Los Angeles Prints 1883 1980 Pt I Sep 4 Nov 30 1980 Pt Ii Jun 25 Sep 20 1981 PDF Download

This beautiful volume chronicles the ever-changing work of Billy Al Bengston - art that spans a period of thirty years, encompasses a variety of materials, and consistently defies stylistic classification. With colleagues Edward Kienholz, Edward Ruscha, and Kenneth Price, Bengston was a leader in the art revolution that transformed Los Angeles from art backwater to international art center beginning in the 1960s. His own widely acclaimed work has changed dramatically from decade to decade, reflecting the artist's independent spirit and firm belief in the open-endedness of the creative process. Bengston has said, "A work of art should never be predictable ... if each time you look at it you see something new, find that it means something more, something different, then you are on the track of art." Inspired by the various environments in which he has lived and worked - from California and Hawaii to London and Mexico - Bengston vibrantly evokes in his works the colors, lights, and patterns of these locales. This book visually chronicles the evolution of the artist's pictorial investigations, from his early paintings that conjure up the metallic and chrome-plated car culture of Los Angeles to the later Hawaiian images that opulently evoke this island paradise. Lavishly illustrated with sixty full-color plates of Bengston's paintings, collages, watercolors, screens, and banners, the book reveals the true radiance of his palette and his continual process of experimentation. Insightful essays by Henry T. Hopkins, Jane Livingston, Karen Tsujimoto, and Maurice Tuchman provide a welcome overview for admirers of Bengston's art and a splendid introduction for those as yet unfamiliar with it. This volume offers an illuminating appraisal of an artist of enormous originality, range, and achievement, whose glowing canvases reward the viewer with prolonged visual pleasure. -- from front cover flap.