September 2013 Notable Review Everything Loose Will Land

Sylvia Lavin (© MAK Center, photo: Mimi Teller)

Edited by Sylvia Lavin and Kimberli Meyer
MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House and Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg (July 2013)
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Reviewer: Book Board member Alissa Walker (Los Angeles)

Everything Loose Will Land edited by Sylvia Lavin and Kimberli Meyer, 2013 (MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, at the Schindler House and Verlag für moderne Kunst Nürnberg)

“Tip the world on its side,” Frank Lloyd Wright supposedly said, “and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.” Maybe he was talking about L.A.’s buildings, which at first glimpse seem haphazardly scattered across Southern California’s famously chaotic urban landscape. But I take it to mean L.A.’s residents: the dreamers, the punks, the weirdos, the outsiders, the nuts, the freaks, the geeks, who are the subjects of this appropriately named exhibition and its appropriately sprawling, rollicking catalogue.

The show, which took up residence in the Schindler House this past summer as part of the MAK Center’s contribution to Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A., examines the intersection of two nascent, experimental, and eventually influential scenes, as L.A.’s contemporary art and contemporary architecture worlds grew up together during the 1970s. As the two movements matured, they became intertwined in a sort of infinite cultural feedback loop, with architects like Frank Gehry, Craig Hodgetts, and Thom Mayne working alongside artists like Ed Ruscha, Robert Smithson, and Larry Bell, exploring new technologies together (this period saw the birth of the personal computer, after all) and employing an increasingly DIY aesthetic. The visionary curator and writer Sylvia Lavin spent years uncovering a vast trove of works to support this thesis, and after a few contextual essays, the book presents these works intelligently organized but largely unadulterated, thanks to the smart design of Roman Jaster and Colleen Corcoran.

Untitled (Equilateral Triangle) by Bruce Naumann, 1980, rebuilt 2013 for exhibition Everything Loose Will Land, 2013 (© MAK Center, photo: Joshua White)

While the entire book is an indulgent visual treat (worth getting for Archigram’s wacky collages alone), the most compelling section is “Works on Paper,” where for 172 pages the designers simply reproduced a jaw-dropping collection of untreated ephemera from the period: personal letters from Denise Scott Brown, notes and drawings by Judy Chicago as she dreamed up The Dinner Party, a children’s book about housing by Victor Gruen’s studio—all of which give the reader the same sense of discovery one imagines Lavin might have had combing some dusty basement archives. Throughout the catalogue, but here especially, the personalities of the projects emerge and you begin piece together the importance of this moment as well as the uniqueness of its artists and designers. They all landed here, and L.A. is so very lucky that they did.

From the exhibition Everything Loose Will Land at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House, Los Angeles, summer 2013 (© MAK Center, photo: Joshua White)

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