The newest addition to this blue-chip cohort is Tony Berlant’s sculptural triptych The Marriage of New York and Athens, a work with a one-of-a-kind provenance. Berlant, a Los Angeles–based sculptor, made the pieces between 1966 and 1968 to serve as an element of his studio’s interior design, and for a few years, they did just that. But when he became busier and needed more space, he removed them and loaned them to a then-upstart architect who had become a close personal friend. That architect: Frank Gehry.
Read MoreI was already impressed by the paintings of Dick Diebenkorn when I first saw him in a photograph through a magnifying glass in a magazine article that showed him in his studio. I saw a calm but determined alchemist. The image invoked for me the vision of an artist working in such a space finding pleasure in the ability to create art as a manifestation of oneself. Work that would not just exist but live on, filled with the presence of its maker.
Read MoreTony Berlant, like fellow Californian artists Ed Ruscha, Bruce Conner, and Joe Goode, has been instrumental in establishing the aesthetic sensibility of the West Coast Pop Art movement.
Read MoreTony Berlant has been a busy man lately. The 77-year-old artist, a crucial influence in the West Coast Pop Art Movement of the 1960s, recently debuted a solo exhibition of new work at Kohn Gallery in Hollywood — and after six decades of making art, “Fast Forward” may be his most energetic show to date.
Read MoreBerlant collects decades-old tin packaging and metal signs, which he cuts into small shapes and proceeds to nail onto a wood panel, in his signature style of collage. The largest work in the exhibition, Self, is based on a Polaroid image of a young Tony Berlant taken by his friend, Andy Warhol.
Read More"The thing about artists," quips Tony Berlant, "is that they say the work speaks for itself, then they can't stop talking about it!" Well, thank goodness for that, because during our tour of his new exhibition, it turned out Berlant had quite a lot to say about his newest work.
Read MoreFor anyone interested in the long arc of art history, the contemporary art world’s obsession with youth, novelty, and spectacle can be exhausting. A welcome tonic has arrived in the form of a dazzling new show at Los Angeles’s Kohn Gallery that is dedicated to recent work by Tony Berlant.
Read MoreFor most of his life, Tony Berlant has surrendered himself to his obsessions. Aside from making his own large-scale collages from vintage metal street signs and advertisements, the Santa Monica painter and sculptor has spent decades collecting ancient objects made by unknown artists.
Read MoreWhether in his collage-based art or his activities as collector/scholar/curator of ancient artifacts, Tony Berlant is penetrating into hidden levels of meaning.
Read MoreAfter 33 years at LA Louver, seminal pop artist Tony Berlant has moved across Los Angeles to Kohn Gallery, in a change that reinforces the gallery’s strategy of supporting artists who helped shape the Californian and West Coast aesthetic.
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