I'm glad to have showed up at least for the last day of the Llyn Foulkes retrospective exhibition at the Hammer Museum on Saturday, and wished I had gone sooner--so that I'd have the opportunity for a return visit. Foulkes is one of the few artists in the past fifty years to have taken serious responsibility for addressing troubling truths about humanity, in particular American humanity, and to have devoted his work to the uncompromising exposure of the dark side of its values: the greed and materialism, the violence and repressed sexuality, the shoddy "dream" based on money, acquisitiveness and ruthless self-advancement at the expense of one's fellow citizens.
Lucky Adam (1985) Mixed media. 50 x 35 x 4 in.
That he hated Disney-ism with a passion is evident in the recurring image of Mickey in his work, a constant, lurking presence who surveys the ruins of a society in decay.
Deliverance (2007) - Mixed Mediums 72 X 84 in.
If there's anger in Foulkes's visual work, his satire takes an irreverently exuberant turn in his music. We were fortunate to catch him on Saturday in rehearsal for a scheduled show-closing performance the following day, setting up his justly famous one-man band and testing the sound. The Machine...
Llyn Foulkes Performing on the Machine at the Church of Art, 2008
...as he calls it, is a fantastic assemblage of xylophones, percussion instruments and cowbells, all fronted by a cluster of ancient car horns that blare out tunefully when squeezed. At the center of this display sits the artist with a spray of drumsticks and strikers sprouting from each hand, a sprightly master of his instruments and a vocalist of surprising authority and range. His songs are, well, exuberantly irreverent, a mix of music hall comedy and rock, and he belts them out with a glint in his eye and a sometimes benevolent, sometimes mocking grin.
It's good to see this modern master get his due. The price he has paid for an uncompromising vision is the kind of marginalization to which the art world too often subjects those who ignore the dictates of its trends and -isms. His contribution is an important one--and one that reminds us that artists, at their best, are those who hold human and aesthetic values up for scrutiny, and not those who toady to the market or the current fashion. To paraphrase the saying, if we didn't have a Llyn Foulkes, we'd sure need to invent him.
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2 comments:
Go Peter! Thanks for taking Disney apart. Thanks for in such economical and eloquent terms summing up the damning truths about the dark side of American culture. Bravo.
Llyn Foulkes is the master of truth and passion expressed each time he paints or plays his instrument or "the machine." This pioneering LA artist never spent much time looking at the work of others in ARTFORUM. He does has not been party to career moves that will get him a NYC Gallery and a mid career retrospective. The blatant and dark humor that is part and parcel of his work is legend among LA artists.
I consider him to be in the James Turrell league with Bob Irwin, Chris Burden and Paul McCarthy. He is an original artist who has followed his mind and not the "market." Good that the Hammer has recognized his work and shown it very well.
I've always felt that LA is the petri dish for late 20th and 21st Century art. Llyn is the ultimate outsider who bares his soul and flips off mass mediated culture with a fine sense of irony and wit. We are all so much the better for his work. He has opened up the can of Disney worms in a certain and unique way. We are all indebted to his insight and honesty. What a superb artist!
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