Addressing Sexuality, Gender, and the Decorative since the 1970s: Artist Lari Pittman in Conversation with Art Historian David J. Getsy
Thursday, May 20, 2021 6 – 7 pm
Online artist conversation | Register
Join us for this online conversation with American artist and influential teacher Lari Pittman and art historian David J. Getsy. Pittman, in conversation with Getsy, discusses his paintings and reflections on the Los Angeles art world, as well as the struggles to address issues of sexuality, gender, and the decorative since the 1970s. They also explore the artistic and political legacies of this moment and Pittman’s ongoing investigation into these issues in his career as an artist.
Pittman is Emeritus Distinguished Professor, Painting and Drawing, at UCLA. Born 1952 in Glendale, California, to an American father and a Colombian mother, he spent part of his childhood in Colombia, before returning to California in 1963. Studying with Elizabeth Murray, Vija Celmins, and Miriam Schapiro at Cal Arts, Pittman emerged as an artist in the 1970s through an engagement with the history-making feminist art movement that developed in Southern California, and through his own work as an openly gay painter who drew inspiration from feminism’s critique of modernism and its exclusions.
Getsy is Goldabelle McComb Finn Distinguished Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and he is the 2020–21 Terra Foundation Visiting Professor of American Art at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.
This conversation is organized by the Terra Foundation for American Art. The event is held online in English. It is scheduled for 6–7:15 p.m., in Paris (CET), including time for a Q&A with the speakers after their conversation.
Image credit: Lari Pittman, How Sweet the Day After This and That, Deep Sleep is Truly Welcomed, 1988, acrylic, enamel, and 5 framed works on paper on panel, overall: 96 x 192 inches (243.8 x 487.7 cm), © Lari Pittman, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles Pittman, photo: Robert Gautier, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles; David J. Getsy