"South of Pico": Space and Temporality in the Development of Los Angeles Art Scene
“South of Pico” by Kellie Jones is a book centered around the development of the art scene in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 70s. Through the lens of African Diaspora studies and spatial theory, Jones posits that the Los Angeles art scene is a product of the Great Migration. The Great Migration is the voluntary movement of African Americans from the southern states towards the North and eventually the Westcoast. It was during the Reconstruction era, a period of 13 years directly after the Civil War, that black people were seeking safe spaces. Jones marks this as the first stage of African American migration.
The search for a utopia of sorts, a promised land where African Americans had freedom and autonomy. Jones identifies the period directly after World War II as the second Great Migration, where over 5 million African Americans left the rural south and moved west. This time span lasted until 1970s which is where she set the scene for the development of the art world in Los Angeles. Amid the backdrop of a cultural explosion, black people were able to escape the constrictions of Jim Crow laws and the structural racism of the south. However, Jones points out “the public sphere, locations of labor, education settings, and housing were some of the arenas that continued as nodes of friction to full engagement of black citizenry, even in California and the paradise of black Los Angles.”1 Black folks were still maneuvering and looking for spaces where they could fully thrive. So, they made physical and intellectual spaces of their own in order to promote full citizenry, educational, and labor-oriented opportunities for advancement. Jones corelates this carving out of the spaces of their in educational spaces to the establishment of spaces in the art world. She asks the question, “How did they respond as artists to the social and spatial world as they found it?”2
Charles White
Charles White moved to Los Angeles in 1956 and immediately immersed himself in the city’s community of artists and actors. Jones does not discount his close relationship with Black Hollywood and the list of performing artists who supported his work. His drawings were included in prominent black films such as Love for Ivy (1968) and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967) where his works enter the conversation as talking point in the film. His involvement with Hollywood most assuredly helps to facilitate his rise as a super start artist once he moved to Los Angeles. This places him as a major figurehead in the development of Los Angeles’s art scene even though he was well renowned before moving to the city. Jones also says “White’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles is emblematic of the cultural climate facing African American artists at the time and the role black Hollywood and black communities played in bringing the work of prominent and unknown artists into view. The weeklong show at the University of Southern California (USC) in April 1958 presented thirteen drawings and prints on the theme of spirituals.”3
White’s oeuvre began fully grounded the Social Realist tradition but transitioned with his moved to the west his aesthetic changed to include some abstraction. Jones calls these depictions of black people as “subjects of accomplishment” rather than just slaves. Birmingham Totem (1964) is one of White’s most famous works, finished in Los Angeles, is recognizing the four victims of the Birmingham church bombing the previous year. In the large ink and charcoal drawing, we a see a young boy sitting at the top of rubble from the bombing. He is enveloped by a large blanket. Compared to the rubble he is sorting through he takes up only a small portion of the surface. He looks down at the mountain of debris he sits on determined, he picks through the pieces with care as if he is picking out what can be saved. Despite the sharp pieces of wood and jagged edges, there is a softness around the young boy’s countenance. Jones describes him as “a youthful male figure sits atop the heaping destruction, shrouded, and with downcast eyes surveying the devastation beneath him. But his hands are engaged, as if he is caressing the ruins. From his right hand dangles a plumb line, marking him as a builder and creators, symbolic of those who reconstruct and review, removed from such despicable acts of racial hatred and intolerance; his generation will build a new house and get it in order.”4 In this drawing the rubble and debris allegorically stand in for not just the four children who were murdered in the bombing but all victims who lost their lives to racial violence.
Betye Saar
Betye Saar (neé Brown), a native Californian, was born in the city of Watts in 1926. Her family spent some time in Pasadena where she attended Pasadena Community College taking classes in art and design. She eventually transferred to the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and graduated in 1949. She went on to get married and had three children but continued to pursue her goal of becoming artist. She once commented on how it took a lot for her to call herself an artist even after finishing art school at UCLA and going back to school (California State Long Beach) to take more classes in design. She said, “It took a long time to say, ‘I am an artist.’ I would say, ‘I am a designer or an artisan or a craft person.’ To say I was an artist took a lot.” 5 This is an indication of the hurdles she had to overcomes not only as a wife with children but as a black woman with insecurities about her place in the art world. She continued to submit her work in art shows and would win top prizes which helped to keep her name in the forefront of Los Angeles’ artistic communities. Her works deal with intersectionality of race, gender and class as it pertains to black female bodies. To Catch a Unicorn (1960) is a work that is considered to have set the stage for her coming out as a “fine artist.” She is working with themes of western mythology, palmistry, tarot cards readings, spiritualism, and the black female body. Themes she continued to conceptualize throughout her career. In the foreground of To Catch a Unicorn we see white unicorn however it is the nude black woman’s body that takes center stage. She stands before the unicorn with full grasp upon its backside. She is in full control of herself and the mythical creature. Both stare up towards the dark sky and the moon. Jones says, “Saar’s early works on paper codify the emergence of feminists themes, which she would build on in decades to come. This is revealed, for instance, in To Catch a Unicorn’s curvaceous black maiden, along with the natural world, celestial bodies in the form of the sun and moon, and the verdant background embracing woman and beast.” 6