The Bottom Line
There was no art scene in Los Angeles until a young, imaginative and charismatic gallery owner named Walter Hobbs gathered a stable of extraordinarily talented artists--Ed Rauscha, Ed Keinholz, Ed Bereal, Robert Irwin, Walter Berman, John Baldassari, John Altoon and other painters and sculpters, plus architect Frank Gehry and actor/artists Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell--into a clique whose lifestyle and work became a hugely influential cultural movement.
This movie tells their story.
Pros
- Artists, gallery owners, critics and collectors tell their stories in their own words.
- Terrific archival footage of artists shown with their own present day commentaries
- Interesting study of how art establishes its own value and environment.
- A fascinating social and cultural history of America.
Cons
- Except for the jazz sequences, the soundtrack could be more interesting.
Description
- See footage of the world's first exhibit of Andy Warhol's soup can paintings.
- Ed Keinholz's unique funeral is a bizarre happening that's both amusing and oddly moving.
- Walter Hopps' wife, Shirley, puts a fascinating spin on events, including her leaving Walter for his partner, Irving Blum.
Guide Review - The Cool School (2008) - Movie Review
Walter Hobbs was an interesting guy. According to artists who knew him back in the 1950s in LA, he was an unlikely art hero. They say they thought he was in the CIA--he was so secretive and dressed so conservatively. But he was at the heart of an art movement that was so progressive, so revolutionary, the outside world thought it had communist influences.
It made art of broken down cars and soup cans, afterall.
Avant garde artists, including Ed Rauscha, Ed Keinholz, Ed Bereal, Robert Irwin, Walter Berman, John Baldassari, John Altoon and others, first showed their work at Hopps’ famous Ferus Gallery on La Cienega‘s gallery row and, from there, eventually exhibited in various renowned art museums from Pasadena to Paris.
In The Cool School, director Morgan Neville mixes archival footage of the artists at work, of their gallery openings, of them hanging out at Barney’s Beanery and other aspects of their lives with very interesting present day on camera interviews in which they candidly recall their impressions about each other--and Walter Hopps--and tell what transpired to create the lively art scene in which they played such important roles.
The voice over narration, read by Jeff Bridges, delivers a lively and unusually authentic art history lesson. The film presents a keen sense of the varied styles and appealing creative quirkiness of the artists in the Hobbs stable.
Hobbs and art partner Irving Blum were the first to exhibit New York artist Andy Warhol, and they introduced Marcel Duchamp to American collectors.
The film shows how this group of artists became celebrities, and how celebrities were drawn to their art until the Los Angeles art scene began to rival that of New York. West Coast abstract expressionists, pop artists, beat poets, contemporary jazz musicians were riding the crest of the avant guarde. This film really catches the wave.