June 22 - October 5, 2008

In the Land of Retinal Delights: The Juxtapoz Factor is an exhibition that presents the work of 150 artists and posits that there has been a huge, but unacknowledged art movement taking place in this country for the last 40 years. Since 1994, this ground swelling of lowbrow, surrealistic, pop, figurative, narrative work has coalesced and found a voice in the pages of Juxtapoz magazine published in San Francisco. This rag has become the most widely read art magazine in the US. It is an influencing force on the aspiring artists of Generation Y and the Millenials, who are now enrolling in art schools in numbers never seen before.

Juxtapoz magazine was founded by Los Angeles-artist Robert Williams. The “Juxtapoz aesthetic or lowbrow art” is almost always figurative, and is inspired by movies, TV, advertising, black-velvet painting, psychedelic posters, pulp porn, sci-fi and horror, carnival art, comics books and all things lower- and middle-class. The Magazine has and does provide a voice and validation for a brand of artist, like Williams, who has not been accepted traditionally by the typical art-world infrastructure of collector, curator, and critic. However, since its founding, it has been the clear focal point for having been the inspiration for the creation of its own infrastructure that supports Juxtapozian art with galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York, collectors, followed by critical attention, followed by museum exhibitions at adventurous institutions. With it’s growing success Juxtapoz has been a major contributor to the reemergence of painting again as a valid practice for artists since the mid-1990s, running counter to forty-years of art-school canon that focused on the Conceptual practice of context, collectivization, and dematerialization of the art object.
For the last decade the art establishment (collector, curator, and critic) has argued that the idea, or construct, of an art movement is outmoded. This exhibition explores the idea of a “Juxtapoz Factor.” Is it an organized movement operating under a singular manifesto? Or is it a wave of talented overlooked artists who decided to reach out to the public and create their own canon?    

This exhibition is organized by Laguna Art Museum and curated by Meg Linton, Director of the Ben Maltz Gallery and Public Programs at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue with essays by the curator and Laguna Art Museum director Bolton Colburn.

ARTISTS INCLUDED:

Ray Martin Abeyta
Van Arno
Anthony Ausgang
Glenn Barr
Gary Baseman
Becca
Peter Beste
Sandow Birk
Tim Biskup
Chaz Bojorquez
Tiffany Bozic
Andrew Brandou
Nathan Cabrera
Ray Caesar
Thomas Campbell
Enrique Chagoya
Sas Christian
Clayton Brothers (Rob and Christian)
Wayne Coe
Sue Coe
Lynn Coleman
 Coop
R. Crumb
Timothy Cummings
 Dalek
Henry Darger
Mike Davis
Einar and Jamex de la Torre
Emek
Ron English
James Esber
Richard Evans
Neck Face
Shepard Fairey
The Date Farmers
Carlee Fernandez
Tony Fitzpatrick
Jim Flora
AJ Fosik
Llyn Foulkes
Phil Frost
Ernst Fuchs
Gajin Fujita
Helen Garber
Camille Rose Garcia
Os Gemeo
Gregg Gibbs
Jeff Gillette
Doze Green
Alex Grey
Rick Griffin
Alex Gross
Moira Hahn
Don Ed Hardy
F. Scott Hess
Laurie Hogin
Seonna Hong
Jim Houser
Michael Hussar
Anya Janssen
Sylvia Ji
Dean Karr
Mike Kelley
Frank Kozik
Charles Krafft
Bari Kumar
Paul Laffoley
Edgar Leeteg
Matt Leines
Zhi Lin
Laurie Lipton
Liza Lou
Jason Maloney
Chris Mars
Paul McCarthy
Barry McGee
Elizabeth McGrath
Michael C. McMillen
Victor Moscoso
Stanley Mouse
Takashi Murakami
Scott Musgrove
Wangechi Mutu
Caleb Neelon
Niagra
Irving Norman
Manuel Ocampo
Estevan Oriol
Gary Panter
Marion Peck
Savage Pencil
David Perry
Raymond Pettibon
Patricia Piccinini
The Pizz
Gail Potocki
Spain Rodriguez
Ed "Big Daddy" Roth
Mark Ryden
Saber
Isabel Samaras
David Sandlin
Jorge Santos
Judith Schaechter
Kenny Scharf
Kathy Staico Schorr
Todd Schorr
Andrew Schoultz
Andres Serrano
SHAG
Jim Shaw
Gilbert Shelton
R. K. Sloane
Joe Sorren
Jeff Soto
Craig Stecyk
Fred Stonehouse
Jon Swihart
Swoon
Stanislav Szukalski
Masami Teraoka
Vince Valdez
Jeffrey Vallance
Mark Dean Veca
Cristina Vergano
Nicola Verlato
 Von Dutch
Kara Walker
Adam Wallacavage
Eric White
Robert Williams
Kent Williams
Suzanne Williams
S. Clay Wilson
Jerome Witkin
Joel-Peter Witkin
Basil Wolverton
Thomas Woodruff
Miriam Wosk
 XNO
Kenji Yanobe
Chet Zar
Peter Zokosky
 

 November 9, 2008 - February 8, 2009 

In Nature’s Temple: The Life and Art of William Wendt will be the first full-scale retrospective on the art of William Wendt. In 1912 William Wendt was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design, the same year that he built a studio-home in Laguna Beach.  In many ways, Wendt represented the essential nature of California Impressionism both stylistically and ideologically. No other California Impressionist so consistently essayed the sweeping, romantic grand landscape view as Wendt, and no other painter so strongly equated his work with the ideology of Nature as Creation, and Nature as a spiritual path. Dapper, distinguished, and much admired by his many followers, Wendt functioned as a very visible example of what an artist should aspire to, and his ongoing career summarized the idealism that was the foundation of California art in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

California Impressionism—a hybrid style of painting that retained clarity of forms overlaid with the brilliant French Impressionist palette—was once critically unquestioned and regionally preeminent. It nearly disappeared in the maze of 1950s California hard-edge painting and abstract expressionism, 1960s pop and funk art, and the deluge of kinetic and performance art forms of the 1970s. However, to fully engage and understand the evolution of American painting, we need to understand the nuances of this hybrid approach to image making, as California was, of all the States, perceived as the real land of opportunity and reinvention and was destined to become the nation’s most populace and economically powerful member. And, to understand California Impressionism, we need to fully examine its central practitioner, William Wendt.

The resurgence of interest in California's early painters over the past two-plus decades has resulted in a number of academically rigorous studies. The Oakland Museum of California Art’s landmark exhibition and catalogue, Impressionism: The California View (1981) was perhaps the first attempt to contextualize California art within the spectrum of American studies, followed by William H. Gerdts still seminal book, American Impressionism (1984), that recognized Wendt and a host of other American artists previously consigned to “regional” as opposed to “American” status. A torrent of regional studies of American art followed in its wake, the majority of these dealing with some aspect of California art history. One of these was a compendium of documents on Wendt’s life privately published in 1992 that, although useful, is limited in interpretive scope and compromised by a narrow methodology.

To date, the most referred to work on Wendt is Laguna Art Museum’s 1977 catalogue written by noted scholar, Nancy Moure, for an exhibition of that same year. While this was a careful and focused study of Wendt, it came before (indeed, helped to instigate) the era of intense scholarship noted above. Given Wendt’s enormous contribution, the time has come to build on Moure’s early work. Until an exhaustive study of Wendt exists, a major piece of California art history, and thus American art history, remains missing.

The most obvious reason no detailed monographic study of Wendt has been undertaken in recent years is the daunting lack of primary research material: the artist left no diary; no scrapbook; and precious few letters. He left no children, and thus not even the prospect of family oral histories. The challenge now is to reconstruct Wendt’s biography taking advantage of all the recent relevant scholarship in the field as a whole and to reassess his art in the same light. The current project proposed by LAM will address this challenge with a full-scale retrospective, accompanied by a catalogue detailing to the fullest extent possible his life and achievement. Wendt died in Laguna Beach on December 29, 1946.
 
This exhibition will be accompanied by a major 164-page color catalogue with a 50-page essay guest curator Dr. Will South. Organized by Laguna Art Museum, the exhibition will be guest curated by Dr. Will South, curator of collections at the Weatherspoon Art Gallery.  Dr. South’s many publications include Guy Rose: American Impressionist (1995); California Impressionism (1998); Color  Myth, and Music: Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Synchromism (2001); and In and Out of California: Travels of American Impressionists (2002).

March 8 - May 24, 2009 

When Life magazine did a special issue on the state of California in 1962, it focused on five artists: Stanton Macdonald-Wright, John McLaughlin, Robert Irwin, Billy Al Bengston, and Roger Kuntz.  While four of these artists remain central to our understanding of the history of California art and have received numerous monographic exhibitions, little has been written on the art of Roger Kuntz.

Roger Kuntz: The Shadow Between Representation and Abstraction, an exhibition of some seventy paintings, drawings, and sculpture organized by Laguna Art Museum, will be the first major showing of the artist’s work since his death.  It will focus on Kuntz’s search for what he called the “middle ground” between figurative and non-figurative painting. By about 1950 Kuntz believed that post-war abstract expressionism had run its course and that the time was ripe for the reappearance of structure in art that communicated to the viewer.  Kuntz embarked on several painting series, culminating in the nationally acclaimed Freeway series.

These bare geometric paintings dated 1959 to 1962 of concrete canyons, underpasses, ramps, pedestrian spirals, tunnels, and signs carved in deep shadow and light, embodied Kuntz’s search for the union of formal abstraction and mundane reality. This stylistic shift away from gestural abstraction was in synch with the times and Kuntz was included in the first national survey of Pop Art organized by John Coplans, editor of Artforum magazine, in 1963.

The Shadow Between Representation and Abstraction will place Kuntz’s work in a national context and explore his role in the Southern California art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. The exhibition will feature the Freeway series as well as a selection from the artist’s interiors, beach scenes, signs, bathtubs, blimps, and tennis series.  Kuntz lived in Laguna Beach from 1964 until his death in 1975 at the age of 49. 

A 140 page, color catalogue (designed by Garland Kirkpatrick) with an essay by guest curator Susan M. Anderson and an introduction by Peter Plagens will accompany the exhibition.  Plagens, an artist and former critic for Newsweek magazine, observed the vital postwar art scene in California first hand.  He is the author of Sunshine Muse, the definitive survey of West Coast art from 1945 to 1970.