Announcer this program was made possible in part by the Los Angeles County department of arts culture, the city of Los Angeles Department of cultural affairs, the frieda berlinski foundation, and the National Endowment for the arts, on the web at arts. Gov. Man pasadena is a quiet place. Along its broad boulevards, all is calm and orderly and wealthy. Its also conservative. Just two miles away is the National Headquarters of the ultrarightwing John Birch Society carl cheng whenin grammar school, we went to see art, we went to forest lawn. Thats a cemetery. That was considered art. So, to me it was like a wasteland here. Hal glicksman there was only one museum in los angeles. Its called the county museum of history, natural science, and art. Cheng it was just antiquity, sort of egyptian art, chinese art, blah blah blah. Glicksman and you went into the museum and you saw the main thing they had was giant rooms are still there with stuffed animals, you know. [laughter] hunterrohojowskaphilp l. A. Was definitely considered the backwater as though it didnt have any kind of art scene whatsoever, but there was a very small galle scene here. It wasnt very expensive to live here. People would open something exciting and teresting and 10 people would show up and they would be the 10 cool people in town who uld all support one another. Mirandi babitz there were maybe about 4 galleries on la cienega, i think at that particular moment. They were just starting to appear. Glicksman the art students, the ones that i met and liked, they said the real openings and the real fun are at the ferus gallery. Drohojowskaphilp ferus gallery was started by an artist and a curator with these really openminded ideas about what art could be. Was immediately attractive to other artists who needed a place to go. It was not an established gallery. It was an art gallery opened by an artist for artists ke Billy Al Bengston and robert irwin and Craig Kauffman and ken price and eventually ed ruscha so, it really comes to define what subsequently is thought of as the, you know, l. A. Look. Babitz wed all go out and, you know, drink chablis and eat little, tiny crackers and, you know, and look at these art and go, nice piece. [laughs] try to figure out what was going on. Glicksman ha ha ha and then wed go to barneys afterwards, so. [indistinct chatter] glicksman that was the life. Man ill see you at barneys. Babitz it was a lot of, you know, lot of interesting art going on, but it was right at the very beginning of it. Drohojowskaphilp ferus was started in part by walter hopps and ed kienholz. Walter was very much more in touch with the way artists think than most dealers, or even curators. I mean, he really felt and thought and acted like an artist. So, he could see and feel very much what was happening right in the moment and accept it. Larry bell he was a very charismatic, charming guy. Chain smoked. Ed ruscha we called him chico. No one really knew where that name came from, but we always just referred to him as chico. Babitz he was on the track of something in the art world that was kind of evenwas beyond, i think, what ferus was doing. He really knew things about art that nobody else knew. Joe goode that guy could get anything he wanted in the art world and he knew what to do with it when he got it. Babitz whenever he was in the room, you paid attention to him, you know, and you wanted to hear what he had to say. Glicksman hes someone who knows and you st have a feeling thate tapped into this secret truth and just could see into the future. I dont know. Drohojowskaphilp hop goes to work for the Pasadena Art Museum, who like him so much they then hire him fulltime as a curator. The perception of thatuseum before walter hopps was that it was a sleepy place. Babitz it wasi think it looked like a chinese restaurant, basically. You know, did not look like a museum. Bell it was mostly chinese and japanese artifacts and antiquities and that kind of stuff, and walter brought the aspect of modern art into their point of view. Drohojowskaphilp the Pasadena Art Museum was taking a chance on walter hopps. This is an exciting world, this new art thats coming up, and they want to be a part of it, and he was able to convey the excitement and thrill of supporting art that was entirely new. Glicksman the pasadena ladies, they got 100 behind walter and about being in the avantgarde and they really liked it. [womens voices sped up] drohojowskaphilp the Pasadena Art Museum then became the only contemporary art museum in los angeles. [distorted voice of duchamp] from all the rooftops shout that he is a genius. Hell have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that hideclarations take sociavalue, and that finally pterity includes him in the primers of artist history. Cheng Marcel Duchamp, hes more li a philosopher. He hits a chord and then anybody that is serious about art has to deal with it. To me, l. A. Was the place where theres no history here. So, as an artist, its creative in any way. You can develop something here. Nobody questions anything. So, thats a great environment for artists. I mean, when you dont have anybody say no, well, then you got a lot of yeses, right . Ha ha were all living in our time. Ha what can you make out of it . All i saw was empty lots with cars and, you know, just rubble. Human waste. But there is also a t of thnology in there, so, the aerospace industry, all that was part of what i considered art materials. And then i would mold around those and made sculptures. Its conceptual, but not just for the purpose of being conceptual. Well, i can make a product like an erosion machine. [machine whirring] now, you just figure out what that means. [machine whirring] theres a part of art you cant teach. You can lead people up to something in art, teach them to do this, think for themselves. They gotta figure it out. Theres nothing. Theres no answer. So, that to me was what duchamp represents. That urinal thing, just, i remember it just knocked me out. I mean, wait, wait, thats not youre not supposed to say thats art. Ha ha its not so much the item, not the product that im looking at in duchamp. I mean, ive learned from his ideas and that goes, thats it, you know. Broadly speaking, i dont think half the people that are making art realize that they are influenced by him, you know . [clicking, whirring] [duchamp speakg french] babitz we knew who a lot of artists were but we did not know who duchamp was. Bell i knew the name but there were no publications about that persons work and there wasnt that much of it to be viewed in any museums that i had access to. Ruscha i came onto duchamps work maybe when i was in art school and it was a little strange and unsettling but provocative. Duchamp my family was family of artists. The First Painting i remember and that still exists was painted in 1902 when i was 15 years old. Picture landscape, very impressionisc, pseudo impressionistic because its not real, but influenced by impressionism that time. Ohojowskaphilp duchamp, initially a painte and th a cubist painter and interested in the ideas of tion and interested in t ideas of modn art. When duchamp presented nude descending staircase in the 1913 armory show in new york, itreated auge story d looking back, its almost like youont know why. Martin friedman was an idea totally his own. It was a painting which was admired and vilified. It was a painting which made him notorioupersonality,amous, and its a painting thatsad ein the way of designation from explosion in ahingle factory to other terms of a program which we dont have to go into. Matthew affron when he was 25 and just having his first flush of fame or notoriety in the public eye, duchamp made a momentous decision and that was to give up being oil painter he needed to reinvent himself constantly in order to remain fresh, in order to remain relevant. Then he came to new york in 1915, partly to escape the First World War in france, and he found a New York Dada world, right . Dada being the internationalist, very antiestablishment, very cuttingedge art movement of that time. Drohojowskaphilp dada is a movement that comes out of world war i and this sense among the artists of the exasperation, of frustration, of the idiocy of that war. They are really questioning what if any kind of art could possibly respond to that chaos and that brutality, and duchamp was captured by the radicalness of that thking. But mostly, i think he was captured byhe idea of thinking. He was a thinking artist. Duchamp i had to find some way of expressing myself without ing a painter, without being a writer, without takingne of the labels, and yet producing something that would be an inner proct of myself. It was a reaion against of painting. Eption retinal art concerns only what the retina receives. The colors and the forms, not much of an anecdote. Didnt like it. I never liked it , i tried to do somethin else to avd to do something only appeali to the retina. Drohojowskaphilp he had come up with the idea of the readymade, where just an object in his studio could become a sculpture. Duchamp the first one was a bicycle wheel. Man just an ordinary wheel . Duchamp an ordinary wheel for a bicycle on a stand. I would turn it as i passed by. The movement of it was like a fire in the fireplace, you kno it has that attraction of something moving in the room while you think about something else. Affron so, readymade is a is really a strategy for raising in a new way the question what is art . Duchamp the idea is the choice of a manufactured object or, i think, a readymade object, but the thing was to choose one that you are not attracted to it for its shape or anything. You see, it was through a feeling of indifference toward it that i would choose it, you see, and that was difficult, because anything becomes beautiful if you lo at it long enough. Drohojowskaphilp he presents a urinal upside down as a fountain signed r. Mutt, not even with his own name, and presents it as a fountain, which is extraordinary. The idea to this day is extraordinary. Its considered one of the most important works of art of the 20th century. Glicksman the r. Mutt urinal. This was the toustone for conceptual artists, that if you say its art, its art in the readymades. Duchamp the readymade comes in as a sort of irony because it says, here it is, a thing that i call art. I didnt even make it myself. Drohojowskaphilp at some point, i think that Marcel Duchamp thought that the art world itself was something of a game, that playing the role of being the artist and dealing with the dealers and dealing with art history, i think all of it felt a bit like a game to him and if he was gonna play that game, he might as well just play the game he wanted to play, which was chess. Duchamp intentionally retired from the making of works of art. He always said the conversatio was really about his own inner dialogue, himself having a conversation with himself about what art could or could not be, and thats why he retired from it because he felt like hed answered all of his own questions. Woman did you ever have any desire to return to painting . Duchamp no, ne. I act like an tist althougugh i am not one. Woman hha affron by the time you get to pasadena, hes also now become a grand old man of modern art, but who still is an enigma because no one has seen a retrospective of his work. So, the appeal is just must have been just fantastic. Duchamp millions of artists create. Only a few thousan are discussed orccepted by the sctator a many less again are consecrated by posterity. Man were you surprised that hopps wanted to do a show about duchamp . Goode no. Never wou have surprised me, huh . It surprised me that he got away with it. [man speaking french [duchamp speaking french] glicksman walter was introduced to duchamp and duchamp was very impressed that he knew all about the work and he knew about the period and everything. This kid, you know, this young guy. And i believe the reason that he agreed to do a retrospective in this crazy, Little Museum made out of a chinese fake Department Store was that he didnt ask duchamp to make anything, do anything, you know, except to talk to the collectors and, you know, bless the show. And so, duchamp thought that was a good idea, to do this show in a kind of a remote place. [man and duchamp speaking french] drohojowskaphilp im not sure walter hopps himself knew what to do in organizing a retrospective of this nature for Marcel Duchamp. Im sure he was not knowledgeable enough about what he would have to ship, how much it would cost. [duchamp speaking french] ruscha it must have taken immense planning to do that and to go back in this mans fe and see what various things that he created and then following up and finding these works and borrowing these works to bring them together. So, there was a bit of p. T. Barnum in that respect. Drohojowskaphilp and it was also put into this institution that was not at all set up for these kinds of exhibitions. It was not set up for largescale works of art. It was barely a museum at all. It wasnt set up for storage or security or labels or any of the kinds of things that were standard, legitimate, bigcity museum, for sure, and it was a huge undertaking and he was very lucky to have someone like Hal Glicksman help him through the process. Glicksman walter shows up at 11 00 at night. [knocking on door] ha ha knocknock. He liked to do that and go around and visit artists at night. And he said, i just got a position authorized for fulltime professional eparator and can you come bacwith me tonight . I says, walter, ill come tomorrow. I started on the champ show and didnt sleep for the next 5 days working on that show and nowha ha. You cant say no to walter. No, this was a great opportunity. I mean, duchamp and becoming the preparator at Pasadena Museum . I mean, this was a dream come true for me. Joe goode well, its hard to explain, but working for walter hopps is a different way of working. Glicksman we would work all night and all day. Wheres walter . Wheres walter . Where is walter . Finally, at 5 30 or 6 in the evening, he would come in and says, well, lets get to work, you know. Then he would stand there like this and say, i want a wall here. So, the next time he came, there would have to be a wall there all built, finished, painted, ready to go when he came back the next 6 00 the next evening. James eller i used to work at the museum helping out, making a few extra bucks to maintain myself and my art. When we put together the large glass there, no one seemed to know how to put that thing together. And i just identified with it and i just dove into it and put it all together and i was thrilled just to be involved with the show and just get to know all of his work. It really affected me deeply. Drohojowskaphilp whats very interesting about his role in pasadena is that hes so present. He was there for two weeks. [duchamp speaking french] glicksman when i met duchamp, we had been up all night building the walls and painting and cleaning up. We had tshirts that were just big yellow stains under the arms, you know. We were completely tired, sitting there out on the stone benches in the patio, just resting, and we were introduced to duchamp. He was so softspoken and tall and thin, and, you know, he just looked like a great artist. I dont know what it was but and yet with a sort of a sly wink at the same time. Man dyou have any particular feeling now when you go downstairs in the Pasadena Museum and look at it . Duchamp no. It was wellainted. I mean, technically speaking. Technically speaking, it was well enough painted that it has not been repaired since. Drohojowskaphilp any Art Exhibition is a story and the curator has to tell the story. And in duchamps case, because so much of the work is, quote, nonretinal, nonretinal being not having to do with really how something looks, it wasnt so much about this blue painting looks great with that black painting or that brown painting, it was really about heres a cubist painting and then theres a bottle rack and theres a piece of broken glass and then theres something thats got text on it and how to make those have a conversation with one another. Glicman walter says if you remember anything about the installation, thats not a good installation. You should only remember the art and it should be presented to you as if thats all just there, just the art. This is especially true about the Pasadena Museum because you had to get the people not to look at the fire extinguisher and the peeling paint and all that stuff. Drohojowskaphilp in many ways, the catalog is the kind of readymade of the show. Theres an existing book by robert lebel thats the definitive source on duchamps work, and although he intended to do something with this book, instead what he wound up doing was cutting and pasting parts of it together with rubber cement and mimeograph, taking source material from photography and text that existed elsewhere, and repositioning it. Thats pure dada and surrealist technique. So, unintentionally, hopps sort of came up with this kind of a catalog solution, but it was also partly because he was perpetually disorganized, running behind, and the whole project was wildly over budget. Glicksman the catalog was sort of brilliant and was gonna have it typeset and there wasnt time, so, he just put the whole scratchy thing into the catag. Drohojowskaphilp thats how the poster comes about as well, with duchamps blessing. Duchamp presents himself as a wanted poster, knowing full well that that has to do with coming to the wild west where hes [duchamp speaking fren] drohojowskaphilp duchamp got to revisit his own history by coming here. Going to ojai, revisiting his old friend Beatrice Wood and other collectors who were around at the time who were interested in the work. He would go around and visit artists studios. They would see larry bells studio. Bell i realized who it was and i got. Petrified. I got totali was totally un just stuckstruck dumb by the fact that this person, this legend that i knew nothing of but kn he was a legend had come into my studio and was interested in what i did, and liked the guy cause i was a cigar smoker and duchamp smoked cigars, too. Drohojowskaphilp i think it was just duchamp who was willing to make this one of the last art gestures of his life. I mean, that retrospective in a way is a kind of performative piece in itself in terms of his own involvement. Man i have never worked with any artist, younger or older, living artist who was more intelligent, that should be obvious, but more resourcefully cooperative. No one, no exception. Charles gaines its interesting his first major museum show is in pasadena. I think that it revealed the potential of los angeles, for sure. So, for that reason, i think itsthis is the risk of being seminal and i think that people then began to expect to see art in los angeles and art coming out of los angeles. Man its not surprising to you, when you look at the photographs, that all the artists youre seeing, its all white guys, basically. Gaines the issue was that the art world in l. A. , in the sixties, it was racist. Well, you know, its just the way it was in those days. You know, there werent many black artists, you know. There were tons. So, the idea that they werent there is false. Whats interesting to me is that my ability to critique the racism was assisted by duchamps idea of unpacking institutional strategies. So, in a strange way, even though duchamp didnt think much about black artists, yeah, but his ideas could be employed to even unpack his limitations. He found problems with these ornized and institutional frameworks that art existed in and just got into the habit of rebelling or deconstructing