Case Study: Innovative Sculptors 1960s and 1970s

Often labeled "Finish Fetish" or "L.A. Look" artists, Los Angeles–based artists in the 1960s and ’70s were producing works influenced by their surrounding landscape, both natural and human made, using a wide range of innovative materials and fabrication processes often borrowed from industry. These artists created seamless, bright, and colorful objects that blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture and between handcrafted and industrially produced objects. This study is focused on the novel and often experimental technologies applied by these artists in combination with analytical data relating to the materials of construction.

Materials and technologies employed by De Wain Valentine in the 1960s and ’70s were among the first to be examined because of his pioneering use of polyester resin. This material could be pigmented and cast into any shape, then sanded and polished to create stunning objects with a very smooth finish. However, none of the commercially available polyester resins could be cast in large volumes. Unwilling to accept this limitation, and with much trial and error, Valentine developed a new polyester resin with a local resin company that allowed him to create, with a single pour of resin, luminous artworks of much larger proportions.

In 2012 the Getty Conservation Institute organized the exhibition From Start to Finish, De Wain Valentine's Gray Column, which presented to the public the research from this study.

The works of Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, and Helen Pashgian were also studied. The studies on Alexander and Pashgian are disseminated through the Artists Dialogues series and the research on Bell, Irwin, Kauffman, and McCracken is compiled in the book Made in Los Angeles: Materials, Processes, and the Birth of West Coast Minimalism.