Lee Mullican
10 November 2005 - 20 February 2006
LACMA
5905 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323-857-6000
Organized by LACMA Curator: Carol S. Eliel
Lee Mullican (1919-1998), Space, 1951, Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 in (101.6 x 127 cms), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Fannie and Alan Leslie AC 1994.180.1, © Estate of Lee Mullican, Photo © 2005 Museum Associates / LACMA.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Lee Mullican: An Abundant Harvest of Sun, on view from November 10, 2005 through February 20, 2006. Organized by LACMA, the exhibition features 46 paintings, 24 drawings, and 10 sculptures by the West Coast artist. Mullican (1919-98) has been acknowledged as the exemplar of the postwar opening of the American mind. He has nonetheless been relatively neglected with no major exhibition of his work organized since 1980. LACMAs exhibition offers the public a full retrospective that will finally bring Mullican the credit he is due.
For over fifty years Lee Mullican created paintings, drawings, and sculptures of great beauty and shamanistic power. His images simultaneously engage the eye, the mind, and the heart with their combination of visual beauty, a fine application of paint, and a broad range of influences and references, including Native American art and culture, modern art, Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and beyond. The richness of Mullicans imagination coupled with the breadth of his interests gave rise to a body of work that addresses issues such as the apparent conflict between abstraction and figuration, the absorption of Western and non-Western sources, and the relationship between form and content that are central to the art of the second half of the twentieth century.
The exhibition includes important paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Mullicans years in San Francisco in the early 1950s, when he was part of the Dynaton group (along with expatriate Surrealists Wolfgang Paalen and Gordon Onslow Ford). Also included are major works created later in his career, when Mullican was based in southern California and a leading teacher at UCLA. In addition to an analytical essay by organizing curator Carol S. Eliel, the fully-illustrated exhibition catalogue (distributed by DAP) includes an homage to Mullican as a mentor and teacher by Lari Pittman, who studied at UCLA for a year in the early 1970s, and a lyrical text by poet and writer Amy Gerstler.
About LACMA
Established as an independent institution in 1965, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has assembled a permanent collection that includes approximately 100,000 works of art spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in the western United States. Located in the heart of one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, the museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety of educational and cultural experiences for the people who live in, work in, and visit Los Angeles. LACMA offers an outstanding schedule of special exhibitions, as well as lectures, classes, family activities, film programs, and world-class musical events. The museum offers free admission after 5 pm every day the museum is open and all day on the second Tuesday of each month. LACMA’s “Free after Five” program is sponsored by Target.
General Information
For general information, call (323) 857-6000. For press information, images, or to schedule an interview, call (323) 857-6522.
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