Berman’s devoted friends thought he had a distinctly spiritual charisma, and he lettered much of his work with the mantra “Art is Love is God.” His collages incorporated the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, regarded by Kabbalists as the spiritual root of all other letters. Popularized in the 1950s by the discovery and publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Berman painted the Aleph on his motorcycle helmet. With Robert Alexander, who had become a mail-order preacher in order to open his own Temple of Man, Berman published Semina, a small loose-leaf magazine of art, poetry, and prose written by and for fellow seekers. Hopps subsidized the rent of a storefront on Sawtelle Boulevard for their publishing venture, Stone Brothers Printing.
Alexander was “involved with drugs and art and poetry and printing, and not necessarily in that order,” observed Kienholz.3 Alexander and Berman hosted readings and jazz gigs at Stone Brothers, something of a precursor to Ferus. One night Dennis Hopper, who had just appeared in Rebel Without a Cause, came with his costar and friend James Dean and met Kienholz and Hopps. He returned many times after, calling Hopps “the intellectual godfather of the underworld,” and began making his first assemblages.4
After his arrest at Ferus, Berman moved with his wife and son to San Francisco, believing, correctly, that he would find a more liberal community in Northern California. Then it was on to Larkspur, where he was followed by a stream of acolytes, including artist George Herms.
* * *
Kienholz and Hopps had no finite criteria for selecting Ferus artists apart from attitude. Friends recommended friends. Berman suggested showing Ed Moses, who rented studio space in the back of Stone Brothers. Raised by his mother in Long Beach, where he was born in 1926, Moses spent summers with his father in Hawaii and became an avid surfer, if not an entirely avid student. In 1943, knowing he would be drafted for service in World War II, he enlisted in the navy and got into the medical corps. He was surprised to discover that he enjoyed his work as a surgical assistant, and when he got out of the service, he enrolled in premed at Long Beach City College. “For three years, I got Ds, Fs, and Cs,” he said. No more medical school. As an elective, he took a class with the eccentric abstract painter Pedro Miller. Moses knew nothing about any kind of art and sat in the back of Miller’s class utterly perplexed as his classmates painted still lifes. As Miller approached, he quickly slapped a brushstroke of red and another of white on the canvas board. “That wasn’t any good, so out of desperation I put my fingers in the paint jars and scratched over the board.… I was doing it as a joke,” he said.5 When Miller got to Moses, he looked carefully, picked up the canvas and put it on a ledge in front of the class. “Now here’s a real artist,” he declared. Moses was stunned. “Changed my life right then and there. I became the hero of the class.”6
Moses transferred to UCLA’s art department, then to the University of Oregon, then back to UCLA. Then he dropped out to work as a messenger at Twentieth Century Fox. After years of surfing, Moses was tall and muscular, with a puckish appearance, a flirtatious manner, and a mass of brown hair combed back in a ducktail. As he pedaled around the studio lot making deliveries, he caught the eye of a bored Marilyn Monroe. She invited him into her trailer for a diversion. “Her shoes were all run down at the heels, she had hair all over her black sweater but what an ass!” Moses sighed.7 There followed a Cannery Row–inspired stint on a sardine ship in Monterey, where he met a young woman separated from her husband who suggested they move to Las Vegas, where she got him a job as a lifeguard at the Flamingo. Six months later, she went back to her husband and Moses went back to UCLA.
In 1957, he met Hopps and Kauffman. They talked to him about De Kooning and Pollock and validated his intuitive approach to abstract painting. He completed his master’s degree at UCLA in 1958. “It took me eight or nine years to get an MA there,” Moses said. “I insulted all the faculty members all the time. One of them said, ‘How would you like not to graduate?’ I said, ‘How would you like dealing with me for another year?’”8 That was the attitude that got him a show at Ferus, exhibiting the gestural abstract paintings that he had completed for his graduate degree. The following year, Moses moved to New York, where he absorbed the remnants of the Abstract Expressionists ethos by drinking at the Cedar Bar and hanging out with Milton Resnick.
* * *
Moses once said that Craig Kauffman’s face was so angular that he looked like Dick Tracy. Indeed, like Hopps, Kauffman had clean-cut good looks that belied a subversive intelligence. His abstract paintings were structured and considered, influenced by his interest in modern architecture. Kauffman was a shoo-in for Ferus, given his long friendship with Hopps. At his rowdy opening reception, where an inch of cheap wine floated across the gallery floor, Robert Alexander and painter Arthur Richer got drunk and started to fight. Alexander stripped off all of his clothes and was standing in his jockstrap when Richer looked at him and said, “Hey, man, I don’t wanna ball you I wanna fight you.”9 Both men exploded with laughter and went back to drinking. Meanwhile, Kauffman’s well-dressed mother, complaining of the mess, was pulling up little pieces of grass that were growing through the broken concrete of the patio. Thanks to his decorous upbringing, Kauffman seemed less overtly defiant than his friends, but he rebelled covertly. One night, after a few drinks, he powered his Jaguar roadster in muddy circles on the well-manicured lawns of the Valley.
An artist who was far from covert in his wild behavior was John Altoon, swarthy and sensual with a hooked nose, full lips, and soulful eyes. His reputation was such that a photograph of him, naked to the waist in his Venice studio with a fetching young woman and a young man lying on the floor, was used as the cover of Lawrence Lipton’s account of the Beats, The Holy Barbarians. Born in 1925 to Armenian parents living in Los Angeles, he attended Dorsey High School, where his drawing talent became apparent. He joined the navy and served in the Pacific through the end of World War II, then attended L.A. County Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design) and Art Center College of Design to study commercial art on the GI Bill. Though making a good living as an illustrator, Altoon yearned to be a serious painter. After taking classes at Chouinard, he moved to New York in 1951 where he was smitten by the abstract painting of fellow Armenian Arshile Gorky.
After four years there followed by a year in Spain and France, Altoon returned to Los Angeles in 1956. A charismatic personality who called his dog “Man” and brought jazz ensembles to play in his classroom at Chouinard, where he then taught in the evening, Altoon attracted the attention of the sultry B-movie star of The Beat Generation, Fay Spain. They married in 1959.
Altoon also suffered from a severe bipolar disorder that led him to commit himself on more than one occasion to Camarillo State Hospital. He was both soothed and tormented by the process of painting.
John Altoon
Photograph by Joe Goode, courtesy of Joe Goode
He heard about Ferus. “He walked in and announced that he was there. He liked us; we liked him,” Kienholz said. “We all went up to Barney’s [Beanery] and, you know, drank for a month or so, and he was part of the gallery. It was sort of casually informal.”10
* * *
Likewise, Billy Al Bengston did not require an introduction. He strolled in and proclaimed, “I’m going to be the world’s greatest artist.… I’ll take you all to lunch.” Hopps and Kienholz thought that was a reasonable proposition. As they all walked out of the gallery, Bengston jumped out in front of a car on La Cienega, flung out his arms, and cried, “Halt!” Kienholz recalled, “The car screeches to a halt … and we thought that was neat, you know, that was okay. He said he was going to be the world’s greatest artist, and he wasn’t afraid to jump in front of a car, and that qualified him somehow.”11
* * *
In addition to this handful of Los Angeles artists, Ferus initially showed the San Francisco painters who had been in Hopps’s Action shows: Jay DeFeo, Sonia Gechtoff, Frank Lobdell, Arthur Richer, and Julius Wasserstein. Many also showed work in
San Francisco at the Dilexi Gallery, run by Hopps’s old friend James Newman. “We were switching shows back and forth,” Kienholz recalled, “running stuff by canvas-covered trailer up the coast and installing it for Jim and bringing stuff down and all that.”12
* * *
In short, the approach to showing art at the first incarnation of Ferus was anarchic. “It wasn’t intended to be a fuck you,” Kienholz said. “It was … an alternative route. And it wasn’t cooperative.… It was Walter’s and mine. It was a place where other things could be tried.… The community response, with the exception of a very few special people, was either ridicule or laughter or the classic ‘My kid could do that.’”13
Ferus did not prove to be a magnet for art collectors, but the actor Vincent Price bought one of Kienholz’s paintings for $100. Kienholz took the check to Barney, proprietor of the nearby bar Barney’s Beanery, who hesitated, unsure whether the check would clear. Price didn’t buy anything else from Ferus until 1964, when, as a spokesperson for Sears, Roebuck and Co.’s department of fine art, he bought about twenty folksy paintings by Streeter Blair.
The Tail-o-the-Pup, a La Cienega hot dog stand constructed in the shape of a hot dog, was a regular lunch stop for Kienholz and Hopps. One afternoon in 1956, they had drawn up their contract on a paper wrapper: “We will be partners in art for five years.” After the first year, Kienholz wanted out.
“I very quickly realized that I couldn’t do a gallery thing because I can’t remember faces and names. People would come in and they’d say, ‘Hi.’ I’d say, ‘Hi.’ They’d say, ‘How are you?’ I’d say, ‘Fine.’ They’d say, ‘What’s the matter?’ I’d say, ‘Nothing.’ They’d say, ‘Well, do you know who we are?’ I’d say, ‘No.’ They’d say, ‘We bought the “something-something” yesterday.’ I’d say, ‘Oh shit, yeah, I’m sorry.’”
Kienholz added, “But that just turns people off like hell.”14
According to Kienholz, he sold his share of Ferus to Hopps for $1,500, then lugged all manner of cast-offs and supplies up the seventy-two steps to his house. He built a studio in his overgrown backyard to concentrate on his own art, which had grown in complexity and scale to include parts of mannequins and bits of furniture. Mary quit her job to take care of their two toddlers, Noah and Jenney.
It soon became apparent that Hopps was incapable of sitting in an art gallery day in and day out. His strength was talking to artists in their studios and spotting talent. Shirley contributed her free time and some of her paycheck from the University of California–Riverside, where she was then teaching art history, but it was clear that he needed a new partner.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ferus Goes Forth
Hopps was working in the gallery one day in 1958 when Adolph Gottlieb and his wife Esther walked through the door. The New York Abstract Expressionist was teaching that semester at UCLA. Hopps was about to welcome them, when, “All of a sudden this guy comes in whom I’d seen several times before but never met,” Hopps said. “He had a booming, bogus Cary Grant accent, a very special style. Anyway, he walks in, flings his arms wide, and says, ‘Adolph! Esther! It’s Irving Blum. How are you?’ At this point, he throws me a wink. ‘Isn’t this an extraordinary place?’ He says, ‘Best gallery in Los Angeles! Let me introduce you to the proprietor.’ And he walks over and says, ‘Walter, I’d like you to meet Adolph and Esther Gottlieb.’ Well, I say to myself, ‘This guy is something else.’ The Gottliebs leave eventually, and I say, ‘Irving Blum, I think you and I should go across the street and have a drink. We may have business to discuss.’ And Irving, in that accent, says, ‘I think we do have business to discuss. I hear you’re looking for someone.’ And that’s the way it happened.”1
Blum, his dark hair trimmed short, with heavy brows and down-turned eyes, was a native New Yorker. His father owned three Astor Furniture stores in Brooklyn. When Blum was twelve, his parents retired to the dry heat of Phoenix, Arizona, for his father’s health. Blum was an English major at the University of Arizona in Tucson with a minor in drama. After joining the air force, he became an announcer for Armed Forces Radio, thanks to his resounding baritone voice. Discharged after three and a half years, he returned to New York to pursue a career in theater. Through his friend David Herbert, who worked for an art gallery, he met furniture manufacturer Hans Knoll. “He was just incredibly charismatic,” recalled Blum.
Knoll became something of a role model and surrogate father for Blum, introducing him to the work of modern furniture designers Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Eero Saarinen, and Harry Bertoia. Blum had never seen anything like it. Knoll invited Blum to work in his showroom for a year and if he didn’t like it, Knoll would give him a bonus to help him pursue his interest in theater. “They were absolutely formative years for me in that I very quickly began to assist Mrs. Knoll, who … was in charge of designing corporate offices.”2 Florence Knoll sent Blum around to New York galleries such as Stable, Betty Parsons, Sidney Janis, and Sam Kootz to pick up paintings to accessorize the modern furniture in Knoll-designed offices, including those of the newly opened Seagram Building.
Through Herbert, who worked for Parsons and Janis before opening his own gallery, Blum enjoyed the Manhattan art scene of the early 1950s, when the first-generation Abstract Expressionists Pollock, Rothko, Kline, and De Kooning were having regular shows. When Betty Parsons, an artist turned dealer, lost Rothko to Sidney Janis, who was an organized businessman, Blum took notice. “I learned that lesson,” Blum said. “You had to have an eye so that you could really select the right people. And then you had to service them in a very professional way.”3
Blum had worked for Knoll for two years when his mentor was killed in a car crash. It was a difficult time for Blum, and he decided to make a fresh start in Los Angeles by opening an art gallery. Over drinks at Barney’s Beanery, Blum told Hopps that he would insist on reducing the number of artists from forty to fifteen. Hopps agreed. “Much as I hated it, I knew you had to seem exclusive, and get behind a small number,” he said.4
Although Kienholz recalled selling his share of Ferus to Hopps for $1,500, Blum maintained that he bought Kienholz out himself for $500. Regardless, Blum took over Kienholz’s share. Blum wasn’t wealthy, but he had a $2,500 bonus from Knoll, and another $1,500 from selling his share in the soft-core pornographic film The Immoral Mr. Teas, for which he had contributed the story and the narration. The story of a timid fellow who is able to see through people’s clothes with a pair of magical glasses, Russ Meyer’s directorial debut became the first porn movie to gain widespread theatrical release. Blum would have profited substantially if he hadn’t sold out.
But his dream at that time concerned Ferus, which had potential, but “it was as much a club as anything else.… I thought it unprofessional.”5 To transform it, he needed more money. He was introduced to Sayde Moss, whose late husband Oscar had funded Los Angeles’s respected new music series, Monday Evening Concerts. Moss, who was friends with art collector Lucille Simon, the wife of wealthy industrialist Norton Simon, bought a one-third interest in Ferus for $3,333. Over the next five years, she gave the gallery some $8,000 a year. Amused and flattered by the debonair Blum and reassured by the scholarly presence of Shirley Hopps, Moss even made up the gallery deficit at the end of each year.
In 1958, the newly capitalized Ferus moved across the street to 723 North La Cienega Boulevard. The space was renovated to reflect Blum’s experience at Knoll. Large and small galleries were painted blinding white, with an overhead lighting system, carpeted floors, rear storage, and a large plate-glass window facing the street where the art on view could be seen easily by passing cars. Hopps and Shirley lived in the attached rear apartment. Altoon was called in to negotiate the $100 monthly rent with the Armenian landlord.
Kienholz did not approve of the tidy ambience and boycotted the place for three months. After a cooling-off period, Blum called and asked him to come down and fix the front door because it wouldn’t close. Kienholz said he would only go
if Blum would write him a letter about his role at the gallery being extremely special. On crisp new Ferus letterhead, Blum wrote, “The undersigned does hereby make generally known that one Edward Kienholz (known in this local area as an artist, forager, balladeer, and crack pistol shot) is granted by vested powers an extraordinary dispensation to enter the sacrosanct premises occupied by the Ferus Gallery at 723 N. La Cienega Boulevard in the city of Los Angeles, said intended object of design of above grant perpetuated solely to permit the competent repair of one busted hinge. Signed, on this 7th day of June, 1959, before God and all, Irving Blum.”
This theatrical gesture of the former actor said much about Blum’s approach, which was good for business if alien to the laid-back sensibilities of the artists and to the patrician Hopps. “Irving was always comfortable. If you wanted to have a party, you invited Irving Blum. He made the party because he was always on. But the truth of it is, what he did was curb a really raw direction and influence a lot of artists in the new Ferus Gallery, and round off a lot of rough corners for the sake of sales,” said Kienholz.6
Under Kienholz and Hopps, Ferus had presented only West Coast artists, a strategy Blum felt to be provincial. In January 1960, Ferus showed New York school paintings by De Kooning, Kline, Pollock, Rothko, Barnett Newman, and others. That market, however, was too competitive for the novice Hopps and Blum. Paul Kantor and other established dealers had ties with most of those artists and their collectors. It became apparent that Ferus would have to focus on the uncertain future of emerging artists.
There followed shows by Bengston, Ken Price, and Bay Area abstract painter Jay DeFeo, who would work on a single canvas, tellingly called The Death Rose, for seven years until it was eleven inches thick and weighed three thousand pounds.7
Rebels in Paradise Page 5