The distinguished international collector, Frederick R. Weisman, is honored with a display of an eclectic collection of his artwork by California artists.
This week celebrated the tenth anniversary of one of this city’s finest and most fitting cultural institutions, the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University. The current exhibition honors the founder’s commitment to art and education by presenting a stunning and eclectic collection of paintings and sculpture from many of California’s finest contemporary artists such as David Hockney, Ed Moses and Edward Ruscha. Although Mr. Weisman died only two years after creating the gallery, his widow, Billie Milam Weisman, continues to expand the collection through the philanthropic foundation that bears his name, and she curated this exhibit primarily from pieces he chose for himself. The result is a show as vibrant and larger-than-life as the man who founded the venue.
Frederick Weisman was one of a rare breed of collectors who bought what he loved rather than checking off a list of “must haves” from a list of artists deemed important by the critics. Thus, there is a consistent vision at work in the show, as well as a striking diversity of form and subject. Much of the art is high-impact, in size and color, with a strong representation of local masters such as Malibuites Chuck Arnoldi, Lita Albuquerque, Ronald Davis and Chris Taggert. If there is a single, unifying theme, it may be perspective as many of the pieces are suggestive of natural phenomena seen from a bird’s eye. For example, a very fine Laddie John Dill collage could be an aerial view of Nebraska farmland on a cloudy day. A white sculptured staircase carved in 1971 by local Venice artist Joe Goode was described by him as “virtually the same” as his very popular 1988 abstract impressionist oil aptly named “Ocean Blue,” although an observer would be nonplussed by his remark.
“They’re both ways of looking at things from a different point of view,” he explained.
Sometimes this aspect of seeing the forest above the trees has a wink associated with it, as in Chris Taggert’s chrome half-gorilla mounted on a mirror to complete the form, or in Ed Ruscha’s vividly colored monumental canvas “Please…,” depicting a life-size carrot dangling from a 20-foot stick. Peter Alexander raises black velvet and sequins from flea market kitsch to fine art in his gigantic and very fetching “Dabs.” Chuck Arnoldi is represented with two distinct, and very different pieces. One, the visual centerpiece of the show, is a twig and paint assemblage that stretches in a linked pair of giant squares across a long wall of the main gallery. Inspired by the volcanic eruption of Mt. St. Helens, one side explodes from the frame in splashes of vivid primary colors while the other side is more somber and reflective, drawing one into the center of its dark crisscrossed branches. An earlier Arnoldi is tiny by comparison, a twisted Chinese puzzle of thick wooden branches titled “American Standard”-its pieces look a bit like plumbing pipes.
Each of the exhibition’s pieces is, in some way, a commentary on contemporary life, sometimes explicit but more often, in Weisman’s choices, the message is subtle or visceral. This befits the purpose of the museum-to employ art as a medium for education, which Weisman extolled. He believed that contemporary art opens people’s eyes to key issues in the world around them. The professors at Pepperdine have found creative ways to use the art in teaching subjects as diverse as sociology and drama. Frederick Weisman endowed a similar museum at the University of Minnesota and wings at the New Orleans and San Diego Museums of Art.
Weisman, who was born in Minneapolis and came to Los Angeles as a young boy, was an executive with Hunt Foods and, at age 31, became president of the company. He later founded Mid-Atlantic Toyota Distributors. He served as a trustee of the Los Angeles County of Museum of Art and served on its acquisition committee. Art News magazine selected Weisman as one of the world’s top 200 art collectors in 1992, two years before his death.
The exhibition, Tenth Anniversary Celebration: California Art from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, is open through Nov. 24.