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SCHOOL OF ART Founding CalArts faculty John Baldessari (Chouinard 59, see next column) has received the National Medal of the Arts, the highest honor given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government. The conceptual art trailblazer collected his medal from President Barack Obama in a Sept. 10 ceremony at the White House. Baldessari was among a group of 11 honorees that included composer and singer Meredith Monk, author Stephen King and actress Sally Field. As befits the outsize roles of CalArts and its predecessor, the Chouinard Art Institute, in the shaping of contemporary American artmaking, plenty of alumni and faculty, former and current, were on the roster of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s America Is Hard to See— the sweeping inaugural exhibition that was held at the museum’s new Renzo Piano-designed home in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Following the move from the Upper East Side concrete fortress to the more open, accessible and airy space downtown, curators used the occasion to reexamine the history of American
Top Left: President Barack Obama presents founding CalArts faculty John Baldessari with the National Medal of the Arts.
art since the founding of the museum in 1931, and in the process “tell a different story… than the lily-white version we’re used to,” according to The New Yorker. The huge survey, which opened in May, featured work by alums John Baldessari (Chouinard 59), Ericka Beckman (MFA 76), Larry Bell (Chouinard 59), Nayland Blake (MFA 84), Mark Bradford (MFA 97, BFA 95, see below), Anne Collier (BFA 93), Sam Durant (MFA 91), Mike Kelley (MFA 78), Suzanne Lacy (MFA 73), Josephine Meckseper (MFA 92), Catherine Opie (MFA 88), Tony Oursler (BFA 79), Akosua Adoma Owusu (Art–Film/Video MFA 08), Lari Pittman (MFA 76, BFA 74), Ed Ruscha (Chouinard 60), David Salle (MFA 75, BFA 73) and Christopher Williams (MFA 81, BFA 79). The current Art faculty was represented by Durant, Charles Gaines and Harry Gamboa Jr., the latter as member of the Chicano art group Asco, while former faculty members included Baldessari, Vija Celmins, Morgan Fisher, Barbara Kruger, William Leavitt and Nam June Paik. A new body of work by MacArthur Fellow and recently honored U.S. State Dept. Medal of Arts recipient Mark Bradford (MFA 97, BFA 95) was on view at the Hammer Museum over the summer. Amazingly, the exhibition,
Center: Lari Pittman, Untitled #16 (A Decorated Chronology of Insistence and Resistance), 1993. Acrylic, enamel, vinyl, glitter and crayon on wood, 84 x 60 1/16 in. Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, gift of Peter Norton.
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© Ruthless Records
© Lari Pittman
Courtesy of the National Endowment for the Arts. Photo: Ralph Alswang
NEWS FROM FACULTY, ALUMNI, STUDENTS AND OTHER MEMBERS OF THE CALARTS COMMUNITY
Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth, was the internationally acclaimed artist’s first-ever solo museum outing in Los Angeles, where he was born, raised, attended college and currently resides. Comprising a suite of 12 mixedmedia paintings, a video installation and a mural in the museum’s lobby stairwell, Bradford’s latest output reflects on the “psychogeography” of L.A., and on traumas of body and identity, as recalled from formative passages in his own lifetime. “An archaeology of memory, personal and cultural, is a primary thread running through it all,” observed the Los Angeles Times. In other news, the CalArts alum was the subject of a lengthy profile, “What Else Can Art Do?,” in the June 22 issue of The New Yorker. New York’s Joshua Liner Gallery presented a solo exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by L.A. graphic designer and artist Geoff McFetridge (MFA 95), renowned as the founder of Champion Graphics, film titles designer (The Virgin Suicides, Adaptation) and, more recently, the “graphical futurist designer” on the Spike Jonze movie Her. Rooted in McFetridge’s signature style—playing on stripped-down imagery, smooth lines, matte colors and perspective—this body of work emerged from a method of systematic
Right: School of Art alum Eric Poppleton lensed the famous cover image for N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton album.