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Collage of five diverse artworks from the Hammer Museum Collections side by side. From left to right: 1) Contemporary painting of two embracing figures with surreal elements. 2) Post-impressionist style painting of trees with vibrant blues and greens. 3) Black and white illustration of a face with intricate patterns. 4) Japanese woodblock print style image of a figure in a checkered robe. 5) Photograph of a couple dancing, the woman in a black dress and the man in white

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Digital Archive Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980
Themes

Frontrunners

Los Angeles began to come into its own as a cultural capital with strong gallery activity and art patronage in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s the city had become a major center for art and culture. The careers of white California-based artists Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, John Baldessari, and Robert Irwin blossomed in that decade. The Dwan Gallery and the Ferus Gallery thrived. Artforum, the landmark art publication begun in San Francisco in 1962, moved to Los Angeles in 1965 for two years before heading to New York. During this time, the dedication of black artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Melvin Edwards, William Pajaud, and Samella Lewis helped thrust Los Angeles into the forefront of the national arts scene. These artists constituted a central group whose artworks and activism led to changes in the reception of black artists and influenced a subsequent generation. They pushed for recognition, showing initially in unconventional spaces such as homes and private clubs and eventually gaining greater exposure in more conventional galleries, university settings, and museums.

In 1956 Charles White, an established artist known for his social realist style and lyrical renderings of the black figure, moved to Los Angeles from New York. Eventually showing with Heritage Gallery (1964) and becoming a professor at Otis Art Institute (1965), White served as a larger-than-life example. He not only influenced the Los Angeles art scene but also taught several of the artists whose work is included in Now Dig This!, including David Hammons. Melvin Edwards came to Los Angeles from Texas in 1955 to earn his college degree and began creating abstract sculptures, some of them meditations on both historical and contemporary incidents of violence against African Americans. Edwards became one of California's most prominent black artists of the period and had solo exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1966) and New York's Whitney Museum of American Art (1970). William Pajaud was also a vital early figure in the black Los Angeles art world. He was a member of the short-lived but important Eleven Associated gallery in the early 1950s. He later became director of public relations for Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the largest African American–owned businesses in the West, where he developed the company's collection of works by African American artists.