ENTERTAINMENT / Movies
"Cool School" paints vivid picture of L.A. art scene
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-07-12 10:29
LOS ANGELES - Documentarian Morgan Neville has fashioned a spirited
riposte to the groundless cliche that Los Angeles is a cultural wasteland.
Rather than delve into individual backgrounds, "The Cool School" uses a
wealth of archival material and up-to-date interviews to paint a group
portrait of the artists, curators and collectors who built an influential
gallery scene in Beat-era Los Angeles. Narrator Jeff Bridges lends the
smart script -- by Neville and journalist Kristine McKenna -- the perfect
Southern California intellectual hipster tone. Jazz tracks propel the
playful visual mix of black and white and color.
A selection of the recent Los Angeles Film Festival, the film is
scheduled for a fall theatrical run before screening on PBS' "Independent
Lens" in 2008. Its chief appeal is to aficionados, but viewers with even
a cursory knowledge of modern art will find plenty to enjoy in the
lessons of "Cool School."
In the face of East Coast chauvinism and local red-scare censorship, Los
Angeles' Ferus gallery became an art-world destination soon after opening
its doors March 15, 1957. It was not in Manhattan but at Ferus' La
Cienega Boulevard site that Andy Warhol's first gallery show went up. An
unlikely partnership between Walter Hopps, a biochemistry major with a
passion for abstract expressionism, and Ed Kienholz, whose groundbreaking
assemblages would make him a world-renowned artist, Ferus became a
crucial hub in the city's emerging avant-garde scene. Self-promoting
theatrics abounded, but beneath that surface was an ambitious and serious
sense of experimentation.
This was a time, of course, when Venice rentals were cheap and "poetic
poverty," as one participant puts it, was possible. Barney's Beanery
served as de facto clubhouse for the bohemian set, which shared the bar
with Bekins employees. But it wasn't all easy street; Wallace Berman's
Ferus show was closed by the vice squad for obscenity, the artist carted
off to jail. In its brief nine years, Ferus faced its fair share of
struggles, but "Cool School" presents a convincing case for its
revivifying effect on the region's museums.
Neville doesn't avoid dismissive naysayers, but it's those speaking from
the inside who give the film its intimate edge. Besides many of the
artists, those interviewed include Ferus owner Hopps; his second partner,
the more commerce-oriented Irving Blum; and Shirley Nielsen, who ended up
marrying both of them. Artists and scenesters Dennis Hopper and Dean
Stockwell puff on cigars as they reminisce; Frank Gehry explains why he
gravitated to painters and sculptors rather than fellow architects.
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