COVER STORY

In Los Angeles, art’s first generation spanned the late 1950s to the early 1970s. First there was Assemblage, Pop and the Light and Space artists in Venice. Then there was Bruce Nauman. The first group included many artists--among them Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin and James Turrell--who defined a clean, serene image of their city. Nauman, in reaction, made art that questions everything, from space, to light, to words to the meaning of life.

Today, Nauman’s sharp, concise, wry and provocative sculptures, neon, video installations and every-other-sort-of-medium have earned him a reputation as one of the most important and revered American artists working today. Long since departed from Los Angeles for a home in New Mexico, he continues to be the inspiration and role model for innumerable younger artists working here and elsewhere.

A retrospective look at Nauman’s career opens today at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and in recognition of that event, Calendar asked painter and Newsweek art critic Peter Plagens, author of the pivotal book “Sunshine Muse: Contemporary Art on the West Coast” (1974), to recall the early days when both he and Nauman had studios in Pasadena, a center of L.A.’s then-burgeoning art scene.