The Depth and Surface of the Thing Itself as it Exists in the Passage of Time John Yau What does not change is the will to change -CHARLES OLSON-1 I felt as though these paintings were not something I created; they were something I discovered. -ED MOSESED M 0 S E S HAS LI V E DAN D W 0 R KED in southern California for all but a few brief yet important periods. He is widely considered to be one of the central figures in the rich, complex history of postwar West Coast art.2 Moses exhibited work at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1957, as well as at the Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, in 1958. These “underground” venues were among the first California galleries to show the young artists who would later achieve international and national prominence.t Moses’s work has been included in major museum surveys of postwar art and the history of abstraction, as well as in solo exhibitions in Los Angeles and throughout the United States, Europe, and the Far East. Despite all the deserved attention Moses’s work has gained over the past thirty-five or so years, this retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings represents the first full-scale attempt at assessing his achievement. Within the context of postwar West Coast art, Moses is the most innovative member of the generation of abstract artists to ascend to prominence after John McLaughlin (1898-1976), Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993), and Sam Francis (1923-1994) first gained recognition in the 1950s.4 However, whereas McLaughlin, Diebenkorn, and Francis developed a mature signature style and/or compositional approach by which they and their work became canonized, Moses developed along a very different path, one with a far more radical outcome. This exhibition focuses on some but by no means all of the specific and compelling milestones that Moses has achieved while traveling on this path.
The canonization of Diebenkorn and Francis, and to a lesser extent Mcl.aughlin,’ is due in part to the fact that they preceded and…