Established | December 1960 [2] [3] |
---|---|
Dissolved | Summer 1961 [3] |
Location | 740 N. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, California [1] |
Coordinates | 34°05′05″N 118°22′34″W / 34.0848°N 118.3761°W |
Type | Art gallery |
Founder | Henry Hopkins |
The Huysman Gallery was an art gallery in Los Angeles, California that operated from December 1960 to summer 1961. [2] [3] [note 1] It was located at 740 North La Cienega Boulevard, across the street from the noted Ferus Gallery. [1] [5] Curator Henry Hopkins, [6] who founded the gallery, named it after the French decadent novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. [7] The gallery showcased the works of several young artists who later had great success, including Joe Goode, Ed Ruscha, and Larry Bell. [5]
The gallery's most famous exhibition, War Babies, ran from May 29, 1961 to June 17, 1961. [3] It showed the work of Goode, Bell, Ed Bereal, and Ron Miyashiro, all of whom were born in the late 1930s and experienced World War II in their early childhood. [5] According to Hopkins, "the exhibition title was selected by Goode to establish a birth point in time and to indicate a sense of post-war internationalism." [8] War Babies was one of the earliest racially integrated exhibitions [8] and "was a daring challenge to the prevailing norms and mores of postwar America and its underlying racial stereotypes and identity politics." [5] The participating artists played off the work of the nearby Ferus artists. [9] Goode contributed thickly painted images of stars along with a cardboard box nailed to the gallery wall, Miyashiro contributed paintings suggestive of sinister eroticism, Bereal contributed leather pouches that stank of oil, and Bell contributed a "saddle painting". [9] The mix of styles present in the exhibition was indicative of the fluidity of the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1960s. [9]
The exhibition's poster, created by Jerry McMillan and Joe Goode, ultimately attracted more attention than the exhibition itself. [9] It depicted the four participating artists seated at a table covered with an American flag as a tablecloth. [5] [8] Each of the artists was posed with a prop playing off an ethnic or religious stereotype: Bell ( Jewish) held a bagel, Bereal ( African American) held a watermelon, Miyashiro ( Japanese American) held chopsticks, and Goode ( Catholic) held a mackerel. [5] [8] Liberals and conservatives alike criticized the poster; the John Birch Society denounced the gallery for flag desecration. [1] [5] [8] Following the controversy surrounding War Babies, the gallery's backers—a group of three lawyers—withdrew their support for the gallery. [4] [9] The gallery closed in summer 1961, soon after the close of the War Babies exhibition. [3] [1]