Red Eye: L.A. Artists from the Rubell Family Collection

by Mark Coetzee, Michael Darling, Michael Holte

The inspiration for this book began at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art with Paul Schimmel's seminal 1992 exhibition Helter Skelter, which introduced to the world the wide-ranging, dissident influence of Los Angeles art. Upon seeing that show, Miami's Rubell family began to collect important L.A. artists of the 1980s and 90s. Recently, the Rubells added a new group of Los Angeles artists to their storied collection. This volume examines juxtapositions and interrelationships between the two generations, with work by Doug Aitken, John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Brian Calvin, Mark Grotjahn, Evan Holloway, Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, Jason Meadows, Catherine Opie, Kaz Oshiro, Laura Owens, Raymond Pettibon, Charles Ray, Jason Rhoades, Jim Shaw, Yutaka Sone and Ricky Swallow, among others.

Genres: Art

218 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

Mark Coetzee was a South African curator, author, and artist whose career spanned continents and institutions. After studying Fine Art at Stellenbosch University, he began his career as a painter and later founded the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet in Cape Town in the late 1990s. In 2001, he was appointed director of the Rubell Family Collection (now the Rubell Museum) in Miami, where he helped shape one of the most influential private collections of contemporary art.
In 2009, Coetzee joined Puma as program director of PumaVision and chief curator of Puma.Creative, working under Jochen Zeitz. This collaboration led to his appointment as founding executive director and chief curator of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (Zeitz MOCAA), which opened in Cape Town in 2017 as a major platform for contemporary African art. He resigned from Zeitz MOCAA in 2018 amid allegations of misconduct.
Throughout his life, Coetzee remained active as a writer and art critic, contributing to publications including The Huffington Post, Mail & Guardian, Revue Noire, and Sunday Independent, and publishing monographs on various artists. He was remembered for his belief in the transformative power of art and his influence on the African and international art scenes.