Ken Price: Happy's Curios (1978)
Softcover, 88 pages, 9.06 x 10.24 inches, black and white, 10 color plates
Published on the occasion of an exhibition at LACMA 4 April - 2 July 1978
"Ken Price is a luminary among that generation of Los Angeles artists which came to maturity in the early sixties, establishing Los Angeles as the second city in the U.S. art world before the end of the decade. In common with most other leading artists of this region Price shares the well-known love for the exquisitely made object. Early in the seventies he began a single monumental project, now titled Happy's Curios, the entire exhibition at hand. This commitment to a single overriding win-or-lose gesture again calls to mind work by other Los Angeles artists: the monumental tableau efforts of Edward Kienholz; the pledge by Larry Bell to an expensive instrument, the coating machine, central to his aesthetic; the Harrisons' monumental "Lagoon" series, which spans the seventies and is still in progress; Jim Turrell's ongoing crater monument; even Maxwell Hendler's 10 x 12 inch Sandpainting, which took seven years to bring to completion. Reminiscent of these and other artists in the area is Price's concern for an absolutely controlled environmental situation; this is of course not a stylistic parallel, but rather a shared belief in certain art experiences."
-Maurice Tuchman (from the introduction)
