American Beauty
American Beauty, 1965, Ed Bereal. Metal, paint, tree branch. 50 x 31 x 12 in. Collection of Betty & Monte Factor. © Ed Bereal. Photo by Larry Hirshowitz
On View at the Getty Center: Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970
Bereal began to make assemblage as a student at Chouinard Art Institute and he was included alongside his classmates in the controversial 1961 War Babies exhibition at the Huysman Gallery. Bereal’s constructions of found materials often incorporate provocative, often politically loaded imagery. Here the Nazi symbols of the swastika and the Balkenkreuz are painted onto a metal military helmet, while the scraggly tree branch that is affixed to its top evokes the history of lynchings in the United States. Peering inside its illuminated casing, viewers are confronted by the figure of Uncle Sam superimposed with a barcode, suggesting the commercial corruption of this once ideological image. American Beauty is an example of the highly political nature of much assemblage produced in Los Angeles in the 1960s, a time when artists were responding to the social upheaval around them.
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Video: Joe Goode, Larry Bell, Ron Miyashiro, and Jerry McMillan speak about the exhibition War Babies, 2010–11
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Ed Bereal in his studio in Los Angeles, ca. 1961. © Ed Bereal. The Getty Research Institute, Gift of George Herms, 2009.M.20.2. Image courtesy of Jerry McMillan and Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica. © Jerry McMillan
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Poster for the exhibition War Babies at Huysman Gallery in Los Angeles, May 29–June 17, 1961. Poster created by Jerry McMillan and Joe Goode. Photo © Jerry McMillan. Design © Joe Goode. The Getty Research Institute, 2006.M.1.5. Image courtesy of Jerry McMillan and Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica
