primary atmospheres

P R I M A R Y A T M O S P H E R E S

PA final pages v2 temp 4/14/10 12:14 PM Page ii

Steidl / David Zwirner


W O R K S F R O M C A L I F O R N I A 1960 –1970

PA final pages v2 temp 4/14/10 12:14 PM

Steidl / David Zwirner


W O R K S F R O M C A L I F O R N I A 1960 –1970

PA final pages v2 temp 4/14/10 12:14 PM Page 2

PETER ALEXANDER

LARRY BELL

LADD IE JOHN D ILL

ROBERT IRWIN

CRA IG KAUFFMAN

JOHN McCRACKEN

HELEN PASHG IAN

JAMES TURRELL

DE WA IN VALENT INE

DOUG WHEELER


7

THE WORKS IN THIS EXHIBITION were my first toys as a young

critic, and they remain talismans of the mystery for me. In the

shorthand of the art world, they are usually referred to as “Light

and Space art,” or “Fetish Finish art,” or, more generally,

“California Minimalism.” The terms don’t mean much now, but

the work is still fresh. Coming upon an aggregation of these

works, cloistered in their enduring fragility, amid the chilly,

industrial juggernauts of Manhattan, they feel more alien than

ancient. They still bear the aura of their formal intentions, but

they have changed. Works once decried as scandalously decora-

tive now seem as suave as the most conservative couture.

Objects once dismissed as the product of provincial mindlessness

now manifest evidence of the most delicate ratiocination. Most

interestingly, the filigree of regional, cultural, and art historical

circumstance that informed the creation, reception, and conse-

quences of this work is more visible now, and more available.

The overwhelming, vivifying circumstance upon which this work

was founded is the status and light and space in the American

Southwest as a benign presence rather than a stark absence.

PR IMARY ATMOSPHERES

by D A V E H I C K E Y


8 9

This is not a world-shaking phenomenon, I know, but if you have

been raised in the West, you miss it when it’s gone. You miss that

sense of the earth as the bottom of the sky, the sense of stand-

ing in the world, not on it, more embraced than assaulted. The

source of this illusion is geographical. Unlike the Northeast

where light from the sky is absorbed by the arboreal landscape,

creating the illusion of volume and vacuum, the light that strikes

the deserts of the West and their adjacent ocean bounces back

up. The particulate desert and the ocean that pervades this

atmosphere is illuminated from above and below, presenting

itself to our eyes as a palpable presence. In the West, as James

Turrell so aptly demonstrates, light is a thing, a local truth, and

not some heavenly benison or assault.

The consequence of living in this full world, in a world without

emptiness, is that everything that divides anything from anything

else seems to exist on the verge of dissolution or liquefaction.

The object and its atmosphere, the mind and the body, the self

and the other all flutter, fade, and intermingle at the edges. All

surfaces seduce themselves. Even the most modest adobe wall

bears the mark of its liquid source and its particulate destination.

In this exhibition, there is hardly a surface that delivers itself to

us as the exterior of the object it encloses, except perhaps for

Larry Bell’s boxed vacuums which bear with them the inference

that hard core “nothingness” is only available to us when it is

exotically isolated. All these surfaces, however, even Bell’s, deliver

back to us the space in which we stand, surreally enhanced with

yet more light and more space deployed along a blended atmos-

pheric spectrum. Laddie John Dill’s untitled work in this exhibition

is composed of mercury and argon gas, a multi-stratum pour of

beach sand, and a squad of intervening sheets of plate glass.

Dill’s piece simultaneously manifests the multiform properties of

silica and the soft spectrum of visibility between them as it

moves from luminosity to transparency to translucency to reflec-

tivity to opaque glow—granular, sleek, atmospheric, and invisible.

Dill’s piece provides an apt demonstration of what one might call

the old school Los Angeles state of mind—an attitude that

derives from the city’s status as what economists call a “gap

city,” one whose culture and industry flourishes in zones that

predate and postdate industrial modernity, a city that runs on the

manufacture of streamlined weapons, fanciful narratives,

fashionable clothing, decorative gardening, and sculptural archi-

tecture. As a consequence, like the California culture that

nurtured it, West Coast Minimalism is intrinsically concerned

with chemistry, with the slippery, unstable vernacular of oxygen,

neon, argon, resin, lacquer, acrylic, fiberglass, glass, graphite,

chrome, sand, water, and active human hormones. This is a

world that floats, flashes, coats, and teases.

So, if East Coast Minimalism speaks the language of construction,

West Coast Minimalism is more like cooking—and gourmet

cooking at that. The artists who make this work, like great chefs

everywhere, are necessarily concerned with appetizing presenta-

tion: these days one might be served at Lutece in Las Vegas

something that looks like Laddie John Dill’s dune or Craig Kauff-

man’s bubble, presented under a glass vitrine on a china plate.

But this is no critique, because presentation is just a grace note,

an invitation. The recipe is everything in this art. The external

surfaces, which are usually dissolving before our eyes, are of no

more consequence than cake pans or aspic molds. Form is not


10 11

wedges exactly approximate the ascending translucency of a ris-

ing wave as experienced by a surfer in the curl.

All this flutter, however, only means that the work has a home.

If the atmospheric rhymes that pervade this work are mistaken

for pictorial representations, or abstractions of pictorial repre-

sentations, as they often were in the early criticism of this work,

the beholder is looking at something that’s just not there, that

cannot in fact be seen. Even more to the point, unlike the bulk of

East Coast Minimalism, this work is not furniture. Surrounded as

it was by Eames design and Case Study houses, this work is best

perceived as a flight from function. Consequently, to worry about

what these works might “look like” or possibly “do” is like trying

to see the ocean in a woozy Bridget Riley while overlooking the

rich phenomenal garden whose efflorescence the artist has iso-

lated and refined for us.

The art historical circumstances that inform the creation of this

art derive, in my view, from a single fact. New York and California

were much farther apart in this period than they are today. The

inhabitants of these metropoli were virtually ignorant of one

another as places and cultures, and the gradual collapse of this

division (caused by this art) had interesting consequences.

Before this moment, art culture in New York was just the

American art culture of dark bars, white rooms, and guys in

paint-spattered pants. When Los Angeles arose as a locus of

comparison, however, differences were exacerbated. So the New

York art world in the seventies would claim to be as tough and

puritanical as the West Coast was presumed hedonistic—at

least until artists of New York and Los Angeles began stealing

from one another—and that was that.

an issue; the visual conflagration of solids, liquids, and gases

morphing into one another, most certainly is.

—

The best argument for the irrelevance of “form” in this art, I

think, derives from the casual availability of the “found phenom-

ena” these artists accumulate and exploit—as New York artists

gather fugitive images and London artists accumulate interest-

ing trash. As a result, in my experience, there is nothing in this

show whose exotic effect wouldn’t flash by your window on a

short drive down Lincoln Boulevard, if one could but extract the

diamonds from the dreck. The boxes, slabs, squares, piles, poles,

lights, surfaces, and slashes of shadow are redolent with

allusion, but these only site the work. If the forms mean anything

in this work, they mean Los Angeles, as Sol LeWitt’s white sky-

scrapers and Richard Serra’s slabs mean New York, and these

associations are comparably trivial.

It is true enough, of course, that Robert Irwin’s poles evoke the

vertical interstices of palm trunks; that Larry Bell, Doug

Wheeler, and Laddie John Dill have all tried their hand at shelving

and enhanced chair rails; that John McCracken’s planks testify

to a city under perpetual construction; that Mary Corse appro-

priates the blaze of urban signage; and that Doug Wheeler does

indeed translate the language of neon in the fog. James Turrell

(like John Singer Sargent in another Venice) appropriates the

daunting shapes and shadows created by shrouded sunlight

burning in over the water. De Wain Valentine, Craig Kauffman,

and Helen Pashgian all make off with glamorous, technological

attributes of the contemporary automobile. Peter Alexander’s tall


12 13

Mulligan, and Chet Baker. The hard-edge project of West Coast

painters like John McLaughlin and Frederick Hammersley, in its

serene rigor, was appropriated and given a technological upgrade.

And all this seemed to transpire quite naturally, almost invisibly,

and the ambience of this scene was so thick, eccentric, and per-

vasive that the artists who worked in it and out of it could hardly

begin to glimpse its cultural implications. As one of them told

me, “All we knew was that it felt new. It felt clear, and it made

you feel incredibly arrogant just being in on it.” Similarly, in the

late sixties, at the far end of California Minimalism’s halcyon

moment, the practice would dissolve quite naturally into the

dishabille of Robert Smithson, Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, Bruce

Nauman, and Keith Sonnier. The rise of these artists is usually

regarded as the great flowering of post-industrial art, so I should

point out here that in post-Minimalism’s founding moment, the

work of Laddie John Dill and Robert Smithson, of John McCracken

and Richard Serra differed only in their defunct ideologies and

the demands of local taste. The rise of post-modernism, or

post-Minimalism, or post-industrialism, or whatever the hell it

was that rose, seems less catastrophic when viewed from the

West than it does when abutted with the work of an ideological

striver like Robert Morris. The change seems more like an

interesting, anxious swerve of the paradigm through which the

object dissolves into a phenomenal occasion without being

degraded in its objecthood.

Looking from the West, then, East Coast Minimalism presents

itself as a handsome terminal eulogy for the romance of indus-

trial modernism. The underlying assumption is that if you strip

the skin from any structure, you reveal another, more primary

Early on, however, influence was communicated between the

coasts as if by smoke signal. Works of art moved between the

coasts at much greater danger and expense, so the less “stuff”

you shipped the better, and nothing shipped was better than that

(Robert Irwin’s scrims). Also, from a mercantile perspective, this

work was coming into being in the twilight of the greatest paint-

ing market for the largest paintings since the sixteenth century.

All the walls were full, and conventional wisdom in both Venice

and Soho held that “the floor is the new wall”—with this California

corollary that “space is the new plane.” So light and space in the

West were regarded as practical, proprietary, mercantile, and

aesthetic virtues. The aspiration was to efficiently exploit light

and space in situ, by exacerbating their attributes.

The simplest way to situate this art culturally, then, is to take an

option that is rarely exploited and look at East Coast Minimalism

from the West. If we do, it is immediately obvious that East Coast

Minimalism is not an historical art. It is neither coming nor

going, but rather exists in stasis as an occasional, imperial prac-

tice—the very embodiment of Pax Americana. Donald Judd and

Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt drew from a quiver of preconceived

maneuvers and applied them to the sites and occasions that pre-

sented themselves, so the Augustan autonomy of this art was set

in stone. To progress was to transgress. West Coast Minimalism,

by comparison, has a softer, more indistinct historical flow; it

arises from the atmospherics of mid-century modernism in

Southern California, from the footprint of the freeways, the

streamlined products of George Barris and Harley Earl, from the

insouciance of Charles and Ray Eames, Rudolph Schindler, and

Richard Neutra, and the serpentine guile of Miles Davis, Gerry


14 15

structure. In the West, if you strip the skin off any structure, you

reveal another skin, and another below that. And if this seems a

hard sell, imagine the city of Los Angeles as it presented itself to

Raymond Chandler, who aspired to capture its essence. To Chan-

dler, the Englishman, the city was a collection of detritus, a tidal

pool of human and cultural oddments accumulated according to

no more rational principle than the tides and the prevailing winds.

So how does one address this human cauldron? Traditional aes-

thetics routinely demand some meaningful relationship between

form and content, but liquids, however heterogeneous, take the

form of their enclosure. So Chandler took the next best option

for his subject. The connectedness of formlessness is Chandler’s

content, so he invented the L.A. private-eye narrative as a spit

around which Los Angeles might seem to revolve—a loosely

woven web of occasions and confrontations, revelations and

unfoldings that runs like a biodegradable armature through the

tidal pool. The subject of Chandler’s books is the wonder of fully

functioning entropy, the exoticism and the banality of the chaos

through which Philip Marlowe slides undaunted on his quests.

The actual narrative of what happens and what happens next is

no more relevant than the plot of Don Quixote, or Larry Bell’s

cubes, or Craig Kauffman’s bubbles, or John McCracken’s

planks. They tell the story, but the story itself is a totally artificial

container for the primary atmospheres that constitute the actual

subject matter of the work.

Unsurprisingly, then, the indispensible abyss between form and

content in California Minimalism and in Raymond Chandler’s

books has left them open to criticism from formalist critics who

find the artifice of the plot or enclosure, in its necessity, a termi-

nal fault. All it means is that in the kingdom of entropy you bring

your bucket with you, and you want the most elegant bucket you

can imagine because, even though the object was largely dis-

credited at this critical moment, there is no persuasive reason

that these discredited objects should be ugly or insist upon their

obsolescence like a school child reciting Nietzsche rote. One

soon began to wonder just how often a point need be proven.

So, finally, having already alluded to this work in terms of couture

and cuisine, I should speak about its elegance, because this is

elegant work and this attribute was as astonishing in its moment

as it seems today. In its initial vogue, these works of art spoke

directly to a new kind of artistic decorum—less aggressive than

Pop, less disheveled than Abstract Expressionism, less ideological

than Minimalism, and less maidenly than post-painterly

abstraction. It had a kind of gallantry—the cool courtesy of a

well-born rake. In a moment when Clement Greenberg was advo-

cating febrile sensibility and Michael Fried was demanding that

works of art ignore our presence, California Minimalism created

a gracious social space in its glow and reflection; it treated us

amicably and made us even more beautiful by gathering us into

the dance. It still does this today, so I am not amazed by the

renewed interest in this work. I am still amazed, however, that

my beach-bum pals could have created such a capacious and

courtly art, although beach bums, I suppose, have dreams like

everyone else.


P L A T E S


Untit led (Acryl ic Column) ,1970–71

Acryl ic

144 × 9 × 5 1⁄2 inches; 365.8 × 22.9 × 14 cm

ROBERT IRWIN

18


Untit led ,1969

Acryl ic lacquer on formed acryl ic plast ic

53 inches (diameter) ; 134.6 cm

ROBERT IRWIN

20


Untit led ,1969

Acryl ic lacquer on formed acryl ic plast ic


ROBERT IRWIN

20


Untit led ,1963–65

Oil on canvas

82 1⁄2 × 84 1⁄2 inches; 209.6 × 214.6 cm

ROBERT IRWIN

22



Oil on canvas

82 1⁄2 × 84 1⁄2 inches; 209.6 × 214.6 cm

ROBERT IRWIN

22


24

Untit led, 1963-65 (detai l )

ROBERT IRWIN


26

Untit led ,1969

Sprayed lacquer on acryl ic with neon tubing

91 1⁄2 × 91 1⁄2 × 7 1⁄2 inches; 232.4 × 232.4 × 19.1 cm

DOUG WHEELER


Juke Green ,1968

Light project ion

Dimensions variable

JAMES TURRELL

28


30

Gard Red ,1968

Light project ion

Dimensions variable

JAMES TURRELL


Untit led ,1969 / 2010

Glass, sand, wood, and argon with mercury

Dimensions variable (architecturally specific)

LADD IE JOHN D ILL

32


Glass Box with Ell ipses,1964

Vacuum coated etched glass and chromium plated brass

8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 21 × 21 × 21 cm

LARRY BELL

36


38

Untit led,1966

Vacuum coated glass and chromium plated brass

4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 inches; 10.8 × 10.8 × 10.8 cm

LARRY BELL


38

Untit led,1966


4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 inches; 10.8 × 10.8 × 10.8 cm

LARRY BELL


Untit led,1966–67

Glass, vaporized gold, and chromium plated brass

10 × 10 × 10 inches; 25.4 × 25.4 × 25.4 cm

LARRY BELL

40


42

Untit led,1968


8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 21 × 21 × 21 cm

LARRY BELL


44

Untit led,1970

Vacuum coated glass

100 × 415⁄16 × 1⁄4 inches; 254 × 12.5 × .6 cm

LARRY BELL


Crazy Otto ,1962

Oil on canvas

66 × 65 inches; 167.6 × 165.1 cm

ROBERT IRWIN

46


50


Polyester resin and acryl ic


HELEN PASHG IAN


50




HELEN PASHG IAN


52



5 1⁄2 × 6 1⁄2 × 6 1⁄2 inches; 14 × 16.5 × 16.5 cm

HELEN PASHG IAN


Untit led (Window) ,1968

Cast polyester resin

28 1⁄4 × 28 5⁄8 × 4 1⁄2 inches; 71.8 × 72.7 × 11.4 cm

PETER ALEXANDER

54


Untit led (Window) ,1968


28 1⁄4 × 28 5⁄8 × 4 1⁄2 inches; 71.8 × 72.7 × 11.4 cm

PETER ALEXANDER

54


Green Wedge ,1969


13 7⁄8 × 8 1⁄2 × 9 3⁄4 inches; 35.2 × 21.6 × 24.8 cm

PETER ALEXANDER

56


58

Black Pyramid ,1975

Polyester resin, f iberglass, and plywood

10 × 16 × 16 inches; 25.4 × 40.6 × 40.6 cm

JOHN McCRACKEN


58

Black Pyramid ,1975


10 × 16 × 16 inches; 25.4 × 40.6 × 40.6 cm

JOHN McCRACKEN


62

Blue Wedge ,1969


92 × 167⁄8 × 25⁄8 inches; 233.7 × 42.9 × 6.7 cm

PETER ALEXANDER


Untit led ,1969

Acryl ic and lacquer on plast ic

73 × 8 1⁄2 × 50 inches; 185.4 × 21.6 × 127 cm

CRA IG KAUFFMAN

64


Untit led ,1969

Mineral coated glass

40 × 40 × 40 inches; 101.6 × 101.6 × 101.6 cm

LARRY BELL

68


70

Untit led Wall Rel ief ,1968

Acrylic and lacquer on vacuum formed Plexiglas

34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

CRA IG KAUFFMAN


70



34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

CRA IG KAUFFMAN


72



34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

CRA IG KAUFFMAN


74



34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

CRA IG KAUFFMAN


Triple Disk Red Metal Flake—Black Edge ,1966

Fiberglass reinforced polyester

62 × 65 × 85 inches; 157.5 × 165.1 × 215.9 cm

DE WA IN VALENT INE

76


Think Pink ,1967


105 × 18 1⁄4 × 3 1⁄8 inches; 266.7 × 46.4 × 7.9 cm

JOHN McCRACKEN

80


Theta-Two ,1965

Nitrocellulose lacquer, f iberglass, and plywood

21 × 22 × 7 1⁄2 inches; 53.3 × 55.9 × 19.1 cm

JOHN McCRACKEN

82


84

Red Plank ,1967


104 3⁄16 × 18 3⁄16 × 3 1⁄4 inches; 264.6 × 46.2 × 8.3 cm

JOHN McCRACKEN


87

PETER ALEXANDER

Unti t led (Window),1968Cast polyester resin

28 1⁄4 × 28 5⁄8 × 4 1⁄2 inches; 71.8 × 72.7 × 11.4 cm

p. 55

Blue Wedge ,1969Cast polyester resin

92 × 16 7⁄8 × 2 5⁄8 inches; 233.7 × 42.9 × 6.7 cm

p. 63

Green Wedge,1969Cast polyester resin

13 7⁄8 × 8 1⁄2 × 9 3⁄4 inches; 35.2 × 21.6 × 24.8 cm

p. 57

EXH IB I T ION CHECKL IST


88 89

LARRY BELL

Glass Box with Ell ipses,1964Vacuum coated etched glass and chromium plated brass

8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 21 × 21 × 21 cm

p. 37

Unti t led ,1966Vacuum coated glass and chromium plated brass

4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 inches; 10.8 × 10.8 × 10.8 cm

p. 39

Unti t led,1966–67Glass, vaporized gold, and chromium plated brass

10 × 10 × 10 inches; 25.4 × 25.4 × 25.4 cm

p. 41


8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 21 × 21 × 21 cm

p. 43

Unti t led ,1969Mineral coated glass

40 × 40 × 40 inches; 101.6 × 101.6 × 101.6 cm

Courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York

p. 69

Unti t led ,1970Vacuum coated glass

100 × 4 15⁄16 × 1⁄4 inches; 254 × 12.5 × .6 cm

p. 45

ROBERT IRWIN

Crazy Otto,1962Oil on canvas

66 × 65 inches; 167.6 × 165.1 cm


p. 47

Unti t led,1963–65Oil on canvas

82 1⁄2 × 84 1⁄2 inches; 209.6 × 214.6 cm

Whitney Museum of American Art. Gif t of Fred Mueller.

pp. 23 and 25

Unti t led ,1969Acryl ic lacquer on formed acryl ic plast ic


Collect ion Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

p. 21

Unti t led (Acryl ic Column) ,1970–71Acryl ic

144 × 9 × 5 1⁄2 inches; 365.8 × 22.9 × 14 cm

p. 19

CRA IG KAUFFMAN

Unti t led Wall Rel ief ,1968Acryl ic and lacquer on vacuum formed Plexiglas

34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

Collect ion of Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York

p. 71


34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

p. 73


34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

p. 75

Unti t led ,1969Acryl ic and lacquer on plast ic

73 × 8 1⁄2 × 50 inches; 185.4 × 21.6 × 127 cm

p. 65

LADD IE JOHN D ILL

Unti t led,1969 / 2010Glass, sand, wood, and argon with mercury

Dimensions variable (architectually specific)

p. 33


88 89

LARRY BELL

Glass Box with Ell ipses,1964Vacuum coated etched glass and chromium plated brass

8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 21 × 21 × 21 cm

p. 37


4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 × 4 1⁄4 inches; 10.8 × 10.8 × 10.8 cm

p. 39

Unti t led,1966–67Glass, vaporized gold, and chromium plated brass

10 × 10 × 10 inches; 25.4 × 25.4 × 25.4 cm

p. 41


8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 21 × 21 × 21 cm

p. 43

Unti t led ,1969Mineral coated glass

40 × 40 × 40 inches; 101.6 × 101.6 × 101.6 cm


p. 69

Unti t led ,1970Vacuum coated glass

100 × 4 15⁄16 × 1⁄4 inches; 254 × 12.5 × .6 cm

p. 45

ROBERT IRWIN

Crazy Otto,1962Oil on canvas

66 × 65 inches; 167.6 × 165.1 cm


p. 47

Unti t led,1963–65Oil on canvas

82 1⁄2 × 84 1⁄2 inches; 209.6 × 214.6 cm

Whitney Museum of American Art. Gif t of Fred Mueller.

pp. 23 and 25

Unti t led ,1969Acryl ic lacquer on formed acryl ic plast ic


Collect ion Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

p. 21

Unti t led (Acryl ic Column) ,1970–71Acryl ic

144 × 9 × 5 1⁄2 inches; 365.8 × 22.9 × 14 cm

p. 19

CRA IG KAUFFMAN


34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

Collect ion of Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York

p. 71


34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

p. 73


34 1⁄2 × 56 1⁄4 × 8 1⁄4 inches; 87.6 × 142.9 × 21 cm

p. 75

Unti t led ,1969Acryl ic and lacquer on plast ic

73 × 8 1⁄2 × 50 inches; 185.4 × 21.6 × 127 cm

p. 65

LADD IE JOHN D ILL

Unti t led,1969 / 2010Glass, sand, wood, and argon with mercury

Dimensions variable (architectually specific)

p. 33


90 91

JOHN MCCRACKEN

Theta-Two ,1965Nitrocellulose lacquer, f iberglass, and plywood

21 × 22 × 7 1⁄2 inches; 53.3 × 55.9 × 19.1 cm

p. 83

Red Plank,1967Polyester resin, f iberglass, and plywood

104 3⁄16 × 18 3⁄16 × 3 1⁄4 inches; 264.6 x 46.2 x 8.3 cm

p. 85

Think Pink ,1967Polyester resin, f iberglass, and plywood

105 × 18 1⁄4 × 3 1⁄8 inches; 266.7 × 46.4 × 7.9 cm

p. 81

Black Pyramid ,1975Polyester resin, f iberglass, and plywood

10 × 16 × 16 inches; 25.4 × 40.6 × 40.6 cm

p. 59

HELEN PASHG IAN

Unti t led,1968–69Polyester resin and acryl ic


Private Collect ion

p. 51

Unti t led ,1968–69,Polyester resin and acryl ic

5 1⁄2 × 6 1⁄2 × 6 1⁄2 inches; 14 × 16.5 × 16.5 cm

p. 53

JAMES TURRELL

Gard Red ,1968Light project ion

Dimensions variable

p. 31

Juke Green ,1968Light project ion

Dimensions variable

p. 29

DE WA IN VALENT INE

Triple Disk Red Metal Flake—Black Edge,1966Fiberglass reinforced polyester

62 × 65 × 85 inches; 157.5 × 165.1 × 215.9 cm

p. 77

DOUG WHEELER

Unti t led ,1969Sprayed lacquer on acryl ic with neon tubing

91 1⁄2 × 91 1⁄2 × 7 1⁄2 inches; 232.4 × 232.4 × 19.1 cm

p. 27


93

Pages 2, 34–35, 49, 60–61, 66–67, 78–79:

installation views,

Primary Atmospheres: Works from Cal i fornia 1960-1970

January 8 –February 6, 2010

David Zwirner, New York


93

Pages 2, 34–35, 49, 60–61, 66–67, 78–79:

installation views,

Primary Atmospheres: Works from Cal i fornia 1960-1970

January 8 –February 6, 2010



95

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to Peter Alexander, Larry

Bell, Laddie John Dill, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken,

Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, and Doug Wheeler,

without whom this exhibition and catalogue would not have been possible.

We wish especially to convey our thanks to the institutions and collectors

who have so generously lent us their works for this exhibition, including

The Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; the Whitney Museum of

American Art, New York; Beth Rudin DeWoody; PaceWildenstein, New

York; and the private collectors who chose to remain anonymous. We are

grateful to Dave Hickey, whose insightful essay published here adds to

the growing scholarship on this body of work. We wish to thank Sara

Bennett, Jack Brogan, and Kiana Sasaki for their efforts and assistance

in the documentation and care of the works in the exhibition, and we owe

our gratitude to Kelly Reynolds, Josh Brown, and Sam Martineau for their

indispensible expertise and assistance in their installation. We also wish

to thank Justin Anderson, Ivin Ballen, Juan Comas, William Conklin, Ariel

Dill, Joel Fennell, Kristin Klosterman, Clive Murphy, Christian Sampson,

Matthew Schreiber, and Ramon Silva for their assistance. Finally, we

would like to thank Anna Gray, Meghan Hill, Lauren Knighton, Greg Lulay,

Erin Pearson, Ashley Stewart, and Alexandra Whitney for their invaluable

efforts in the preparation of this exhibition and catalogue.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970

First edition published in May 2010

This catalogue is published on the occasion of the exhibition

Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970

January 8 – February 6, 2010


Curated by Kristine Bell and Tim Nye

Editors: Kristine Bell and Tim Nye

Editorial Coordinator: Alexandra Whitney

Production Coordinator: Lauren Knighton

Catalogue Design: Skolkin & Chickey

Copyediting: Nadine Covert and Meghan Hill

Color separations: Fire Dragon Color

Printing: Steidl, Göttingen

Photography Credits:

Cover and page 27: Jens Frederiksen

All plates and installation views, except pages 21, 23, 25, 27, and 47: Cathy Carver

Page 21: Philipp Scholz Rittermann

Pages 23, 25, and 47: Malcolm Varon

All artwork © 2010 the artists

“Primary Atmospheres” Essay © 2010 David Hickey

Publication © 2010 Steidl / David Zwirner

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photographing, recording, or information

storage and retrieval, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Düstere Str. 4 / 37073 Göttingen, Germany

Phone +49 551-49 60 60 / Fax +49 551-49 60 649

[email protected] www.steidleville.com / www.steidl.de

ISBN 978–3–86930–147–1

Printed in Germany

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