguely, to her important engagement with Conceptualism, in particular the language-based work of Joseph Kosuth, Mel Bochner and Lee Lozano. From there, the museum visitor enters a section devoted to the Land Art projects of Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, and then a greatest hits of Minimalism (based on Dwan’s 1967 exhibition ‘10’) featuring Jo Baer, Fred Sandback, Agnes Martin and Sol Lewitt, amongst others.

Robert Grosvenor. Untitled (Yellow)

Everything is too tightly hung and gloomily lit (perhaps because of its delicacy) but there are some magnificent treasures among the clutter. An unrealistic demand, I know, but I would have loved to have seen the Martin and the Sandback, for instance, in galleries on their own. Nearby, a reconstruction of a huge, slanting yellow fin by the Minimalist sculptor Robert Grosvenor, which is cantilevered at an angle from an overhead support, and stops in mid-air, a foot above the ground. Untitled (Yellow) deservedly had Dwan’s L.A. gallery almost to itself when it was first exhibited in 1966. Here, it is beset on all sides by other artworks and ephemera; behind it, the rock of Michael Heizer’s permanent outdoor Levitated Mass installation looms through the window shades.

The strikingly beautiful and dynamic Dwan was only 28 years old when she opened her gallery. Naturally, she came from money: her grandfather was one of the founders of the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. (better known as 3M), and her considerable inheritance had been burning a hole in her pocket since her 21st birthday. She was supported in her artistic interests by members of her family. Her mother-in-law, Vera Lazuk, owned a gallery on Long Island where Dwan’s sister-in-law, Eugenie Thompson, had worked; when she moved to Los Angeles, Thompson agreed to serve as co-director of Dwan’s space.

Virginia Dwan. 1969

All of this is worth mentioning because LACMA’s exhibition, which was co-organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and is accompanied by a fat catalog, takes Dwan’s visionary exceptionalism as a given. (The fact that she is still living, and was involved in lending works for the show, may explain this.) There is no doubt that she supported some of the most important artists of her time; she introduced the West Coast to Paris and New York-based artists, and, significantly, in turn introduced those artists to the West Coast. L.A. made a considerable impression on Claes Oldenburg, who in 1963 organized a ‘happening’ in a parking-lot off Beverly Boulevard for cars and motorbikes called Autobodys. Larry Rivers, Mark di Suvero, John Cage and Merce Cunningham also all enjoyed the Pacific view from Dwan’s Malibu beach-house, where they set up their studios in a spare room. This exhibition begins with a charcoal portrait of Dwan by Rivers, dedicated “to my great dealer + her sun + surf”.

Claes Oldenburg with Floor Cone (1962) in front of Dwan Gallery, Los Angeles. 1963

Dwan’s real affinities seem to be with New York, where she lives today. Two years after she opened her New York gallery, in 1965, making her one of the first gallerists to operate bi-coastally, she closed her L.A. space. Relatively few of Dwan’s artist roster were SoCal residents; Ed Kienholz, perhaps the most prominent among them, defected to Dwan from the Ferus Gallery in 1960, and eventually defected from L.A. for good in 1973.

As a young woman in the male-dominated LA art world (think of the macho Ferus ‘Studs’), Dwan’s achievements deserve recognition. But she does not appear to have made careers, so much as supported and encouraged already established or ascendant figures. She promoted few female artists. And, as Dwan herself admits in a video in the exhibition, while her modest financial aim was to break even, she never succeeded.

Dwan might best be remembered for what she did outside of her gallery, rather than in it. The eleven years that coincided with her adventure into the business of selling art also happened to be the years in which Modern Art progressed from the large, saleable Ab-Ex paintings of the 1950s to the ungainly assemblages of the Duchampian Pop artists of the 1960s, then on to the dematerialized language art of Conceptualism, late in that decade, and finally to the site-specific anti-monuments of Land artists which were situated miles away from the gallery. In short, it was a lousy time to try and sell art.

In 1968, Walter De Maria sent Dwan a telegram:

DEAR VIRGINIA MANY LAND SENSATIONS AND PROJECTS ALREADY REALIZED SO VERY POSITIVE I URGE YOU TO CONSIDER CLOSING OF GALLERY AND TO CONSIDER WORLD WIDE OPERATIONS

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah. 1970

Dwan did not heed the advice – at least, not for a while. Instead, she proceeded to fund a series of hugely ambitious (and unsellable) “land sensations”, as De Maria called them, including Michael Heizer’s Double Negative (1969), which entailed the removal of 240,000 tonnes of earth, and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970). Film documentation of Spiral Jetty featured prominently in the Dwan Gallery’s final exhibition, in June 1971. Nearby was work by the Land artist Charles Ross, whose extensive architectural project Star Axis was begun in New Mexico that same year, and, like De Maria’s Lightning Field (1974) and Heizer’s monumental City (1972- ongoing), was graciously supported by Dwan.

Charles Ross, Star Axis, New Mexico. 1970’s-ongoing

The history of the Dwan Gallery is, then, hardly an example that many young gallerists would choose to emulate today. Like so many stories about the patronage and dissemination of art, it does not feature anyone making sacks of cash, but rather someone who was bold and committed and generous (and, crucially, rich) sharing her wealth seemingly without consideration of her personal gain. It is heartening to imagine that some of today’s most magnificently unsuccessful galleries might one day be celebrated in a museum, half a century after they go out of business.

Michael Heizer. Double Negative

~

Jonathan Griffin is a British art critic based in Los Angeles. He is a contributing editor for Frieze magazine and he also writes for Art Review, Art in America, Art Agenda, the Financial Times and other publications. His book On Fire is out now, published by Paper Monument.

 

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Art, The Line

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

The Line

Presence as Abstraction, as Beguiling Obfuscation, in the Works of Leon Kossoff

Leon Kossoff: A Life in Painting, at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC (with concurrent exhibitions at LA Louver in Los Angeles, through 9 April 2022, and Annely Juda Fine Art in London) Reviewed by Arabella Hutter von Arx The first painting greeting us in the Mitchell-Innes & Nash exhibition is, aptly, a self portrait. Smaller than […]

Noah Davis, Untitled (2015)

The Haunt of One Yet Faintly Present: Noah Davis, Still at Home

Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, Los Angeles Reviewed by Ricky Amadour Directly across from the entrance, an opening statement to Noah Davis, at the Underground Museum, reads “many of the paintings you are about to see were painted in this space.” Smudges, dribbles, and droplets on the floor embody the physical notion of Davis […]

Robert Lowell's "Skunk Hour" is critically reflected on at Riot Material.

“Skunk Hour,” by Robert Lowell: A Reflection

by James McWilliams Robert Lowell Life Studies / From the Union Dead Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 176pp In 1958, The Partisan Review published Robert Lowell’s poem “Skunk Hour.” This was a notable moment in American literary history. The poem was closely linked to Lowell’s friendship with Elizabeth Bishop. Reading and re-reading Bishop’s work allowed Lowell […]

The Ephemeral Palace: Alexey Titarenko’s City of Shadows

at Nailya Alexander Gallery Booth, Paris Photo 2021 by Allyn Aglaïa Aumand The Ephemeral Palace . I walked across Paris to the Palais Éphémère to go to Paris Photo. I walked Across Paris, Dense with ghosts. I walked between selves. I walked to the future. I walk. I walked.

Entering the Mind, by C von Hassett

The View Into Your Already Awakened Mind

In his new book, Entering the Mind, C von Hassett takes us luminously into the life-affirming, heart-awakening, consciousness-altering terrains of mind in its natural state, where he shows us how to recognize it within ourselves, then realize it through holistic, wholly committed practice. “EtM is a singular accomplishment, remarkable for its clarity as well as its […]

Albert Pinkham Ryder, The Race Track (Death on a Pale Horse), (c. 1896–1908)

Albert Pinkham Ryder: White Whale of American Art

by Christopher Benfey A Wild Note of Longing: Albert Pinkham Ryder and a Century of American Art at New Bedford Whaling Museum, MA NYR “American history is haunted by nightbirds in the nineteenth century,” Lewis Mumford wrote in The Brown Decades, his landmark 1931 study of Gilded Age culture. Chief among these nocturnal artists, for Mumford, was […]

Savage Journey: Hunter S. Thompson and the Weird Road to Gonzo

Fifty years after the publication of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and more than a decade after his death, Hunter S. Thompson’s celebrity continues to obscure his literary achievement. Savage Journey refocuses our understanding of that achievement by mapping Thompson’s influences, probing the development of his signature style, and tracing the reception of his major works. […]

An interview with Alison Saar, at Riot Material magazine.

An Interview with Alison Saar

By Ricky Amadour As an indefatigable voice for women of color and the greater human spirit, Alison Saar recomposes fractured histories into multivalent sculptures. Saar curated SeenUNseen, a group exhibition at L.A. Louver Gallery, with a focus on spirit portraiture. Throughout human existence there has been a predilection to the allure of the unseen. Hidden […]

William S. Burroughs on a bed, smoking a cigarette.

“The Opposite of Literature:” Mary McCarthy’s Feb. ’63 Review of Naked Lunch

From the inaugural print edition of The New York Review of Books In remembrance of Jason Epstein, originator and co-founder of NYRB RIP 1928-2022 by Mary McCarthy Naked Lunch  by William S. Burroughs Grove Press, 304pp., $14.49 “You can cut into The Naked Lunch at any intersection point,” says Burroughs, suiting the action to the […]

Remembered and Remade: James Castle’s Conjurings of Mind

James Castle at David Zwirner, NYC (through 12 February 2022) by Andrew Martin James Castle: Memory Palace John Beardsley Yale University Press, 280pp., $65.00 NYR Every James Castle picture seems to contain a secret. Approaching one of his works for the first time, you peer into pockets of shadow and smudge, examining the depopulated landscapes […]

I Am Not Your Cis

by Hypatia The verve of English is under house-arrest by the under-educated: the students of Ivy League universities. They are the standard-bearers — Premium Woke — of our freshly scoured language. Still hallowed as God’s little incubators of future elites, America’s most prestigious universities began their decline in the 1980s. The humanities became a forum for […]

Vulgar Genres: Gay Pornographic Writing and Contemporary Fiction

Vulgar Genres: Gay Pornographic Writing and Contemporary Fiction

An excerpt from a new book which examines gay pornographic writing, showing how literary fiction was both informed by pornography and amounts to a commentary on the genre’s relation to queer male erotic life. —The University of Chicago Press Vulgar Genres: Gay Pornographic Writing and Contemporary Fiction by Steven Ruszczycky University of Chicago Press, 216pp., $30.00 In the United […]

Hilary Brace, Drawings and Tapestries, is reviewed at Riot Material magazine.

Darkness Made Visible in Hilary Brace’s Drawings and Tapestries

at Craig Krull Gallery, Bergamot Station (through 19 February 2022) Reviewed by Eve Wood The intricacies and inherent beauty of the natural world are rarely celebrated these days, and when artists do turn their attention to the surrounding landscape, the resulting images are usually ones of devastation and chaos — charting the movement of fires, […]

The Tragedy of Macbeth 

A film written and directed by Joel Coen Reviewed by James Shapiro NYR Those who have long followed the Coen brothers and their cinematic universe of criminals, nihilists, and overreachers may see in Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) a long-deferred reckoning with Shakespeare, who has been there before them. We don’t typically think of Shakespeare […]

John Divola, From Dogs Chasing My Car In The Desert,1996-98,

Illuminating Images: Liquid Light and Golden Hour and the Affective Force of Non-Didactic Art

at the Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles (through 5 February 2022) Reviewed by Johanna Drucker What is the difference between a wall label and a work of art? The unrelenting didacticism that prevails in current gallery and museum exhibits of contemporary art makes it seem that many curators and artists cannot answer that question. […]

The Occult Works of Ray Robinson, with an essay by Christopher Ian Lutz, is at Riot Material Magazine.

The Brush as Luminous Torch: Ray Robinson’s Blazing Portals Into the Divine Feminine

The Third Door:Occult Works of Ray Robinson, at the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magic (through 15 January) by Christopher Ian Lutz Burn the Sun The persecution of the witch is a war of the hours. The Inquisition that charged women with witchcraft was not just about controlling women’s bodies – it was a crusade to extinguish […]

An Interview with Artist Gala Porras-Kim is at Riot Material Magazine.

An Interview with Artist Gala Porras-Kim

by Ricky Amadour . Interdisciplinary artist Gala Porras-Kim frames her research to highlight and question the current institutional practices of conservation, acquisition, and deaccession. Acting as an investigator of cultural artifacts that correspond to institutional collections, Porras-Kim deep dives into the expansive histories, stories, and functions of those objects. The artist’s first solo exhibition in […]

Seizing the Snowmelt: Industrial Agriculture is Draining Our State Dry

by Mark Arax The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax Knopf, 576pp., $25.00 MITTR The wind finally blew the other way last night and kicked out the smoke from the burning Sierra. Down here in the flatland of California, we used to regard the granite mountain as a place apart, our […]

The Great Flood of 1862

The Looming Catastrophe Few in California Are Aware Of (or in Want to Address)

An excerpt from Perilous Bounty: The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent it, by Tom Philpott. THE FLOOD NEXT TIME In November 1860, a young scientist from upstate New York named William Brewer disembarked in San Francisco after a long journey that took him from New York City through Panama and then […]

RIOT MATERIAL
art. word. thought.