Documentary explores 1950s L.A. art scene

Published 5:57 pm Thursday, February 21, 2008

A moment in American art history comes to crisp, finger-snapping life in “The Cool School,” a documentary about the Left Coast. Morgan Neville’s film shows how Art became a Happening in late-1950s Los Angeles.

First, the film does a convincing job of demonstrating that the serious art scene of early 1950s L.A. was a cultural dustbin, lacking a history and cowering in the shadow of the great and all-powerful Manhattan.

By mostly focusing on one innovative gallery, the Ferus, the film suggests how a single energizing place could unify a group of artists. The story of the gallery is a colorful one: Founded by a nervous, square-looking curator, Walter Hopps, it was eventually taken over by a slicker, more promotion-minded chief, Irving Blum. Both men are extensively interviewed, as is the woman who married them both.

The gallery brought the newest American art to L.A., including Andy Warhol’s first solo show of signature soup cans (thus trumping New York for once), but even more importantly it showcased the bristling young California artists.

Many of them are still alive (and there’s a lot of vintage footage of the era), so we get both their early swagger and their nostalgic looking-back mood. Among the best known are Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha and Ed Kienholz, whose outrageous installations caused patrons to line up around the block when his stuff was finally displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Narrated in the beachy California tones of Jeff Bridges, “The Cool School” deftly draws together the cultural scene at the time, and how it might have influenced these artists: jazz, custom car culture, nearby waterhole Barney’s Beanery, the occasional presence of and influence of French conceptualist Marcel Duchamp. Even surfing comes into play.

Movies like this invariably take on a nostalgic tone, a sense of capturing a lost Eden of youth and creativity. I am always a little suspicious of these things — surely there must have been boring times and nasty feelings? — but it does look like a genuine scene.

Along with the artists, other scene-makers are interviewed, including actors Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell and architect Frank Gehry. It’s a full portrait, complete with New York disdain for it all, supplied by a Gotham-centric art snob. The L.A. people probably wouldn’t have it any other way.