Explore the Era

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.

Black Tear

Black Tear

Black Tear, 1969, Ronald Davis. Molded polyester resin and fiberglass. 60 ½ x 136 in. The Robert A. Rowan Collection, Pasadena, California. © Ronald Davis

Vector and Black Tear belong to the Dodecagon series of paintings that Ronald Davis made between January 1968 and October 1969 in which he experimented with new materials, perspective, and spatial ambiguity. Each dodecagon (a shape with 12 angles and 12 sides) was produced using a Formica mold into which Davis brushed and poured colored polyester resins, adding layers of fiberglass reinforcement before lifting the finished work out of the mold and polishing it. Although the surface of these works is perfectly flat, the image appears at once to recede and project into the viewer’s space. This illusion of three-dimensional form on a two-dimensional surface recalls the perspectival qualities of traditional painting.

Loading the player...

Exhibition audio: Curator Andrew Perchuk discusses the illusion of three-dimensionality in this painting.

Historic Map Locations

Explore the Archive

  • Video: Ronald Davis

    Video: Ronald Davis speaks about his work, June 2011

  • Ronald Davis installations

    Installation view of Ronald Davis's Dodecagons and Cubes series at Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles, 1969. Image courtesy of Ronald Davis

  • Ronald Davis's studio

    Interior view of Ronald Davis's studio at Pico Boulevard and 4th Avenue in Los Angeles, 1966–72. Photo by Bob Jaye. Courtesy of Ronald Davis

  • Ronald Davis's studio on Pico Boulevard

    Ronald Davis's studio at Pico Boulevard and 4th Avenue in Los Angeles, 1966–72. Photo by Bob Jaye. Courtesy of Ronald Davis

  • Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Ron Davis exhibition

    Exterior view of Nicholas Wilder Gallery at the time of Ronald Davis's first solo exhibition in 1965. Image courtesy of Ronald Davis

  • Ronald Davis

    Ronald Davis in 1963. Photo by Steve Sokol. Image courtesy of Ronald Davis