Breadth in Venice

Inside a Venice studio one block from the beach, architect Frank Gehry sits in a corner, naked from the waist up. Nearby is artist Ed Moses, wearing only suspenders. Both are busts, recent sculptures by Robert Graham.

Gehry and Moses are longtime friends of Graham. With Ed Ruscha, Billy Al Bengston, Kenneth Price, Chuck Arnoldi, Larry Bell, Peter Alexander and Tony Berlant, they were part of a creative group who worked and played in Venice beginning in the 1960s and ‘70s. For Graham, busts of his running mates became a way to discover them anew. “When you start really looking at that person, you start seeing all kinds of things. You discover a particular rhythm of that person.”

The lions of Venice bohemia are a ways from at least one Graham specialty. Along with monumental works, the 65-year-old is celebrated for his full-body cast bronzes of young female nudes. But those of his old friends have wrinkles, crevices, even gravitas--young Turks turned elder statesmen. “There’s a contrast between the harmony and beauty of a young woman, and then this other thing that comes with age and experience and also spirit. And it always shows in the face.” Graham likens the Gehry bust to “some kind of [Roman] senator.”

There are laurel wreaths aplenty in this crowd. Graham created the massive bronze doors and statue of the Virgin Mary for the entry of Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. Gehry is basking in hosannas for the Walt Disney Concert Hall. “Look at Ed Moses,” Graham says. “He’s in his 70s and doing his best paintings ever.”

Graham first met Moses in the 1960s. Later in the decade he got a studio on the same Venice street as those of Moses, Bengston and Robert Irwin. “Little by little, we became comrades,” says Moses. Later, Graham began casting bronze nudes and accepting large civic commissions such as the “Olympic Gateway” for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles; “Monument to Joe Louis” in downtown Detroit; and the “Duke Ellington Memorial” in New York’s Central Park.

Chomping his trademark cigar, Graham, who looks as regal as his wife, actress Anjelica Huston, reflects on this latest preoccupation. “I’ve always made portraits,” he says, “but it’s mostly portraits of young women, and they don’t register as portraits.” So far, Graham has sculpted 16 friends, including Dr. Milton Wexler, the psychoanalyst who saw a number of the Venice artists in group therapy. He also hopes to sculpt Berlant, Ruscha and David Hockney.

Gehry, who also sat for artist Don Bachardy “way back before I was as notorious as I am now,” says he dislikes images of himself. “I’m a guy who doesn’t look at the mirror much, even when I shave. I don’t have vanity about that. I always think of myself as a short, fat Jewish guy.” Still, the 74-year-old didn’t need much prompting to take off his shirt.

“I went, I bared my chest,” Gehry says. “I’ve been working out a lot so I think I look good.”