Book Review : The L.A. Art Scene Gets the Brushoff--and Its Due

Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Second Edition by Mantle Fielding (Apollo: $85)

Art of Our Time in Southern California: A Guide to the Documentation of Contemporary Art, edited and compiled by William K. Cohen (Garland, 136 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y., 10016: $35).

As the pulse of Los Angeles’ contemporary art scene quickens to an unprecedented rate, scholarly anxiety tightens its grip. Confronted with openings of the Museum of Contemporary Art and County Museum of Art’s new wing for modern and contemporary art, the Frederick R. Weisman Collection’s search for a home, the arrival of the Lannan Foundation and a flood of new galleries across town, the most compulsive art watchers worry about keeping track of all the artists whose work is likely to be shown.

The “Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers, Second Edition” by Mantle Fielding offers little help. Despite the addition of about 2,500 names to the 1983 revision of the original 1926 edition, this weighty dictionary is a view from the East. No book that omits such a prominent figure as Sam Francis--not to mention Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, John Baldesarri, Billy Al Bengston, James Turrell, Robert Graham and Ed Kienholz--can be taken seriously here.

Scant and Erratic

Perhaps Fielding and his editor, Glenn B. Opitz, thought the inclusion of Richard Diebenkorn and feminist Judy Chicago would take care of their obligation to internationally known artists who live in Los Angeles or made their reputations here. But so scant and erratic is their California tally that it’s pleasantly surprising to find Helen Lundeburg and Joyce Treiman listed. Coming across the accomplished but lesser known Robin Vaccarino is a shock.

I can’t tell you much about the Fielding people’s criteria for selecting 12,000 names; the preface only says they drew biographical information from “an extensive library of source material, including both readily available and many out-of-print references, as well as resumes submitted from artists in response to our solicitation.” But their methods surely are suspect. When Opitz claims that “this single volume represents our highest effort to present a comprehensive listing of American artists,” you have to wonder what a lower effort might have produced.

Far more encouraging, though admittedly tentative and incomplete, is “Art of Our Time in Southern California: A Guide to the Documentation of Contemporary Art,” edited and compiled by William K. Cohen. This slim guide to research collections in Southern California, assembled by a former project archivist at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, is a publication project of the Southern California Committee for Contemporary Art Documentation. Following this “first step toward listing, preserving, and making accessible the kinds of contemporary records relating to art that are so often neglected and eventually lost of the communities that generate them,” the committee will update and add to files to be maintained at the Getty’s Archives of the History of Art.

A Host of Institutions

Cohen surveys 46 arts institutions, describing each organization, the scope and nature of its collection, the system of organization employed and how to gain access to the holding. Along with predictable listings of major art museums and universities are the defunct Arco Center for Visual Art (whose exhibition archive will be maintained by Atlantic Richfield Co.), Los Angeles Murals Program, the Beverly Hills Public Library and the Woman’s Building.

Inclusion of La Mamelle, Inc., a San Francisco-based artist organization, unaccountably stretches the boundaries of this Southern California project to the north--and suggests the possibility of a statewide guide. The currently available one looks rather slight, but it bodes well for an area that is finally taking its contemporary art seriously.