“Loa Angeles is 72 Suburbs in Search of a city.” —Dorothy Parker
January is always a quiet month for the Los Angeles art world, but it was made even quieter this year by natural disaster—the fires shut down many art institutions while the city grappled with destruction—and the gloom of the national political situation, which depressed an already down-and-out town. There were fire fundraisers, of course, and I made an effort to catch a few winter gallery shows before they closed, but with the exception of Paul McCarthy’s Tomato Head at Jeffrey Deitch and Betye Saar’s incredible Mojotech at Roberts Projects, nothing was hitting. Notably, both of those artworks were made over three decades ago, which only deepened my longing to be alive at some time other than here and now.
So, I retreated into what everyone else was doing and spent hours listening to politically oriented podcasts in the hopes that someone could explain how Silicon Valley rationalists, Claremont-based Christian neo-imperialists, Lower East Side shitposters, and Stefan Simchowitz are all connected. By late January, I had connected all the dots and planned to deploy my grand theory in the 800 words of this column (you’re welcome!). But then February happened, and I went out drinking for seven nights in a row during Frieze Week LA, reducing myself to a smooth-brained complacency. At this point, I can’t digest anything unless it comes on a cocktail napkin.
What I had wanted to write about when I felt smarter—and will now attempt to reconstruct despite my hangover—is that our great nation is having a serious California moment, but the wrong kind of California moment. Representatives from the wrong city—Silicon Valley–trashed San Francisco—have ascended to power, bringing with them the promise of world-dominating scientific supremacy, of AI farms on Mars, of a Cybertruck in every driveway and Soylent in every pot. They promise to rid our streets of foreign nationals and do other nefarious shit we’ve all read about, which I don’t need to reprise here. But most of all, they promise to just do things, to break things and get messy, startup-style.
Musk and company have sold these actions as anti-government, but I think the truth is that after a couple of decades of getting the short shrift in D.C., California’s Founders decided they actually needed to become more political themselves. They aren’t trying to eliminate the government so much as to use it to get the regulatory situation they want. The political language around just doing things actually predates them—I trace it to how Karl Rove and the neocons talked about Iraq—but regardless of its origin, it sets up a strange dichotomy: Those who Just Do Things on the libertarian Right, and those who consider their actions on the authoritarian Left. Where are artists supposed to land in this? With the skaters or the librarians?
Just doing things is classic Cali. Here in California, we have no allegiance to history, no God or the wrong God, and plenty of drugs—a combination that usually gets it done, for better or worse. Now we are seeing where that potent California energy, combined with scientific positivism, gets us—to a heinous, beauty-free world full of ChatGPTese and Waymos.
But imagine the world if, instead of rationalism + Silicon Valley, California, we had exported to D.C. what Los Angeles has to offer: anti-rationalism + the chaos of Southern California. We do things differently here in Los Angeles, and with no less power. We prize beauty and sex. The mysteries of the desert and the threat of the ocean. The tricks of the silver screen. Who do you think taught all those fucks in Silicon Valley that sign and signifier might not be connected? And our artists are insane (as Diva Corp aptly points out in their article in this issue on risk-taking and art—this is the city that made Chris Martin!).
If art is the interpretation of science, we have never more desperately needed art that interprets science. To get us out of this mess, spiritually speaking. I hope that Los Angeles’s artists are the ones to do it—I actually think we are the only ones poised to fully understand the dastardly semiotics of the current political situation—but first, we’ll have to recover from our hangovers.
