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February 18—March 17, 2012
Sugimoto Sadamitsu: Shigaraki and Iga

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 18, 2012, 5:00 - 7:00pm

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John Mason and Pacific Standard Time

John Mason will be featured in the upcoming Pacific Standard Time series of exhibitions, an initiative of the Getty. Mason emerged in the mid-1950s as one of the leaders of a revolution that transformed clay from a craft to a fine art medium. Since that time, Mason has had a distinguished career as a sculptor. Mason's work over the past six decades presents one of the most compelling arguments for abstract sculpture. His line of thought and consistency of execution mark the work of a master builder. Mason "knows how to get the most out of a relatively simple three dimensional form," according to art critic Suzanne Muchnic. Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980 is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Each institution will make its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through a multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs.

A key figure in the development of significant sculpture in Los Angeles, John Mason will be featured in a number of Pacific Standard Time museum exhibitions. At the main exhibit, Mason's massive 1959 Blue Wall will be prominent. We are pleased to announce the upcoming schedule, and provide links to the exhibitions:

J Paul Getty Museum: Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970
October 1, 2011—February 5, 2012

Laguna Art Museum: Best Kept Secret: UCI and the Development of Contemporary Art in Southern California, 1964-1971
October 30, 2011—January 22, 2012

American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA): Common Ground: Ceramics in Southern California 1945-1975
November 11, 2011—March 31, 2012

Pacific Asia Museum: 46 N. Los Robles: A History of the Pasadena Art Museum
November 18, 2011—April 8, 2012

Scripps College: Clay's Tectonic Shift: Mason, Price and Voulkos, 1956-1968
January 21, 2011—April 8, 2012

Museum Exhibitions

Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 – 1980 is a collaboration of more than sixty cultural institutions across Southern California, coming together for six months beginning in October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Each institution will make its own contribution to this grand-scale story of artistic innovation and social change, told through a multitude of simultaneous exhibitions and programs. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty.

The Frank Lloyd Gallery is pleased to announce its participation, with a fall exhibition programming which will coincide with the Pacific Standard Time museum exhibitions and events.

September 10—October 15, 2011
Craig Kauffman: Sensual/Mechanical

This exhibit traces the development of Craig Kauffman's paintings from 1958 to 1964. A turning point in modern Los Angeles art, the paintings were sparse, clean, sensuous, yet intelligent. Kauffman absorbed influences from European painting as well as American abstraction. Even as a teenager, Kauffman had read Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's book The New Vision. By 1958, he had clearly begun to work in opposition to the dominant Abstract Expressionist mode. Kauffman has stated that his lean, lyrical look was a personal reaction to the heavy and thick abstract painting of the time.

In the early 1960s, after living in France, Kauffman began a series of work that took forms from the earlier paintings. In small paintings on advertisements for shoes and lingerie, the artist explored sensual abstract forms and acknowledged the influence of Dada. He later recounted the "things I was interested in: kind of sexual, biomorphic mixture of mechanical things."

Transferring those images to paintings on flat plastic in 1962 and 1963, Kauffman integrated bold line and intense color with playfully suggestive forms. This exhibition includes works that were shown at Kauffman's 1962-3 exhibit at Ferus Gallery. Painted on the reverse of acrylic plastic and employing flat shapes with rounded contours, the works predict the artist's later vacuum formed pieces. As stated by art historian Susan Larsen, "They had the sleek good looks of a well-made machine, animated by strong sexual overtones. As such, they are late twentieth-century counterparts to the mechanic-erotic visions of Duchamp and Picabia."

October 22—November 26, 2011
Larry Bell: Early Work

Larry Bell's innovative sculptural work is integral to the development of the clean, clear look of Los Angeles art. Significantly, several series of paintings preceded the artist's well-known cubes and environments of the later 1960s. These early works, from the years 1959 to 1963, show a progression from paintings influenced by Abstract Expressionism, to early shaped canvases, to Bell's incorporation of geometric form within paintings.

Bell's inquiry was driven by his sense that the image should relate directly to the plane of the canvas. In these early works, Bell focused on visual perception and his questions led him to eliminate distractions such as gesture and tactile layering of paint. That focus on planes and the reduction of gesture meant that the image could suggest volume. In a work from 1961, Untitled, Bell introduces the illusion of a sculptural volume as well as the use of mirrored glass. Other pieces included in the exhibit employ glass, wood and paint and demonstrate the artist's interest in the medium of reflected light.

As Michele De Angelus has summarized, "…Bell expanded the two-dimensional illusion of a geometric form into actual space: his canvases became thick panels with the addition of clear and opaque, black and white glass and mirrors."

December 3, 2011—January 7, 2012
Adrian Saxe: GRIN - Genetic, Robotic, Information, Nano (Technologies)

The extraordinary experimentation in ceramic art of Los Angeles since World War II is international in scope. Among the most inventive and significant artists since 1970 is Adrian Saxe. Saxe's early work was site-specific sculpture that employed arrays of modular ceramic elements. Some of these pieces were exhibited in the late 1960s at the Pasadena Art Museum.

Saxe has worked with the ceramic vessel because he saw the opportunity to address complex social and cultural issues in a format accessible to a broad audience. Since the early 1980s, Saxe has sought to reinvent a role for ceramic art that employs decorative art conventions to comment on social and cultural expectations surrounding a number of topical themes. Some of these themes are explored in his new exhibition, GRIN—Genetic Robotic Information Nano (Technologies).

Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times has written, "With outrageous humor and unspeakable beauty, [Saxe] makes intensely seductive objects that exploit traditional anthropomorphic qualities associated with ceramics. Having pressed the question of the utility of his own art in a post-industrial world, his work engages us in a dialogue about our own place in a radically shifting cultural universe."

January 14—February 11, 2012
Peter Voulkos in L.A.: Time Capsule

Peter Voulkos was, by all accounts, one of the most influential artists in L.A. history. He crossed every boundary, and though he is best remembered for his breakthrough work in ceramics, he was also a painter, bronze sculptor, and highly influential teacher. He knew artists ranging from Ed Kienholz and Robert Irwin to Billy Al Bengston, and worked with John Mason, Ken Price, Paul Soldner, Henry Takemoto and others. In a counterpart to the Pacific Standard Time project, the Frank Lloyd Gallery presents selected works from the collection of Peter Voulkos' daughter, Pier, in an extraordinary show that encapsulates the period of time 1954-1959.

Whether made by Voulkos, or collected by the artist from his colleagues and cohorts, the works in this exhibit directly related to the beginnings of assemblage art, abstract painting, and innovative ceramics that sparked the growth of modern art in Los Angeles. Works include a wall relief by Ed Kienholz, a very early painting and a drawing by Billy Al Bengston, and several examples of small-scale pottery by Peter Voulkos. In contrast to the large sculpture shown at the Getty Museum and Scripps College for Pacific Standard Time, these bold, innovative works have a domestic scale. As critic and curator John Coplans has written, "two ceramists, Peter Voulkos and John Mason, were the first to take the plunge into something quite startlingly unfamiliar by applying the most radical of techniques to fired-clay sculpture."

Announcement

We are pleased to report that an interview with John Mason was conducted by Paul Smith for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project. A transcript can be viewed on the Archives of American Art website.

John Mason has also been interviewed by Hunter Drohowjowska-Philp for Artscene Visual Radio, and the recording will be available soon for download or podcast at the Artscene Visual Radio website.

The Ceramics Research Center at Arizona State University is a national and international destination for the hands-on study and enjoyment of ceramics. Established in 2002, it houses and displays the ASU Art Museum's extensive ceramic collection of more than 3,000 objects. The international holdings demonstrate the full range of technique, aesthetic approaches and possibilities within the medium. To learn more, please visit the CRC website .

The Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery at Scripps College in Claremont, California is home to the Marer Collection of Contemporary Ceramics. The collection, which includes nearly 900 works by American, British, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese artists, is focused on West Coast ceramics and the work of those artists involved in the ceramic revolution of the 1950s. The collection is available for viewing online through the Williamson Gallery website.