STUDIO VISITS is a collection of candid portraits of California artists curated from the archives of photographer Jim McHugh.
These images span more than three decades, from 1978 to the present. Many are vintage prints created with rare photographic materials no longer available.
Jim McHugh is considered the pre-eminent portraitist of West Coast artists. Immediately apparent in his photographs is the great respect and exuberance he holds for his subjects and their work.
This insightful collection of historic images is an homage to the Los Angeles based artists who defined a new aesthetic, vision and creativity, completely independent of the New York School.
Jim McHugh’s collaboration with Henry Hopkins and Chronicle Press for "California Painters: New Work" and Abbeville Press for "The Art of Light and Space" offered singular views into the thoroughly engrossing world of these artists.
McHugh’s photographs of David Hockney were used as the official art for the reopening of the Pompidou Museum in Paris and most recently again by the Louisiana Museum in Denmark.
STUDIO VISITS will be unveiled in two exhibitions. The first begins October 22, with the second opening in April 2012.
Art historian Kristine McKenna, author of the award-winning book and documentary, The Cool School. She has also written the definitive work on the legendary 1960s West Coast artist Wallace Berman. McKenna, who has a long history as a noted Los Angeles Times writer, has generously contributed her talent and expertise to this body of work and to the selection of artists illustrated in the 80-page color catalog, Volume I, accompanying this first exhibition. Artists included:
Richard Diebenkorn, Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Julius Shulman, Ed Moses, Sam Francis, Robert Irwin, Ken Price, James Turrell, Bruce Nauman, Nicholas Wilder, Peter Voulkos, Helen Lundeberg, Billy Al Bengston, Joe Goode, Bettye Saar, Charles Garabedian, Gordon Onslow Ford, Larry Bell, Craig Kauffman, William Brice, Sam Maloof, Georges Herms, Lyn Foulkes, Hans Burkhardt, Emerson Woelffer, Noah Purifoy, Doug Wheeler, Eric Orr, John Outterbridge, Jay de Feo, Robert Graham, Don Bachardy, Ron Davis, Beatrice Wood, Karl Benjamin, Lee Mullican, John McCracken, Rachael Rosenthal, Dennis Hopper.
All images © Jim McHugh / Los Angeles
