Customer Reviews

Ferus

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Los Angeles would not have become the contemporary art capital of the West Coast without the Ferus Gallery and its larger-than-life owner, dealer Irving Blum. It was Blum who organised the first Warhol exhibition on the West Coast (of the Campbell Soup series in 1962)and who showed Roy Lichtenstein in a city that was, at the time, scornfully viewed from the East Coast as a cultural backwater.

This book, a 2009 reprint of the catalogue for an exhibition held in 2002 at the Gagosian Gallery in NYC, tells this story with many first -rate illustrations of the artists Blum promoted and of their works (many of them being nowadays icons of American contemporary art, such as Ed Ruscha or Ed Kienholz), an interesting essay by the late Kirk Varnedoe on Warhol's Campbell Soup series and how it was exhibited in the Ferus Gallery, and an in-depth interview of Irving Blum who gives an exciting account of the art world in both NYC and LA during the 60's and 70's.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in Pop Art and contemporary art in general.

Under the seminal direction of Irving Blum, Ferus Gallery quickly became one of the leading galleries on the West Coast, showing important and groundbreaking works -- including Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans, Roy Lichtenstein's Drowning Girl, and Ed Ruscha's Los Angeles County Museum on Fire -- and helping to launch the American Pop movement.

Ferus was first published on the occasion of the 2002 exhibition of the same name at Gagosian's Chelsea gallery. A timeline documenting the Ferus gallery's history opens the fully illustrated catalogue, followed by an interview with Irving Blum by Roberta Bernstein and a critical discussion of Warhol's Campbell's soup can paintings by Kirk Varnedoe.

This hardcover edition is 148 pages, with 93 color and 67 black-and-white reproductions, including evocative documentary photography by Dennis Hopper.

Reviewed by IR Staff

This book is a great account of the L.A art scene at the Ferus Gallery.

What an era that was and I love seeing it captured in books such as this.