Billy Al Bengston
Paintings & Watercolors
 | |
|---|---|
| Editor(s) | Hans Neuendorf |
| Author(s) | Mary Agnes Donoghue, Hans Neuendorf |
| Design | Gerd Fleischmann |
| Size | 23 x 28 cm |
| Pages | 368 |
| Illustrations | 390 |
| Cover | Hardcover |
| Language(s) | English |
| ISBN | 978-3-947563-39-5 |
The First Monograph on the Californian Pop Artist Since More Than Thirty Years
Billy Al Bengston (b. 1934, Dodge City; lives and works in Venice, California, and Honolulu, Hawaii) is the very personification of the cheerful, carefree attitude towards life in California – with his work as well as his person: a former surfer and motorcycle racer, an extravagant artist and key figure of West Coast Pop Art. After studying at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the Otis Art Institute, he exhibited at the legendary Ferus Gallery in 1957 and was the central figure among a group of artists that included Frank Gehry, Edward Kienholz, Ed Ruscha, and Ken Price. BAB, as he apostrophizes himself, inserts car and motorcycle parts as motifs into his otherwise abstract paintings, using lacquer and spray paint instead of oil, and aluminum panels with at times dented surfaces instead of the traditional canvas. Art and lifestyle combine to create the individual “Bengston iconography” of California Cool.
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By letting it all hang out, they allow us to see ourselves as we are instead of presenting a picture of what we (supposedly) should be like. The insolence of it!
