Ken Price Retrospective at LACMA, Designed by Frank Gehry

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) hosted a retrospective of Ken Price from September 16, 2012 to January 6, 2013. Price, a mythical California artist known for his modestly sized ceramic sculptures, died a few months before the exhibition. His friend, architect Frank Gehry, designed the scenography using light wood tables, benches, and cubes, which some critics found too precious for Price's eccentric, color-driven universe. Price's forms—drops, mountains, cups, mounds, eggs—are enigmatic, organic or geometric, repulsive yet seductive. His work was inspired by jazz, Miró, Brancusi, the Memphis movement, and Matisse. He left the West Coast twice: first in the 1950s to escape mentor Peter Voulkos, and later in the 1980s to battle alcoholism. The series Happy's Curios (1970s) features teapots, coffee, and tequila sets, an ode to colorful Mexican pottery often adorned with wood, transforming the domestic into the fantastic. The exhibition traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from June 18 to September 22, 2013.