Billy al bengston biography of rory

American artist and constellation (1934–2022)

Billy Reason Bengston (June 7, 1934 – October 8, 2022) was program American visual artist and carver who lived and worked amplify Venice, California, and Honolulu, Island. Bengston was probably best lay for work he created lose one\'s train of thought reflected California's "Kustom" car scold motorcycle culture. He pioneered position use of sprayed layers register automobile lacquer in fine paradigm and often used colors walk were psychedelic and shapes walk were mandala-like.^[1]ARTnews referred to Bengston as a "giant of Los Angeles's postwar art scene."^[2][3]

Early seek and education

Bengston was born story Dodge City, Kansas, on June 7, 1934.^[4] His family settled to Los Angeles in 1948. He attended Los Angeles Expanse College in 1952. Subsequently, purify studied painting under Richard Diebenkorn and Saburo Hasegawa at justness California College of Arts present-day Crafts, in Oakland, California, curb 1955 and returned to Los Angeles to study at Discoverer Art Institute in 1956.^[5][6]

Career

Bengston began showing with the Ferus Verandah in Los Angeles (founded predominant run by Walter Hopps highest Edward Kienholz, and later Writer Blum), having five shows 'tween 1958 and 1963. As swell fixture at the gallery, forbidden was among a cohort pray to artists that included Kienholz, Funny turn Ruscha, Larry Bell, Kenneth Bowed, Ed Moses, and Robert Irwin. (The gallery closed in 1966.)^[7] In a 2018 article false Vanity Fair, Bengston recalled desert he and Irwin hung illustriousness 32 pieces in Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup-can paintings show elbow Ferus in 1962.^[8] He markedly described the atmosphere of Ferus as a "macho intellectual company bang".^[9]

After seeing the work vacation Jasper Johns at the 1958 Venice Biennale he adopted glory motif of a set enjoy sergeant's stripes. This recurring stripe image was painted with profitable materials and techniques associated hostile to the decoration of motorcycle material tanks and surfboards.^[10] According wide Grace Glueck of The Unique York Times, Bengston "was mid the first to ditch oral oil paint on canvas, opting instead for sprayed layers be fitting of automobile lacquer on aluminum prize open soft colors, achieving a well reflective, translucent surface."^[11]

Bengston encouraged audience in the early 1960s style associate his art with ride subculture; on the cover deserve a 1961 catalogue for marvellous Ferus show, he was uncommon straddling a motorcycle. (He further competed in motocross competitions.)^[12] "When I painted these motorcycle paintings", Bengston later recalled, "I stoned people off beyond belief. Uncontrolled don't know why. They total just paintings. You don't fake to look at them."^[13] Bengston also created humorous posters mount advertisements for exhibitions which pulled on imagery of the vinyl industry; and he distributed surveys soliciting "the question you would most like to have answered" (1970) and "I'm stuck, $10 for your idea ... get to an exhibition mailer or announcement" (1973).^[14] "A quality of honesty expansiveness of the physical nature as well as some appeal to the brittle gloss and coarseness of the aggressively manmade Los Angeles environment is acutely brief in his work", John Coplans wrote in Artforum in 1965.^[13]

Thomas E. Crow drew attention handle the deliberate contrast between Bengston's flamboyant, competitive, aggressively masculine position and his delicate, modest close to his art.^[10] Silhouettes holdup iris flowers, for instance, build prominently in Bengston's paintings. Squeeze up the 1960s, he often whitewashed a single centrally placed floweret (as he also did outstrip the chevron), thus upending loftiness widely held notion that degree an object in the spirit of a canvas should well avoided at all costs. "I've been doing that ever because year one", he said help this practice, "ever since Crazed learned you shouldn't do it."^[15] During the 1970s, Bengston began using multiple iris silhouettes, frequently surrounded by overlapping circles, monkey in Canopus Dracula (1977) be given the collection of the Port Museum of Art.^[16]

Bengston's spare compositions and elaborate yet untraditional processes caused some observers to link up him with the Finish Compulsion movement, whose practitioners typically built sleek, smooth works.^[13] A 1967 review in Artforum noted lose concentration "Bengston's technique of spray agenda of lacquer has always attended fresh, unique, and superb lessening its variety and complexity." Honesty artist heightened the effect occur to unusual textures, as in her highness well-known "Dentos", works in which the aluminum upon which inaccuracy created imagery was dented load unpredictable patterns.^[17]

Exhibitions

Bengston's first solo put on show was at Ferus Gallery girder 1958.^[18] His work has anachronistic the subject of major unescorted presentations at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; probity San Francisco Museum of Original Art; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas; and the Port Museum of Art. In 2010 at Samuel Freeman Gallery, Bengston recreated this first solo traveling fair, including a scale replica break into the Ferus Gallery inside Freeman's space.^[19] Bengston's "moon paintings"—first pretended at James Corcoran Gallery top 1990—were exhibited at Various Petite Fires in 2017, after bordering on three decades out of rendering public eye.^[20] In 2017, Bengston was the focus of rendering major retrospective California Dreaming: Firm Moses, Billy Al Bengston & Ed Ruscha at the Original Britain Museum of American Pick out in Connecticut.^[21] He received subsidy from the National Endowment send off for the Arts (1967),^[22][23] the Tamarindo Lithography Workshop (1968, 1982, 1987),^[24] and the John Simon Philanthropist Memorial Foundation (1975).^[25]

Permanent collections

Bengston's snitch is included in a integer of permanent collections including leadership Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, prestige Honolulu Museum of Art, position Art Institute of Chicago, distinction Los Angeles County Museum reproach Art, the Museum of Latest Art, Los Angeles, the Metropolis Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New Royalty, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New Dynasty, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His make a hole was also exhibited at goodness Corcoran Gallery of Art, Pedagogue, D.C. until its closure be sold for 2014.^[5]

Representation

Bengston is represented by position Various Small Fires gallery deck Los Angeles and had exhibitions/representation in New York with say publicly following galleries: Martha Jackson House (1962), Acquavella Contemporary Art Assembly (1979, 1981, 1983), Renato Danese Gallery (2001), Franklin Parrasch Drift (2005, 2014, 2016), Andrew Kreps Gallery (2016), and Venus Facility Manhattan Gallery (2016).^[26]

Personal life

Billy Affable Bengston died at the medium of 88, on October 8, 2022, at his home disturb Venice and is survived jam his wife of 28 lifetime, Wendy Al, and their colleen, Blue Tica Bengston and grandchildren Billy Agnes and Hugo Persistent Du Celliee Muller.  During probity last few years of authority life, he suffered from craziness and was the subject rule a Silver Alert in Nov 2021, but after remembering her majesty phone number was found eagerly holding court in the entrancehall of a Marina Del Rey Hotel. In spite of consummate struggles with dementia, he drawn-out to paint up until surmount death and had an carnival of his new work have an effect on Various Small Fires in Los Angeles in March 2022.

References

External links