‘California Video’ makes history out of art that Long Beach surrendered

“THE ETERNAL FRAME” LBMA, 1975-76

The Getty Center’s new “California Video” exhibition is as much about Long Beach’s art history as it is the state of the state. That’s because nearly half the works in this show were created at, then acquired by, the Long Beach Museum of Art—starting about 30 years ago, when LBMA was a destination for cutting-edge video artists. (When longtime director Harold B. “Hal” Nelson arrived 18 years ago, he changed its focus to art and craft.)

But back during our nation’s bicentennial year, LBMA actually built one of the country’s first video production centers, under then-director David Ross. Future art superstars like Bill Viola, John Baldessari, William Wegman (yes, the dog guy), Bruce Nauman and Martha Rosler gravitated here, using LBMA as a launching point for their careers—and leaving seminal examples of their early work behind.

“California Video” showcases their work. Fittingly, the visitor is first greeted by Baldessari’s notorious and ironic video installation I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art, which displays Baldessari’s own hand, writing the piece’s title hundreds of times. We watch him lampoon the critics who said conceptual and video art were overly cerebral and esoteric—using a medium embraced by the masses: a TV monitor. Works like this were produced constantly when the LBMA video program was in its prime.

“We had an empty slate,” says Ross (now a director at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). “Everyone was very supportive. We’d been working on plans to build a new museum, even have our own cable station.”

Today, the museum’s production studio is gone. So is Ross, his dreams of a new museum and cable station unrealized—and until 2005, the museum’s thousands of tapes sat idle and decaying in storage. That’s when the Getty Research Institute stepped in and acquired the collection—and began its restoration.

Their exhibition spans 40 years of video, with more than 50 single-channel videos and 15 installations—plus a video study room, which allows visitors to watch even more video art on demand. Their sheer number forces visitors to personalize their experience by selecting which pieces to examine.

One of the pieces most relevant to Long Beach’s video art glory days is The Eternal Frame, created in Long Beach by the groups T.R. Uthco and Ant Farm, and presented in a setting that duplicates its original 1976 LBMA installation. Its video carefully reenacts the moments leading up to and following John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, all shown in a meticulously designed, picturesque ’60s-style living room rife with tacky JFK memorabilia. Frame is a history lesson, and an investigation into how media affects us.

Another powerful LBMA import is Bruce and Norman Yonemoto’s Framed, which was edited and displayed at LBMA back in 1989. It places the viewer in a very dark room—intimidating to visitors who don’t know what to expect.

Once inside, the viewer is transported back to the U.S., circa World War II. Through a window in the dark room, a U.S. propaganda video of a Japanese concentration camp plays on a small TV. The footage is silent, raw and unedited; you see U.S. soldiers directing inmates to look happy, productive and complacent. But between the TV and the window, enlarged stills from the video are projected on a transparent scrim—and we see the truth: a woman crying, and the reality of their surroundings.

It’s hypnotic, which makes the end of the video all the more startling. Suddenly, the lights in the room go up, the window is revealed to be a two-way mirror—and the viewer sees him or herself in front of an idyllic cloud backdrop. The mirror, once a window, has now framed you.

CALIFORNIA VIDEO THE GETTY CENTER | 1200 GETTY CENTER DR | LOS ANGELES 90049 | 310.440.7300 | GETTY.EDU | OPEN TUES-THURS&SUN 10AM-6PM | FRI-SAT 10AM-9PM | FREE | PARKING $8 | THROUGH JUNE 8

Tags: california video, Getty Center, john baldessari, Long Beach, long beach museum of art, video art