A prominent arts administrator and leading expert on contemporary art for the last several decades, Henry Hopkins joined UCLA in 1991 as director of the Wight Art Gallery and professor in the School's art department. He has been director of the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum since 1994. This fall he retires from the Museum and returns to the art department full time and to his first love, teaching. Responding to our request to contribute a piece on Los Angeles art in the OPinion on ART section, Henry Hopkins sent us the following:

Upon being asked to write a few words about the current art scene in Los Angeles, I find that my new ideas are my old ideas. With that in mind, I have chosen to adjust bits of my earlier writing in the belief that the ideas still resonate.

“Los Angeles art is becoming known for its diversity. This can be a positive virtue or a fault depending on the critic but certainly it is a fact, a condition born out of the character of the city itself, which sprawls over the geography of Southern California like a gigantic beach towel. Artists’ studios polka dot its surface from hem to hem. There is no Tenth Avenue, no North Beach, no single creative heart; there is only a multitudinous series of capillaries, each seeking the ‘mainstream’ of art as best it can.”

Catalog: “Fifty Paintings by Thirty Seven Painters of the Los Angeles Area,” UCLA Art Galleries, 1960

“What is America and who are Americans? Is it more American to hide from the richness of the age, pretending that atom bombs and cold wars do not exist, or is it more American to put forward your beliefs even if they appear unattractive? The only way to cure a cancer is to expose it.

“Make no mistake: the angry, protesting art of the neo-dadaist is not the cancer but rather the pus congealing in a major social wound. Each object is a corpuscle giving its life in an attempt to notify, to heal. It may have a sense of ugliness about it but it is not nearly as ugly as the complacency, half-truths, and materialism of contemporary American society.

“Is it more American to deny our international (global) role? Or, is it better to face our international future? To this end, the Abstract Expressionists have evolved an art which erases all national boundaries and which communicates through elements basic to all art (line, form, color, texture) a message that can be comprehended by all who wish to understand.”

My response to a New York Times article by UCLA art department chair Lester Longman calling for a retreat from post-WWII art and a return to “American values,” 1960

During 1961, I directed the Huysman Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard, where I presented an exhibition entitled “War Babies: 1937-1961.” The poster (photo by Jerry McMillan) became an icon of the era and drew strong negative reaction, which needed some response.

“The purpose of the poster is to elicit a response from the viewer in favor of integration and internationalism. It represents four young men grouped around a table (Larry Bell, Ed Bereal, Joe Goode, Ron Miyashiro — the artists in the show). They are of different racial and religious backgrounds. These differences are enhanced by symbolism which is clear. The African-American holds the cliché symbol of his race, a watermelon, the Jew a bagel, the Asian a bowl of rice, and the Catholic a tin of herring. Four specific minority groups sharing a symbolic meal. The Brotherhood of Man. Over the table is draped an American flag which serves as a unifying force.

“If the only thing you can object to is the use of the flag as a table cover then you miss the point. By using this image I admit to an idealistic gesture, but without idealism, reality never changes. There must be a forward edge in all things, ideas just a little ahead of now that make us stretch to accommodate them.”

Open Letter, 1961

As people and business move west, culture will follow and therefore, the year 2000 could well be the point at which the international influence from the East and West Coast reach parity.”

Art World 2000
Images and Issues Magazine
Vol. 1-4 and Vol. 2-3, 1981

“As we move through the 1990s, there is little doubt that California will continue in a state of comparative grace, even in a turbulent worldwide economic climate. It is simply too well positioned to be ignored. The state leaders in all areas — from culture to finance, education to politics, business to recreation — must prepare themselves to take increasingly independent and progressive positions within their areas of expertise. Destiny and a solid economic base seem to be shaping California to
be the new creative heart of the nation. From here will flow the ideas that will fuel the future.”

California Painters: New Work, Chronicle Books
San Francisco, 1989