Pop Art Exhibit at Newport Museum

Though the King of Pop Art lived and reigned in New York, Andy Warhol’s pop art colleagues in Los Angeles helped the form to flourish too. Their work had qualities unique to California, however, a notion explored in an exhibit opening Thursday at the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

“L.A. Pop in the Sixties,” through July 9, features paintings and multimedia work by Ed Ruscha, Vija Celmins, Joe Goode, Billy Al Bengston, Wallace Berman, Phillip Hefferton, John Baldessari, Robert Dowd and Llyn Foulkes, all originally associated with ‘60s pop art.

“This was a group of very important artists who developed slightly differently from the pop artists in New York,” said Marilu Knode, a museum curatorial assistant, “and very differently from Warhol, the quintessential pop artist.”

“For example, Celmins uses small common objects. But unlike Warhol’s Campbell soup cans, she infuses her work with a very personal, lyrical and intimate touch that removes it from the glitz of pop.”

Like Jasper Johns, Goode’s abstract painting “shows his intimate interest with surface,” she said. “But, Goode’s paintings also incorporate assemblage--a large milk bottle sits on the ground in front of many of them--which makes his work much more sculptural than Johns’ and shows a tension between abstraction and found objects.”

Certain unique elements of conceptualism, as personified by Baldessari’s and Ruscha’s work, also distinguish California’s pop style, said Knode, attributing the overall differences largely to the state’s strong, existing traditions of assemblage, surrealism, Dada and abstraction. “The work was made in a much more isolated art world as well.”

A panel discussion on “L.A. Pop in the Sixties,” including artists Goode, Dowd and Foulkes, will be held at the museum May 13. Ticket information: (714) 759-1122.

OPEN VOTE: Proposals by four artists for a site-specific public artwork to be installed on the beach will be on view for public comment in the lobby of Santa Monica City Hall, 1685 Main St., through Wednesday.

The proposals--by Red Grooms, Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison, George Herms and James Turrell--were submitted for “Pico Seagate,” a competition sponsored by the Santa Monica Arts Commission and Foundation to select a functional artwork for the site of the future Park Hyatt Santa Monica Beach Hotel when it opens in May, 1990. The hotel is to be located where Pico Boulevard meets Santa Monica Beach.

The winning artist will be given $650,000 for artist fees, design, construction, equipment, fabrication, transportation and installation. A jury of noted local arts and urban design professionals selected the four finalists from 25 proposals.

The public may vote for the winning proposal at City Hall. Votes will be tallied and taken into consideration by the commission and Santa Monica City Council, which will make the final decision.

Works that address ecological issues in Santa Monica Bay and body building at the beach are among proposals submitted.

PEOPLE: Weston Naef, curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, has been chosen by the Members’ Board of the California Museum of Photography to receive the 1989 Members’ Award for outstanding contributions to photography in Southern California. Naef, formerly a prints and photography curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, joins previous Members’ Award winners Robert Heinecken, Darryl Curran and Constance Glenn.