When asked, I tell people, mostly visitors to LA, that the Norton Simon Museum has by far the best collection in Southern California if not the West Coast. But I now must qualify this. If you just want to see twentieth century art, there is nothing that rivals the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation. Located in Holmby Hills, the foundation is restricted (by neighbors) from advertising, promotion and all sorts of other things that ordinarily would draw attention to the greatest art collection I have ever seen in one place. The art in the house is left exactly as Fred Weisman had it hung the day he passed. The only exceptions are because of lending art to shows (big museum shows of important works), those pieces get replaced from a vast stockpile of the Weisman collection that happened to not be hung on the walls the day Fred passed. On the day I visited, the docent, who leads the group and whose biggest rule is that nobody is allowed to leave her line of sight, mentioned that a few masterpieces we were looking at were only there because a Jasper Johns painting that was supposed to be there was part of an international traveling exhibition.
At the front door is the greatest Clyfford Still painting I have ever seen (and I’ve been to his eponymous museum in Denver). There is a second Still, these are two of less than 40 Stills in private hands. That second one is in a room with two De Koonings worth a hundred million each and the single best Rothko I’ve ever seen (the docent turned off the lights to show it as Mark R. himself intended, a perfect gesture, and a memorable sight). There are weird things – like two motorcycles decorated by Keith Haring – but the core of the collection on display here is a greatest hits of American mid-century art.
If you are hyperallergic to enjoying art and must view it all from a political angle, hit the Weisman Foundation in the Holmby Hills to tackle what was created at the peak of the empire; it still stands, emblematic in its state of mostly abstraction. If you are aesthetics first, just let your eyes inhale a century’s worth of recapitulating form. A rare Jackson Pollock poured painting on paper hangs in a hallway, two small early Barnett Newmans are standing in their frames on shelves, two Ad Reinhardt paintings from the early sixties are on either side of a doorway. It’s just endless Modernism here, easily a billion dollars worth, maybe two.
This collection is a major thing, and NOBODY talks about it. It beats an afternoon at the Getty tenfold. You should take your friends when they visit there. You should take the people you love to debate there. I should take my wife soon, as I went with a friend from out of town who booked the day there on a whim. What a whim! There is a lot of bad art out there, we are awash in mediocrity in the schools and galleries and institutions. The occasional highlight is lost in a sea of parroted drivel. It is nice to go somewhere and it is all just greatest hits. That somewhere is nearby, on a curving street in Holmby Hills. You’ve heard of the “Western Canon”… well this is the boom out of that cannon.
Not only is the collection of Frederick R. Weisman a world-class assembly of postwar art, the foundation still acquires contemporary art. Billie Milam Weisman has curated selections from the collection focusing on Los Angeles artists for Cal State L.A’s Silverman gallery. The exhibition, entitled WE ARE LA: Contemporary Art from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, is a fantastic mix of mid-century minimal masters like DeWain Valentine and Ed Ruscha along with vital living artists as diverse in practice as Gisela Colon, Kelly Berg and Scott Heywood. The curator weaves in work by Eric Orr, Vasa, Peter Lodato and many others.
The exhibit affirms that the foundation’s aesthetic is committed to art that prioritizes formal visual investigations. In an era of trendy conceptualism glutted with mediocre figuration and redundant “messaging”, We Are LA is a refreshing reminder that the core foundations of visual art can be inspirational in and of themselves. College galleries serve student populations and one can imagine that the Cal State Los Angeles art students will have a stronger output in their visual art with an exposure to the depths of possibilities in art once gimmicky sloganeering and thin commitments to ideologies are abandoned in the name of art itself. Meanwhile most other art programs in Southern California’s art institutions sink deeper into pits of despairing lectures on adherence to being good citizens and making art that submits to the whims of leaders to be followed. Barf. Art for Art’s Sake is once again a radical necessity in an art scene that has a sclerotic fear of art itself.
Let’s hope the collaboration between the Weisman Foundation and Cal State Los Angeles continues to bear unique, fearless fruit like this exhibit for years to come. Modernism is not trendy these days. Formalism, never really popular, is seen as quite suspect. The minimal is a sign of an historical epoch synonymous with exclusion. These truths about the state of the art we live in are evidenced almost everywhere. And perhaps these realities are to blame for all of the bad art out there.
Allow me to explain…
A few years back I was at a major art fair and a collector had texted me to be on the lookout for “reductive modernist painting and sculpture”. Basically minimalism with a flair that maintained a disciplined commitment to high modernism. There were a few great examples on display as I trudged aisle by aisle in the hope of a big score, taking three pics of each find and dutifully texting them his way on the spot. The whole experience had an unexpected effect on me as a viewer. Honing in on art that reduced its contents to the formal elements alone really brought everything else in the art fair into a sharper focus. Figurative artists I had shrugged off for years suddenly looked rigorous, composed. Trendier names on display for the market’s sake looked formally bereft. And that was just after one afternoon of training my eye on formalist-first art. So little contemporary art embraces “looking good” and so few artists have any encounters with modernism, with formalism, with minimalism. And it shows. But not at Cal State L.A. these days, thanks to the Weisman Foundation.
(photo by the author)