Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future 1940-1990

(The Getty Center, 27 April 2013)

Advances in art come with advances in technology. Only the most successful adopters of novel technologies are remembered. Only the most confident in their own success venture to experiment and can afford to.

L.A. has had neither a Haussmann nor centuries of compression to mould a city. Its identity is not that of a city, but of individual ideas, which did not have to clash and form a consensus alien to each contributor. Instead, each dreamer got his way (e.g., got Anaheim, Venice, Disneyland, and the LAX Theme Building), neither hampered nor supported by a non-market arbiter of good taste and civic sense.

A museum in a city brings a respite from the mandate and gathers disparate individuals with shared tastes, whom one later learns to recognise unaided. The former role is largely obviated by L.A.'s natural beauty and eccentricity.