LARRY BELL — From the ’60s, Hauser & Wirth, New York, 2016

Larry Bell. From the ’60s. Hauser & Wirth, New York, 2016. Exhibition invitation. Single sheet, offset printed in black and grey; 20 × 26 cm. Recto: early photographic portrait of Bell in his Marine Street studio, Venice, California, c.1959, photographed by Jerry McMillan. Verso: exhibition details.

Produced for Hauser & Wirth’s exhibition Larry Bell: From the ’60s, 3 February–9 April 2016. Bell emerged from the Los Angeles art scene of the early 1960s alongside artists including Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman and John McCracken. His early glass cubes and experiments with mirrored, coated and translucent surfaces helped establish a distinctly West Coast approach to Minimalism, while anticipating what would later be identified with Light and Space.

The invitation is interesting precisely because the 2016 exhibition looks backward. An institutional announcement made more than fifty years later returns Bell to the studio before the work had acquired its art-historical categories. The photograph operates simultaneously as portrait, documentation and retrospective construction: the young artist reproduced by the later institution. A useful companion to period Bell ephemera — the same career circulating at two different historical moments.

Condition: very good. Light handling and minor surface and edge wear consistent with circulation.

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