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PBS's 'The Cool School' explores art's start in L.A.

By Lennie Bennett, Times Art Critic
In print: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

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ADVERTISEMENT [PBS] Walter Hopps, co-founder of the Ferus Gallery (1957).

Fifty years ago, Los Angeles was not even a blip on the international art radar. The city that today is a brand name for everything hip was in the throes of the Red Scare, making California about as uncool as you could get.

So imagine the gutsiness of the people who sought to establish a bona fide contemporary art scene in such a soulless city.

Ferus Gallery opened on La Cienega Boulevard in 1957 with that daunting goal, and The Cool School, a PBS documentary at 11 tonight on WEDU-Ch. 3, tells its fascinating story. The cast of real characters could not have been invented. Irving Blum and Walter Hopps, the gallery owners who hated each other but together put L.A. on the art map; the bad-boy artists they promoted who would be vilified now for their personal behavior; the collectors who bought art cheaply and waited decades for it to be worth millions.

The documentary is filled with great anecdotes. In 1962, Ferus was the first gallery to devote an exhibition to Andy Warhol's soup can paintings. Only a few were sold at $100 each. Blum asked the buyers (one was actor Dennis Hopper) to sell them back so the collection could be kept intact. Blum bought the lot for $1,000.

One of Cool School's many virtues is its refusal to descend into gossipy prurience, though director Morgan Neville had a wealth of such material. Instead he honors the main players, warts and all, and focuses on their genuine desire to make good art and have it acknowledged as such. Before it closed in 1966, Ferus had launched the careers of Angelenos Ed Ruscha, Ed Kienholz, Craig Kauffman, Wallace Berman, Ed Moses and Robert Irwin as well as introducing the West Coast to Warhol, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

There are lessons here for any urban area aspiring to be an arts community. And the film points out those dynamics can also be responsible for a scene's demise. Sometimes the coolest thing is knowing when the party's over.