Pam Beale

Pam Beale, 1971, Allan McCollum. Dyed and bleached canvas with caulk. 103 x 103 in. Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, Gift of Anne V. Champ, 1974. © Allan McCollum
On View at the Getty Center: Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970
One of a series of “constructed” paintings made in the early 1970s, Pam Beale consists of three-inch-wide strips of torn and dyed canvas held together with industrial caulking. In this work, McCollum deconstructed and examined the means and materials of making a painting. But despite its emphasis on process, Pam Beale also has a figurative element: the artist placed the unevenly dyed strips in such a way that darker, more saturated pieces form a large diamond pattern. The work’s title, an homage to a cocktail waitress at the Troubadour nightclub in West Hollywood, near where the artist worked, adds another layer of meaning.