LOS ANGELES, CA.- parrasch heijnen is presenting a five-decade selection of collage and assemblage by Altadena, CA-based artist La Monte Westmoreland (b. 1941, Racine, WI), the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. This show marks the gallery’s fifth in a series of solo exhibitions dedicated to former Brockman Gallery artists, as the gallery mourns the recent passing of legendary artist and Brockman Gallery co-founder, Alonzo Davis.
La Monte Westmoreland’s work is an observational reflection and critique of the African American experience in the United States. Through social, historical, humorous, and personal considerations of American culture and his own experiences, the artist explores the intricacies of human conditions of oppression and resistance, hypocrisy and order. Settling in Los Angeles after having served one-and-a-half tours of duty as a sergeant in the United States Marines Corps at the height of the Vietnam War, Westmoreland earned his BA, MA, and MFA at California State University, Los Angeles on the GI Bill, shifting his focus from painting to printmaking, and eventually to collage and assemblage.
In 1971, Westmoreland encountered Brockman Gallery in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles where he saw a two-person show of David Hammons and Timothy Washington that transformed his relationship with art and his own practice. Westmoreland was embraced by these and other Brockman artists, as well as gallery’s founders, brothers Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis. Westmoreland started to exhibit at the gallery shortly thereafter, and in 1972 he held a two-person show with Greg Pitts, followed by inclusion in multiple group shows, and a joint solo exhibition with Samella Lewis’ Gallery Tanner in 1985.
Westmoreland’s balanced, structural compositions establish visual hierarchies which are further informed by the symbolic nature of his chosen iconography. The artist repeatedly uses recognizable advertising icons and symbols of racist stereotypes from the Jim Crow era including Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, the Cream of Wheat man, watermelons, and lawn jockeys, to draw palpable connections between the racist history of the United States to contemporary dynamics of politics and popular culture. As seen in Ingres’ Odalisque with Aunt Jemima (2003), Westmoreland combines this imagery with famous art historical works such as Jasper Johns’ Target (1961), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque (1814), and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (c. 1503-19) to draw parallels between the established standards of western thought and art and those suppressed from mainstream recognition.
The reproductions of black and white photographs found throughout Westmoreland’s work, as in the cut out images in the circular lens of Butterfly Series (1974), were primarily sourced from Ebony magazine and Jet Magazine, the first periodicals to chronicle African American cultural and political realities. Documenting all aspects of Black experience from entertainment to politics, sports, social events, people, and tragedies, the magazines’ photojournalists provided visual commentary and record on Black life and achievement in a world of negative images and non-recognition. Westmoreland’s selection of some of this imagery, and its collaged use, is not specifically about the identity of the individual but more importantly the semiotic operation of the picture over time and across cultures as he sought to create his worlds and archive life through his eyes. Other photographs the artist uses consistently are self portraits, or pictures of historical figures, such as seminal artist and mentor, Charles White.
After studying with master printmaker Shiro Ikegawa and Lydia Takeshita at California State University, Los Angeles (CA), Westmoreland embraced a sensibility that absorbed the formal and spatial considerations of Japanese printmaking, utilizing Japanese and Chinese calligraphy, commercial products, and classical imagery, and drawing from the stark chromatic and luminous contrasts of Kabuki theatre. The Last Big Feast #1 (1986-2002) combines these images and languages to connect religion with past atrocities and contemporary stereotypes, pulling together time and place in a personal confrontation and reminder of realities of pain and strength. Westmoreland’s inclusion of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (1495-1498), watched by enslaved men as Uncle Ben serves Jesus and his Apostles Kentucky Fried Chicken and watermelon, serves as a multi-layered critique of institutional oppression and commodification.
La Monte Westmoreland (b. 1941, Racine, WI) received his BA (1971), MA (1976), and MFA (1985) at California State University, Los Angeles. Most recently, Westmoreland’s work was featured at the Rubell Museum (Miami, FL) in a solo exhibition in 2024. Other notable solo exhibitions include La Monte Westmoreland: A Survey Exhibition 1974 - 2018, at California State University (Los Angeles, CA) in (2018); Sankofa at the Watts Tower Art Center, (Watts, CA) in 2017; Looking Back at Peppers Art Gallery (Redlands, CA) in 1994; and Target Series Phase #1 at Brockman Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) and Tanner Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) in 1985. Notable group exhibitions include Brockman Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) in 1974; Tanner Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) in 1980; LA Object & David Hammons Body Prints at Tilton Gallery (New York, NY) in 2011; Legacies at Fine Arts Gallery (California State University, Los Angeles, CA) in 2017; BAILA at Watts Towers Art Center, (Watts, CA) in 2013; Two Centuries of Black American Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA) in 1976; and La Monte Westmoreland and Greg Pitts at Brockman Art Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) in 1972. In 1996 Westmoreland was honored by his alma mater, Washington Park High School in Racine, WI where he was inducted into their Hall of Fame, and an art scholarship was offered in his name. La Monte Westmoreland is represented by parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles.
