Gemini G.E.L.’s 60th Anniversary Show Is a Love Letter to L.A.

On the corner of Melrose Avenue and Kings Road in West Hollywood sits an unassuming building designed by Frank Gehry in the 1970s. It incorporates deconstructivist “L.A. School” elements such as exposed wood stud framing, skylights and airy spaces ideal for artmaking, an activity that has long occupied Gemini G.E.L., one of North America’s preeminent printmaking studios since 1966. Its client list is a who’s who of American artists from the mid-century onward, and this year marks its 60th anniversary.

“That’s many generations of artists,” curator Susan Dackerman tells Observer about the L.A.-themed show, “Impressions of Los Angeles: 60 Years of Printmaking at Gemini G.E.L.,” on through May 1. “This show could be done over and over with different imagery. Looking through the prints I realized that there was a great group of images in which artists tried to recreate the atmospheric conditions of L.A., the sunlight, mist, haze, L.A. exuberance, L.A. magic hours, from the hard light of Ken Price to the diffuse magic hour that Tacita Dean captures.”

In addition to the abovementioned, there are works by people like David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Ann Hamilton, John Baldessari, Richard Tuttle, Analia Saban, Frank Gehry, Ed Ruscha, Claes Oldenburg, William Crutchfield, Joe Goode, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Diebenkorn, Toba Khedoori and Vija Celmins.

“One of the things Gemini has done so well is match artists with a technique that will allow them to execute their ideas no matter how difficult,” says Dackerman, a lecturer in art history at UCLA specializing in western print culture. “Some artists are working closer with a master printer, and there are printers here who can solve their problems. When the artist says I want 75 gradations of color, the printer figures that out. The artist has the vision, the printer has the technical skill.”

Lithography hasn’t changed much since 1796 when German playwright Alois Senefelder stumbled upon the idea of duplicating his scripts by writing them in greasy crayon on slabs of limestone and then printing them with rolled-on ink. While limestone is still sometimes used, the modern equivalent is the more manageable aluminum plate, with each color and shade requiring a separate one. The initial step is mark making, putting the composition on aluminum, followed by the printing, fixing the image to a surface. Each time a plate gets printed it has to be re-inked.

For example, Lichtenstein’s multi-hued Sunshine Through the Clouds (1985) required 27 colors in 23 runs from five aluminum plates, three Finnish birch woodblocks and 15 screens. “When people look at paintings, which are also complicated to make, I don’t think they get as involved in the technical aspects. What kind of paint? Is it canvas? Is it linen?” Dackerman says, distinguishing between the two mediums and how they are perceived. “I think prints lend themselves to complicated analysis. And sometimes what gets lost is what happens when all that technical skill ends up on a sheet of paper and you have a great image.”

Tacita Dean’s LA Exuberance 2 (2016), a deceptively simple skyscape of striated clouds on blue, required plates for every shade of blue and white. “It looks like a photo but it’s not,” says Dackerman. “She drew it and used chalk and sprayed chalk and drew and smudged and I think it does a really good job of replicating L.A. skies. Then, after doing the blue sky she realized the sky makes other colors in the hour right before sunset,” which describes Dean’s second piece in the show, LA Magic Hour 13 (2021).

A longtime L.A. resident now living in London, David Hockney created prints involving a wide array of media and techniques ranging from the use of mylar to iPad drawings. His weather series from 1973 include Sun (1973), an 8-color lithograph/silkscreen, Mist, a 5-color lithograph, and Rain, a 6-color lithograph/silkscreen.

“I think this is one of the best print series that he did,” Dackerman says, nodding approvingly toward Rain. “Once you put the color down, you can make scratches in it, and that allowed him to get the raindrops with a little bit of bounce at the bottom. He allowed the ink to drip and the ridges are like water pools. You get a much cleaner line.”

Richard Diebenkorn’s Twelve (1985) is done in his familiar style of color blocks in beige, brown and green, bordered in blue, like empty lots from a bird’s eye view. A 14-color lithograph, it seems to employ the blotchy texture of watercolor. “He allows the characteristics of printmaking to set the scene like he uses paints to set the scene on those canvases, watery diluted markmaking that’s very typical of lithography,” notes Dackerman. “In this print, it’s what he emphasizes. He’s letting it happen when he’s putting the ink down on the surface of the stone. And the way it moves, he leaves it there.”

Known primarily for his pop-art sculptures, Claes Oldenburg has four pieces in the show, including Sneaker Lace in Landscape – Red (1991), which is based on one of his sculptures. The ankle high sneaker blends with the white background leaving visible only the lace, which resembles a scribbly red palm tree, the bow resembling fronds. He arrived in the city in 1968 and spent two months writing and drawing before making the series, 12 images based on his notes and presented in his signature playful style.

Analia Saban’s Wooden Floor on Wood (Horizontal) (2017) is a seemingly simple technical exercise depicting the textured floor of her West Adams bungalow, a singular illustration of the challenges presented by the medium. Made from a photo she transferred to an etching plate, it was reworked by the artist to emphasize lines and incisions. “There’s an emulsion on the plate,” explains Dackerman, “partly photo emulsion, light onto the plate. But then the plate needs to be incised so that ink can sit in those incisions and the plate can be pressed, creating an impression in the wood.”

Of the eight prints by Robert Rauschenberg, two are snowflakes made in 1982, collaging photo elements and commenting on “flaky” Angelenos. Others, like Chronosaur (1993) feature familiar landmarks like the dinosaur with a clock in its mouth topping Hollywood Boulevard’s Ripley Believe it or Not! Museum. His L.A. Uncovered series from 1998 is a collage of familiar sights derived from photographs of storefronts, Watts Tower and the Marlboro man that used to tower over Sunset Strip, reading, “It’s the earthquakes, fires and riots that are real.”

“Turns out that’s true,” quips Dackerman. “They all got assembled and printed. He gave a real flavor of what L.A. is.” Images of Sid Vicious, James Dean, Marlon Brando and Bob Marley comprise Marmont Flair (1991), with a red curtain symbolizing the legendary West Hollywood hotel.

Beginning with Walter Hopps and Ed Kienholz’s Ferus Gallery in 1957, L.A. has evolved into a contemporary art mecca, becoming the first to exhibit Andy Warhol’s Soup Cans and to celebrate Marcel Duchamp with his first career retrospective in 1963. Movements like Finish Fetish and Light and Space emerged in the 1960s, led by artists like James Turrell, Robert Irwin and Larry Bell, and pioneering pop artists like Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston called the city home for decades.

With the opening of MOCA in 1986, the addition of The Getty in 1997, The Broad in 2015 and the expansion of LACMA (which opens next month), the city has become home to titans old and new, with Gemini G.E.L. drawing practitioners from every corner of the country. “L.A. can be depicted in so many different ways, and you can capture so many different aspects of it,” Dackerman assures us. “It figures as a subject in artwork in a very real way that we don’t often think of a city as a subject. But L.A. is that.”

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