Abstract

From the 1960s through the early 1970s, Los Angeles, California experienced the first of what the city would consider an authentic, identifiable artistic moment, appropriately titled the “L.A. Look.” This is considered as an overarching label, meant to relate artworks described by aesthetic terminology for this time period, such as Finish Fetish and Light- and-Space. The L.A. Look focused on visual and environmental experiences created by objects with clean lines and glossy, colorful, or translucent surfaces. Growing industry and economy in post-war Los Angeles contributed to widespread availability of industrial materials produced during the war, particularly polyester resin, which characterized this new movement. Arguments for the use of polyester resin are framed through L.A. Look artists to identify the impact of this material on their work. Artists investigated with more specificity include De Wain Valentine, Peter Alexander, and John McCracken, due to their success using polyester resin. Objects by these artists will be comparatively analyzed with other L.A. Look work made of glass to determine why polyester resin was the media of choice. Ways in which the L.A. Look was forced to compete with preconceived, East-Coast notions about the quality and complexity of the L.A. aesthetic are described in order to further establish why the contribution of resin has been widely under-appreciated by scholars until this point. This paper demonstrates how industrial resin enabled artists of Cold War Los Angeles to set themselves apart, in both concept and materiality, as they developed an artistic identity while work of the L.A. Look became distinctive in the world of contemporary art.

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