Pasadena's Unlikely Role in the Making of L.A.'s Contemporary Art Scene
In the fall of 1963, the bucolic, tradition-bound city of Pasadena became unlikely host to the most radical artist of the 20th century: Marcel Duchamp.
A pioneer of the Dada movement in post-World War I Europe, Duchamp had scandalized sophisticated New York, notably in 1917 by having his art rejected by the Independent Art Fair, a sculpture that consisted of a porcelain urinal titled "Fountain" and signed "R. Mutt." The piece had outraged art fair organizers. His position that "anything is art if an artist says it is" has become the raison d'etre for contemporary art ever since.
Despite his international reputation, not a single museum in the world had offered him a retrospective until Pasadena Art Museum curator Walter Hopps came to see him in New York, where he had lived since fleeing the violence of World War II.
Pasadena, like the rest of Southern California, supported the visual arts in the traditional modes of painting and sculpture. Prominent residents supported the Pasadena Art Museum as it showed such work in a converted Chinese-style mansion, now the Pacific Asia Museum, on North Las Robles.
Changes — more adventurous curatorial ambitions — began in 1953 when it was bequeathed a substantial gift of modern art by German art collector and dealer Galka Scheyer who had moved to L.A. in 1930. Among the 500 pieces were many abstract works by Paul Klee, Vasily Kandinsky, Alexei Jawlensky and Lyonel Feininger, which she called the "Blue Four." At that time there was no other art museum in Southern California. The focus on modern art at this small museum would have a seismic impact in just two decades.
Thomas Leavitt was the third Harvard-trained art historian to lead the museum when he was hired in 1957. Despite the disinterest and even distrust of many locals, he managed to convert them with shows that established PAM as a pioneering force. He hired Eagle Rock native, third-generation Californian, Walter Hopps as curator. Hopps already had established a reputation for co-creating Ferus, the gallery on La Cienega Bl. that launched the L.A. art scene of the 1960s. He sold his share of that business to Irving Blum and in 1962 compiled the first exhibition in America of Pop Art, The New Painting of Common Objects.
This alone would hardly have convinced an artist of Duchamp's standing to send his invaluable art to Pasadena but he had a special, personal history with Southern California.
Duchamp's foremost collectors and friends had been the independently wealthy Walter and Louise Arensberg. When living in Manhattan, they had started collecting his work in depth. Walter Arensberg was in on Duchamp's plot to present the urinal as his art, what he labeled a "readymade," since the object was just that. Duchamp also acted as the Arensbergs' art advisor, suggesting works for them by Constantin Brancusi, Jean Arp, Joan Miro, Henri Matisse and more.
The Arensbergs moved to Los Angeles in 1927 and that collection covered the walls of their Hillside Avenue home in Hollywood. It was there that Hopps was introduced to modern art while on a school field trip. He returned on his own repeatedly and asked Walter Arensberg to tutor him on modern art.
Duchamp made several visits to the Arensberg's new home. He tried to facilitate the donation of this collection to UCLA's art galleries or other California institutions but modern art had become the target of the 1950s McCarthy hearings. Plus, the Arensbergs insisted on a proper building. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art wouldn't be built until 1965. In the end, the collection was sent to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
All the more remarkable then that Hopps, who flew to New York to see Duchamp, was able to convince him to loan these works for a retrospective in Pasadena.
Duchamp had declared, falsely, that he was finished with the art world in 1923 and would devote his life to playing chess. Doubtless he was tickled by the irreverence of his reemergence in such an unpredictable spot. He insisted the Philadelphia museum ship his art and he came to Pasadena to oversee the installation. The 1963 opening was attended by up and coming artists Ed Ruscha, Billy Al Bengston, Larry Bell and Joe Goode, all dressed up in suits and ties along with movie star Dennis Hopper and Andy Warhol, who was having his second show at Ferus as well as prominent collectors, dealers and artists from New York and Europe. The next day, Duchamp had the surreal experience of being photographed playing chess with writer Eve Babitz who was totally in the nude. Duchamp died at his New York home in 1968 but the impact of his visit and that show had an outsized impact on the direction of art in L.A. As art historian Dickran Tashian said, "The L.A. artists who were outsiders saw the success of Duchamp and thought, 'Hey, if this guy can do it, so can we.'"
In the close-knit contemporary art world, in 1963, Pasadena became the most important city on the West Coast after San Francisco.
When Leavitt left to become director of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in 1963, Hopps was promoted to director and hired John Coplans, who had been editor of nascent Artforum and had a similar dedication to promoting the unique art being made in L.A. Shows by L.A. artists who are now seen as pioneers: hard edge painters John McLaughlin and Frederick Hammersley; the Light and Space-oriented figures Robert Irwin, James Turrell and Doug Wheeler; expressive painter John Altoon, the more conceptually oriented Allen Kaprow and Terry Allen, sculptor Melvin Edwards and Tamarind prints founder June Wayne.
Newly minted art collectors who bought work by young L.A. and New York artists joined the museum board, respected figures with substantial reputations like Robert Rowan, William Janss and Frederick Weisman. Heady with success, a building program was launched in the city owned Carmelita Park. The renamed Pasadena Museum of Modern Art in a curving structure designed by Ladd & Kelsey opened to national fanfare in 1969 with art donated by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin and many others.
Yet, the transition proved to be too much of a financial burden. The museum was about to declare bankruptcy when an art collector of a different persuasion stepped in. It became the Norton Simon Museum in 1974.
Pasadena's shining moment in the history of contemporary art faded but all art institutions have cycles of focus and value in a community. The excitement behind the Pasadena experiment was redirected. Marcia Weisman, then wife of Frederick Weisman and sister of Norton Simon, was an energetic supporter of contemporary art. She resolved with others to open another venue. Many of the former Pasadena Art Museum board members would join her. In 1979, that would become the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown L.A.
