Proof at Norton Simon

Have you had a chance to see any of the exhibitions connected to Pacific Standard Time? If you haven't heard, Pacific Standard Time covers the Los Angeles art scene from 1945 to 1980, with exhibitions at more than 60 cultural institutions. This is a huge undertaking, and, as a museum person, I need to dip my toe into these shows.

Seeing Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California at Norton Simon was a great start. Not only is Norton Simon in my backyard, but printmaking includes one of my favorite styles of art, like those wonderful WPA posters that were made by silkscreen, lithograph or woodcuts - all printmaking techniques.


One Roy Lichtenstein woodcut blew me away! Back in the day, before we had fancy-schmancy scanners to capture images for printing, we had to use a stat camera with various dotted screens for the conversion. I always connected Roy's art with those screens, never imaging his dots were cut by hand!

The companion exhibition, The Original Print: An Introduction to Printmaking in the Postwar Period, does a fantastic job of displaying and explaining the differences between relief, intaglio, lithography and screenprinting. No need to go all technical here - go see the exhibition if you need to know.

Only 59 more Museums to go ... anyone want to recommend my next PST stop?

Click here to go to Norton Simon's Web site.

Click here to go to PST's Web site.