On Thursday, July 21, Dr. Alexandra Schwartz, Adjunct Professor at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology and Guest Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, will host a virtual lecture focusing on Altoon at the height of his career during a legendary period in the LA art scene and also on several of Altoon’s works on view in the exhibition.
The lecture, titled “Indefinable Lifeblood: John Altoon and LA Art in the 1960s,” starts at 4 p.m on Thursday, July 21.
“John Altoon is one of four California artists featured in the exhibition ‘Alternate Realities,’ on view at the Museum through August 22nd. Schwartz will focus on several of the objects on view in the exhibition,” Leslie C. Denk, Director of External Affairs at Norton Simon Museum told Pasadena Now. “People will learn about this dynamic, talented and complex individual and the important role he played in shaping LA’s reputation as an art capital.”
‘Alternate Realities’ includes works by Richard Diebenkorn (1922–1993), Frank Lobdell (1921–2013), and Emerson Woelffer (1914–2003) currently on display at the museum.
During the 1960s, Altoon was exhibiting at Ferus Gallery – a cradle of the LA art scene – and teaching at Chouinard Art Institute, now CalArts. Artists such as Ed Ruscha – who has called him an “indefinable lifeblood” – Billy Al Bengston and Laddie John Dill remember him as an indelible role model and mentor.
A trained illustrator, Altoon developed idiosyncratic arrangements that allude to body parts, organic objects, even a pair of striped pants, while refusing to cohere into legible narratives. His “Ocean Park Series #8” (1962), named for the neighborhood in Santa Monica near where he lived and worked, distills traditional landscape painting into its base elements to evoke a vivid sense of place.
“Short, parallel strokes of yellow and brown paint convey powerful rays of sunshine, while a playful spade-like form conjures a crashing wave throwing off drips of blue paint. Along the lower margin, a green shape suggestive of a cactus stretches upward behind horizontal bands of sandy brown pigment, perhaps an allusion to a fence or a well-trodden path.”
“By excising the connective tissue of a background, Altoon’s landscape floats free as if hovering on the surface of the canvas, hinting at visceral associations with warm sun and refreshing spray rather than literally depicting them,” according to a description of his work by the museum.
Thursday’s event is the second of two virtual lectures organized in conjunction with the Alternate Realities exhibition, Denk said. The first was held on June 22 titled “Bay Area Abstraction: Production and Reception” by art critic and historian Elizabeth Buhe.
“Alternate Realities” opened in May. Drawn entirely from the Norton Simon Museum’s extensive holdings of postwar American art, the exhibition explores the ways in which Altoon, Woelffer, Lobdell, and Diebenkorn challenged the notion of a pure, gestural abstraction by exploring the expressive potential of figural forms.
According to the museum, the live lecture is held over Zoom and participants must register in advance to receive the Zoom link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ds5YhnjCQIWIZ7isAKNLBQ.
For more information, visit www.nortonsimon.org/exhibitions/2020-2029/alternate-realities-altoon-diebenkorn-lobdell-woelffer.