Peter Plagens > Quotes

“Southern California sunsets, neon, flowers, ocean, desert landscapes, and wide boulevards sifted their ways into the subconsciousnesses (or consciousnesses) of L.A. artists.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“An argument for the existence of a regionalist art that is fully capable of international acceptance, that is fully capable of operating outside the lineal leapfrog of Europe-to-New-York styles, and yet of adding to them.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Pre-war Southern California produced little important art.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Kauffman was the first Southern California artist ever to paint an original painting.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Bay Area bric-a-brac sensibility.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Easygoing, nonmilitant Pop, as at home in Southern California as was Impressionism on the banks of the Seine.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Early assemblages pointed up a maniacal (or horrifying) California appetite for conglomerates. Hard Edge arose out of Los Angeles's desert air, youthful cleanliness, spatial expanse, architectural tradition . . . and . . . optimism.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Exhibitions were experiments.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“They seemed to dispense with the need to represent space in the interests of directly manifesting it.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Elegance and simplicity . . . plastic, including polyester resin, which has several attractions: permanence (indoors), an aura of difficulty and technical expertise, and preciousness . . . rivaling bronze or marble. . . . in short, the aroma of Los Angeles in the sixties — newness, postcard sunset color, and intimations oif aerospace profundity.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Colors are essentially tonal, rooted in the California landscape.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Non-physicality grew from Los Angeles's geographic/architectural/cultural climate.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“The idea that one man's unique personal vision is greater than the importance of fashions in art or mainstream type philosophy.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“In such paces — the Vancouvers, San Diegos, Portlands, Seattles, and, yes, San Franciscos and Los Angeleses — can we hope for anything more than jazzed-up melding of New York styles or self-conscious lampoons that aspire to kift the curse of provincialism?”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“The characteristics of the region as an art center — geographically remote, overly conscious of regional identity, and desiring not to be another commonsense Midwest or an appendage of New York or California culture — predisposed local artists to domination by the first individual personalities to manifest both independence and exoticism.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Assemblage is the first home-grown California modern art.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“Two currents of West Coast art . . . the 'dirties' and the 'cleans'.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“If you believe in Modern Art History . . . it follows that the best breeding ground for good art is where competing ideas, esthetics, and artists are thickest and where regional niceties are thinnest — New York. . . . The 'regions'. . . . are short on white-hot overpopulation, edifice complexes, and career fights to the death. . . . Should it be gauged against the 'mainstream' . . . or should it be sized up from exactly the opposite point of view?”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast

“For once in California there was an integration of art with avant-garde literature and music.”
― Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse; Contemporary Art on the West Coast