Event performance at University of California, Santa Barbara

Delve into the postwar Los Angeles art world in this online archive, which provides additional material related to the exhibitions on view at the Getty Center. Learn about hipsters and happenings, and the venues across the city where all the action took place through images from the archives and first-hand accounts with the artists.

Event performance at University of California, Santa Barbara

Event performance at University of California, Santa Barbara, 1970, Wolfgang Stoerchle. Gelatin silver print documenting the event, unknown photographer. 9 15/16 x 8 in. The Getty Research Institute, 2009.M.16.1. © J. Paul Getty Trust

On View at the Getty Center: Greetings from L.A.: Artists and Publics 1950-1980

The art schools in the University of California (UC) system served as a hotbed of performance art and other innovative genres. Wolfgang Stoerchle’s Event consisted of the artist and a gymnast breaking through various plaster pieces set in the University of California Art Gallery in Santa Barbara. The performance, Stoerchle’s MFA thesis project for UC Santa Barbara, was broadcast on local television. In his brief but rich career, Stoerchle produced many other performances, often involving his own body, and often for the video camera.

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Video Works 1970–72 (excerpt), 1972, Wolfgang Stoerchle. Documentation of Stoerchle’s 1970 performance Event.The Getty Research Institute, Allan Kaprow papers, 980063