John McLaughlin, #26, 1961
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Mr. Joseph Mendelson through the Contemporary Art Council © John McLaughlin Estate
‘John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction’ – LACMA The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents ‘John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction’, the artist’s first solo retrospective in 20 years. November 13, 2016–April 16, 2017.]]>
Source: LACMA
One of the most important Southern California artists of the postwar period, John McLaughlin (1898–1976) created a focused body of geometric paintings that are entirely devoid of any connection to everyday experience and inspired by the Japanese notion of ‘ma’ (the void). Using a technique of layering rectangular bars on adjacent planes of muted color, McLaughlin created works that provoke introspection by making the viewer, not the artist, their subject. The exhibition is organized chronologically and consists of 52 paintings and a selection of collages and drawings that establish McLaughlin as one of the foremost innovators of total abstraction.
“John McLaughlin Paintings” is curated by Stephanie Barron, senior curator and head of modern art, and Lauren Bergman, assistant curator in modern art. McLaughlin was included in the now-landmark 1959 exhibition “Four Abstract Classicists”, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum, alongside Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, and Frederick Hammersley. He was also the subject of four major museum retrospectives, at the Pasadena Art Museum (1963), the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (1968), the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (1973), and the Laguna Art Museum (mounted posthumously in 1996). Yet, despite this success, he never received widespread attention during his lifetime. He has subsequently become a hero among later generations of Los Angeles artists across a broad range of disciplines and styles.
“John McLaughlin is one of the most important Southern California artists of the postwar period, and the opportunity to share some of his most critical works in this retrospective is both exciting and long overdue,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “Following the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945 Image captions on page 5 Page 2 1980 initiative, it was a natural decision for LACMA return to some of the individual artists whose work elicited the greatest sense of revelation, most recently with Noah Purifoy (Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada in 2015) and now John McLaughlin. ‘John McLaughlin Paintings: Total Abstraction’ features the most comprehensive range of his abstract experimentations.”
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