L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945-1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy

By Michael Duncan, Peter Selz
reviewed by Stephen Maine

The conventional story of postwar American art relies heavily on the chapter in which Abstract Expressionism establishes itself as the dominant idiom, and New York, its home, as the hegemonic art capital. Figurative modes were, if out of fashion, alive and well, of course; MoMA's 1959 exhibition "New Images of Man" surveyed recent American art dealing with the human form. Among the participants was a stalwart of the Los Angeles scene, painter Rico Lebrun (1900–1964), whose grim, harrowing vision of bodies in distress is among 41 painters, sculptors, photographers, installation artists and performance artists that curator Michael Duncan compiles in L.A. RAW: Abject Expressionism in Los Angeles 1945–1980, From Rico Lebrun to Paul McCarthy.