"Ed Ruscha Monument," 2017 / 303 S. Hewitt St., The American Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles Arts District |
“Some people are just
too big to fit into a canvas and hang on a gallery wall.”
- Kent Twitchell
Twitchell’s monumental portraits have raised the bar in L.A.
mural culture since the 1970s because he uses classical painting techniques
that are rarely seen beyond museum walls. But outside the protection of a
museum these public artworks were vulnerable to vandalism and sadly many of his
giant portraits have been destroyed. Armed with new conservation materials
(B-72 a thermoplastic resin used as an adhesive) that provide a sacrificial
coating which protects artwork from vandalism and preserves it for posterity,
Twitchell has created a new 30-foot portrait of Ed Ruscha’s torso. The portrait
was painted in his studio on polytab - unlike his earlier portraits painted
directly on the wall - after many photographic sessions with Ruscha to find a
dramatic pose for the site and many drawings exploring shadows and tonal values
that he translated into nuanced color constituents.
The inspiration for Twitchell’s larger-than-life portraits
is his childhood experience of drive-in movie theaters in the 1940s and ‘50s
which transported his imagination “in the days when big guys did the right
thing and not the expedient thing.” He recreates this uplifting experience of
looking up at cinematic heroes by using the city as a canvas for
monumentalizing L.A. creatives who embody these ethical ideals. Over the past
four decades Twitchell has painted monumental portraits of legendary L.A.
artists with dramatic character faces: Ed Ruscha, Lita Albuquerque, Gary Lloyd,
and Jim Morphesis. He also painted movie stars Steve McQueen and Clayton Moore,
the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, Michael Jackson, and the Freeway Lady.
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"Gary Lloyd Monument," 1982 / 5th and Town St., Los Angeles. Illegally painted out in 1992. |
In a metropolis famous for signs and street art, Twitchell’s monumental portraits create quiet spaces for reflection on the deeper values of traditional art - amidst incessant visual noise. Twitchell’s portraits recall Aristotle’s philosophy “the aim of Art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance” because he conveys the inner strength of artists, from an artist’s point of view. Twitchell monumentalizes artists who inspire him because “they take their god-given gifts and push them to the hilt.”
His portraits remind me of an artistic counterpart to the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rarely is generosity seen in the art-world on the
level of musicians’ tributes during their heartfelt inductions into the Hall of
Fame. Nevertheless, artist friendships were a defining characteristic of “The
Cool School” in the 1960s, before there was an L.A. art-scene. This artistic
comradery allowed artists like Ruscha and his legendary buddies (Robert Irwin,
Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, and Ed Moses) to develop their defiant attitude
of “not giving a shit” which gave them artistic license to break the rules in
cutting-edge artwork.
Ruscha’s pop art, epitomizes this ethos of non-conformity -
before careerism turned viral in today’s tacky art-fair dominated art-world.
Twitchell celebrates human capacity and honors what is honorable. Ruscha
insists, “Kent is a larger-than-life artist, an ace painter, who thinks big,
and his paintings are big.” With characteristic irony, Ruscha adds, “It is
unusual to have a large image on a wall that is not selling anything - except
maybe my fingers.”
Ruscha transports popular signs from L.A. car culture into
museums and Twitchell transports classical portraiture techniques from museum
culture into car culture. Twitchell memorializes Ruscha’s larger-than-life
persona as a towering presence in the L.A. transportation culture that inspired
his pop art. Ruscha is the quintessential L.A. artist on the global map and
Twitchell’s monumental portrait mirrors his geographic aesthetic as we view an
artist-hero from our car window - like the cinematic heroes Twitchell admired
in drive-in movies.
This giant Ruscha portrait hovering 40 feet over the rooftops
on Traction Ave. - on the side wall of the historic American Hotel, owned by
Marc Verge, in the heart of the DTLA art district - signifies L.A.’s art
history. The Hollywood sign that used to symbolize provincial L.A. is a
commercial real estate sign (originally, “Hollywood Land” ) with no aesthetic
interest except its geographic location as a focal point from many directions.
Today, Chris Burden’s sui generis “Urban Light” at LACMA has become the iconic
symbol of sophisticated L.A. art culture. But Twitchell’s monumental Ruscha
portrait is destined to become a historic symbol of L.A.’s 21st-century
transformation into an art mecca.
Twitchell’s traditional painting techniques recall classical
European frescos because he uses repoussoir (French “to push back”) to create a
dramatic depth of field. When I first saw this portrait driving down Traction
Ave. I spontaneously began humming Beethoven’s First Four Notes from his Fifth
Symphony. Just as Beethoven uses the simplest notes as his first motif to
generate symphonies, Twitchell uses repoussoir to draw our attention to
Ruscha’s hands and eyes - the signifiers of a visual artist.
The great American art historian Bernard Berenson began the
critical dialogue on the positive effects of “space composition” in the
experience of art, arguing, “Art comes into existence only when we get a sense
of space not as a void, as something negative, but on the contrary, as
something very positive and definite, able to confirm our consciousness of
being, to heighten our sense of vitality.”
Twitchell is a master of space composition who creates
spatial depth by using repoussoir to oscillate our attention between the
elegant hands in the foreground and the piercing blue eyes in the background.
Unlike the shallow flat frontal focus of most murals or Hollywood movie
bulletin boards, which are painted in solid colors without the variation that
creates dimension, Twitchell uses a complex palette of hundreds of constituent
values, meticulously mixed by hand, to create subtle variations of tones and
hues. This makes his portraits hyper-realistic because in real life a face has
hundreds of subtle color tones.
Ruscha’s gray fox hairline is dignified above the roof, and
his maroon shirt matches the hotel awnings. Twitchell is influenced by the
SoCal Light and Space movement and minimalism, particularly Lita Albuquerque’s
groundbreaking outdoor V-shaped artwork “Washington Monument,” which led him to
work with the natural light of his sites to create different lines of shadows
over his portraits during the course of the day.
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"Ed Ruscha Monument," 2017 / 303 S. Hewitt St., The American Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles Arts District |
Twitchell was in the Air Force and he recalls his missions
flying to London where he was inspired by the different perspectives of looking
down from the air and then up from the street at beautiful historic buildings
reaching toward the sky. An American in London is enthralled by history and
Twitchell longed for the majesty of Old-World urbanism. Twitchell also
reminisces that he was part of the hippie, flower-child generation who wanted
to beautify everything from cars to clothing with painted flowers. This desire
to both historicize and beautify L.A. is the modus operandi for his monumental
portraits.
Twitchell’s artistic purpose is diametrically opposed to
graffiti vandalism which desecrates artworks and historic landmarks, destroying
beauty in turf wars. Many of Twitchell’s early monumental portraits were
destroyed by vandalism, careless property owners, and corporate entities.
Although some of his monumental portraits were transported, Twitchell’s trials
and tribulations as an active member of the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles
led to a two-year legal battle over his 1987 “Ed Ruscha Monument,” which was
destroyed in 2006 when it was whitewashed by the owner without the artist’s
consent. This public battle is as larger-than-life as his portraits because it
led to a highly publicized protracted lawsuit involving twelve entities,
including the Federal government, who shared the $1.1 million sum Twitchell was
paid - over half of which went to legal fees and taxes.
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"Ed Ruscha Monument," 1987 / Hill St., Los Angeles. Illegally painted out in 2006. |
Twitchell insists that the lawsuit was an issue of “politeness” because it is a “lack of politeness and respect to destroy an artist’s work.” He cites Kenneth Clark’s thesis in Civilisation which differentiates people who create from those who destroy. For the same reason, Twitchell criticizes mural vandalism as “gangsta culture,” emphasizing the millions wasted repairing “impolite” vandalism. He has also been influential as a mentor to a younger generation of art school-trained muralists currently making their mark in L.A. Twitchell’s magnanimous monumental portraits are a major contribution to L.A. because they allow the general public to ponder and muse on the enticing beauty of classical art values seen outside museum walls.
___
LITA BARRIE is a Los Angeles-based, award-winning,
international art critic and essayist. Born in New Zealand, she gained two
post-graduate degrees in philosophy at Victoria University and continued
post-graduate studies in journalism at Canterbury University. Her art criticism
is published in art magazines, newspapers, university essay collections, and art
gallery and museum artist monographs in New Zealand, Australia, and California.
Her feminist intervention in the canon of women’s art is discussed in the Encyclopedia of New Zealand and an
archive of her art criticism is held in the New
Zealand National Library, Te Puna Matauranga Aotearoa. Website:
www.litabarrie.com
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Twitchell is a national treasure.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely
DeleteI appreciate your kind words, Peter. I've admired your amazing oil paintings for years. Kent Twitchell
DeleteAwesome article! Thank you Ms. Barrie. Congratulations to Master Painter, Kent Twitchell!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure
DeleteThank you, Justice. Bless you.
DeleteKent Twitchell
Agreed
DeleteVery nice article. If you'd like to see the short video on varnishing the Ed Ruscha Monument, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJhlIY_TXuM
ReplyDeleteThank you
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIt was great working with you again, Scott. I am very fortunate to have you by my side with these giant public projects.
DeleteKent Twitchell
Regarding the saving and protection of Kent's freeway murals (and others) see this page: http://www.SaveFreewayMurals.com
ReplyDeleteWonderful
DeleteI drove by there just today. It's a great piece and terrific article on Kent's work.
ReplyDeleteIt sure is when you see it driving
ReplyDeleteIt made my heart sing, Da Da Da Dum....from Beethoven. Then I sang the first notes from Stairway to Heaven.......
ReplyDelete