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LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA, presents the groundbreaking exhibition Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s−70s, which runs from June 13 through October 3, 2004. The exhibition examines the role of radically simplified form and systematic strategies in the evolution of vanguard art across the West in the decades following World War II. Covering Central and Western Europe and North and South America, Beyond Geometry is the first exhibition to treat these issues art-historically, in a broad international context. It is also the first to examine South American Concrete art outside of a regional context. Included are examples of European and South American Concrete Art, Argentine Arte Madí, Brazilian Neo-Concretism, Kinetic and Op Art, U.S. Minimalism, and various forms of Post-Minimalism, including Process and Conceptual art.

1945-1979: A Turbulent Time
Nineteen forty-five to 1979 constitutes a discrete and significant historical period. It saw the advent of the cold war and Vietnam; the civil rights movement and the women’s movement; the questioning of family values, sexual orientation, and racial stereotyping; and the emergence of an activist youth culture. In the art world, for the first time dominance shifted from Europe to the United States. Coming after the height of Modernism and before the first fully postmodern generation, the artists represented in Beyond Geometry developed radical new forms of art making, simultaneously reflecting and helping to shape a socially and politically turbulent period.

Escalating Globalization
Having lived under the cultural hegemony of Europe, many U.S. artists and their supporters viewed this as their moment and saw their art as entirely separate from developments elsewhere. The exhibition questions that hypothesis, instead positing a growing global consciousness. As the period begins, most artistic trends were regional, but by the end of the sixties, cheap air travel, photocopy machines, and easy long-distance telecommunications had permitted a broad-based intercontinental art discourse, the foundation of today’s international art world. Common intellectual and artistic concerns, developed in the years immediately following World War II, formed the basis for this unprecedented coming together.

Beyond Geometry examines these developments as they took place all over the West. Latin America and Central Europe are frequently referred to as “non-Western.” In both cases this is a misunderstanding. Beyond Geometry helps place the recent art history of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland within that of the West, where it belongs. It looks carefully at differences as well as similarities in art trends and ideas on the three continents.

Concepts and Strategies
Artists in Europe and the Americas attempted to forge new, more interactive relationships with the viewer. They sought a dynamic art that engaged the spectator’s entire body, not only the eyes. Widespread interest in phenomenology—a philosophy of perception—fueled this quest. Following the precepts of French artist, Marcel Duchamp, artists emphasized art’s intellectual properties. Prizing process over product, many created systems for art making—mathematical and rational or random and irrational. Some used movement—whether actual (powered by motors or natural forces) or virtual (using optical illusions)—making the time it took to experience an art work explicit, and expressing the fleeting nature of perception. Others made light installations that engulfed observers in mesmerizing and seemingly transcendent environments.

The notion of the literalness of the art object, first proposed by Dutch modernist Theo van Doesburg in 1930 in a manifesto on Concrete Art, also had widespread currency in the decades after World War II. Literalness (or the concrete) in art signified that meaning resided exclusively in the physical art object, rather than its metaphorical content or relationship to the outside world. For some this concern required a move to three dimensions. As U.S. artist Robert Morris put it, “the sculptural facts of space, light, and material have always functioned concretely and literally.”

By the 1960s, artists who highlighted the intellectual in their work engaged in a critique of the museum and gallery systems, creating new forms, including temporary installations and huge earthworks in remote locations, that opposed the mechanisms by which art became revered and commodified. Their creation of systems for art making, which theoretically reduced the authority and mystique of the creator, further undermined the values of the art market.

Although history has often posited a divide between structural and expressionist art, during the period in question, artists’ use of geometric shapes and systematic strategies was anything but “pure.” While earlier forms of geometric Modernism impacted much of the work included in Beyond Geometry, Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Dada, Pop, and other movements also deeply influenced many of the artists in the show. Some of those included continued to work in a geometric and/or systemic mode; for others these approaches constituted a brief but significant interlude in their production.

Beyond Geometry
An essay rather than a survey, Beyond Geometry contains nearly 200 works by more than 130 artists from three continents and eighteen countries, chosen because they most clearly articulate the issues that are at the core of the exhibition. Loans come from artists and their estates, private collections, and public institutions worldwide. Many works have never before been seen in the United States. The exhibition juxtaposes intimate moments with physically enveloping art experiences. In additional to painting and sculpture, it presents major installation works, a sound room with ambient serial music, wall drawings, concrete poetry and artists’ books, photo-based conceptual art, and documentation of performances, earthworks and site specific environments and interventions. Beyond Geometry is divided into six sections that identify ideas that concerned artists all over the West who were developing alternative forms from a geometric and/or systematic base. As many were inclined to use several of these ideas over time—or even within a given work—artists may appear in more than one section of the show.

• The Forties and Fifties focuses on influential modes of abstraction employed during the first decade and a half after World War II. It is conceived as an introduction to, and background for, the remainder of the exhibition. It will include artists such as Max Bill (Switzerland); François Morellet (France); Gyula Kosice (Argentina); Lygia Clark (Brazil); Ad Reinhardt (U.S.; and Ellsworth Kelly (U.S.).
   

• The Object and the Body concerns the move from two to three dimensions. More than any other section in the show, this one underscores the importance of phenomenology. It includes artists such as Lucio Fontana (Italy); Franz Erhard Walther (Germany); Hélio Oiticica (Brazil); Cildo Meireles (Brazil); Robert Morris (U.S.); Eva Hesse (U.S.).
   

• Light and Movement encompasses aspects of Kinetic and Op Art, as well as works made with light. For certain artists in Europe, South America, and the United States, the scientific approach to “research” that characterized some geometric painting led to explorations of perception using optical illusions, light, and movement. Some featured artists in this section are Gianni Colombo (Italy); Bridget Riley (England); Gego (Venezuela); Jesús Rafael Soto (Venezuela); Douglas Wheeler (U.S.); and Robert Breer (U.S.).
   

• Repetition and Seriality: Repetition formed the basis of a system for artmaking that eliminated the need for traditional composition, the visual balancing of one pictorial or sculptural element against another. Repetition—with its associations to industrial processes—also reduced the necessity for the artist’s hand in the execution of the work, minimizing the possibilities for personal associations and metaphor. However, what at first seemed like an emotionally cool approach could also be overheated in its obsessiveness. Among artists included in this section are Bernd and Hilla Becher (Germany); Hanne Darboven (Germany); Mira Schendel (Brazil); Lygia Pape (Brazil); Sol LeWitt (U.S.); and Carl Andre (U.S.).
   

• The Object Redefined looks at works from the late sixties and seventies that gave priority to ideas over physical presence. This undermining of the traditional art object constituted a breaking down of barriers that was commensurate with the social mores of the time. A broad category, Conceptualism can be composed of words typed on a piece of paper or written on a wall, but it also permeated performance, installation, and earthwork. The Object Redefined includes works by Daniel Buren (France); Piero Manzoni (Italy); Hans Haacke (Germany/United States); Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay); Antonio Manuel (Brazil); John Baldessari (US); and Dennis Oppenheim (U.S.).
   

• The Problem of Painting: In the late sixties and seventies, alternative forms dominated the international art discourse, and painting was said to be “dead,” the province of an earlier time and age group. Nevertheless, strategies associated with Conceptualism provided certain artists with a path back to painting. The Problem of Painting includes work by some of these artists, Blinky Palermo (Germany); Roman Opalka (Poland/France; Raymundo Colares (Brazil); Robert Ryman (U.S.); and Mel Bochner (U.S.) among them.

Education Programs
At LACMA, visitors to Beyond Geometry will receive a helpful exhibition guide entitled Abstraction and Beyond: A Guide to 8 Works in the Exhibition. Meant to be used within the show, it suggests ways of confronting eight very different examples of radically simplified and conceptual art. Artists created these works with the intention of engaging viewers through visual effect, humor, or shared experience, but for many visitors these works’ unconventional forms make them seem distant and alienating. By looking carefully at such works, this guide attempts to make the artists’ intentions more available to the viewer and help to lay the groundwork for future encounters with vanguard post-war art.

In conjunction with Beyond Geometry, LACMA is launching a Web component from the lacma.org site that aims to make conceptual and highly simplified works of art more accessible to a general audience. The program, which will become a permanent component of the LACMA site, will concentrate on 20 representative works from Beyond Geometry, eight of which are from LACMA’s permanent collection. The Web program will be organized in the same six sections as the exhibition and feature video “walk-throughs” of installation pieces, audio clips, still photos, bios of artists, an extensive chronology, and a dictionary of terms. The site will also offer “investigations,” interactive activities that allow viewers to experiment with some of the concepts and strategies used by artists in the exhibition.

Also in conjunction with this major exhibition, LACMA is planning a number of related events, including a two-day conference mounted by the Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles; the remounting of Brazilian Lygia Pape’s performance “Divider” by the School of Dance at California Institute of the Arts; a weekend of readings, text scores, and realizations of works at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center; and at LACMA, a film program; a music concert; and several Sheila and Wally Weisman Family Sundays events. For more information, please request a Beyond Geometry Related Events sheet from LACMA Media Relations, or visit lacma.org.

After LACMA, the exhibition travels to the Miami Art Museum in Florida, where it is presented from November 18, 2004, through May 1, 2005.

LACMA and MIT Press are publishing Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form 1940s−70s, a 240-page catalogue written by exhibition curator Lynn Zelevansky and others. This in-depth catalogue features essays by leading art historians, a detailed chronology of the period, and 232 illustrations (130 in color), depicting the work of the more than 130 artists represented in the exhibition.


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Credit
This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, dedicated to expanding American understanding of history and culture. Additional support was provided by Gallery C. Transportation assistance was provided by Lufthansa German Airlines. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this exhibition do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Special thanks to the Cultural Services of the French Embassy/French Consulate Los Angeles, the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Vitae, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Germany, the Embassy of Brazil, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, the Consulate General of the Netherlands, and the Polish Cultural Institute.

Exhibition Curator
Lynn Zelevansky, Curator and Department Head, Modern and Contemporary Art, LACMA


General Information
For general information, the public should call 323 857-6000. For press information, images, or to schedule an interview, please contact Bo Smith at 323 857-6515 or bsmith@lacma.org.


Museum Shops
During the exhibition’s run at LACMA, all museum stores, including the Home Store, Gift Shop, and BookShelf at LACMA will feature the exhibition catalogue and items related to or inspired by Beyond Geometry.


About LACMA
Established as an independent institution in 1965, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has assembled a permanent collection that includes approximately 100,000 works of art spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in the western United States. Located in the heart of one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, the museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety of educational, aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural experiences for the people who live in, work in, and visit Los Angeles. LACMA offers an outstanding schedule of special exhibitions, as well as lectures, classes, family activities, film programs, and world-class musical events.


Museum Hours: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday noon–8 pm; Friday noon–9 pm; Saturday and Sunday 11 am–8 pm; closed Wednesdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Call (323) 857-6000, or visit our web site at www.lacma.org for more information.

General LACMA Admission: Adults $9; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 62+ $5; children 17 and under are admitted free. Admission (except to specially ticketed exhibitions) is free the second Tuesday of every month, and evenings after 5 pm.