October 11, 2015


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Lot 137: Joe Goode

Lot 137: Joe Goode

Glass and Spoon (Tickled Pink)

Oil on Belgian linen
Signed, titled, and dated in marker verso; retains remnant of Fort Worth Art Center Museum label verso; bears the inscription "Rowan" on canvas stretcher verso
Canvas: 60" x 60"
Provenance: The artist;
Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, California;
L.M. Asher Family Collection, Los Angeles, California;
Private Collection, Los Angeles, California;
Thence by descent; With Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, New York; Private Collection, Los Angeles, California
Exhibited: "English Still Life on White Tablecloth," Rowan Gallery, London, May- June 1967; "1967 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, December 13, 1967-February 4, 1968; "Joe Goode and Edward Ruscha," Balboa Pavilion Gallery, Newport Harbor Art Museum, March 27-April 21, 1968; "Joe Goode: Work Until Now," Fort Worth Art Center Museum, 1972
Literature: 1967 Annual Exhibition of American Painting. Whitney Museum of American Art exh. cat. 1967. #45.

Illustrated: Joe Goode and Edward Ruscha. Newport Art Museum exh. cat 1968. N. pag.; Joe Goode: Work Until Now. H.T. Hopkins. 1972. #5.
Estimate: $100,000 - $150,000
Price Realized: $156,250
Inventory Id: 20136

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Artist Joe Goode (b. 1937) has been living in Los Angeles for over 55 years and his work has been exhibited internationally since before the very genesis of terms like "contemporary art or "Pop art. " His work was included in Walter Hopps's groundbreaking show New Paintings of Common Objects at the Pasadena Museum of Art in 1962 alongside Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Dine.

Artists as varied as Vija Celmins, Ed Ruscha, and Alex Israel have cited Joe Goode as an important influence on their work. His paintings are in the permanent collections of many major museums such as the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Recently, Joe Goode sat down with Peter Loughrey, Director of Los Angeles Modern Auctions, to talk about his career and Glass and Spoon (Tickled Pink) (1966–1967), which is being offered at auction for the first time in almost half a century.

Peter Loughrey: Which LA artists influenced you the most?

Joe Goode: Probably Ed Ruscha because he and I grew up together. We've always been exposed to essentially the same things. When you grow up with somebody from when you're seven years old, and you both turn out to be artists, it's pretty rare.

PL: Which of your instructors at the Chouinard Art Institute [now the California Institute of the Arts] gave you the most encouragement as an artist?

JG: Well, the one that hands down influenced me the most and also gave me the most encouragement was Bob Irwin. He was the one who said, "You don't need to be here anymore. " And I just thought "Oh! Amen!"

PL: There has been a lot written about your works having a "detached austerity" or a "placeless, colored background. " But I've always seen a connection to light and space and what you can find here in Southern California.

JG: Yeah, well, I think we can lay that on some people like John Coplans [writer, curator, and Artforum Editor-in-Chief from 1972–1977] who said one time "these are the loneliest paintings I ever saw" or something like that. [Laughs.]I guess what you see is what you get. I never thought of them that way. I definitely saw them as still lifes on a white tablecloth. And when I showed this one in England, they thought I was making fun of English still lifes! When in actual fact I was paying homage to them because I always respected [them], particularly English paintings. I went to London five or six times in the 60s to be there and stay with friends there. To be making fun of it there wouldn't make sense at all.

PL: So, Glass and Spoon (Tickled Pink) was actually painted in London. Did the location make a difference to the subject matter?

JG: From a significance point of view, I don't think so. But I find in hindsight that, yeah, it's different. It would never have been that way [in Los Angeles] and in this case, you can see that the shape of the glass and the shape of the spoon is typically a London shape. In London, that was the glass they put wine in. The color of London was not really what I was dealing with in these paintings. I was thinking of [the background color] in terms of a tablecloth. I wasn't rationalizing it like I am now, I was just painting a tablecloth.

PL: Your work is often described as "Pop" and your work was included in the first American retrospective Pop art exhibition in 1962. But I've never thought of your work as "Pop."

JG: It always of course looks different in hindsight. But at that time I was working and I didn't care what they labeled me as long as they showed it. At that time this place was really young and there was very little opportunity to get exposure and sell things. No artist was in a position to say anything [to the contrary] when something like that opportunity came up. I just looked at it as [the curator's] opinion. At that particular time in America, everyone was saying that this scene was a new art. But at the time I was thinking "I don't see anything so new about what I'm doing." I didn't feel it was. I definitely didn't feel it was "Pop."

PL: You were certainly painting common objects around you and in front of you.

JG: [Yes, but] I always said from the very beginning, if there was an artist that I related to, it was [Giorgio] Morandi.

PL: The West Coast was certainly a kind of outpost of the art world. How did Artforum or trips to New York and London help inform your work?

JG: After I had already started [having success] doing Milk Bottle paintings and House paintings, I just wondered where, if at all, was anyplace I fit in. So, after a time, travelling helped a lot. I was curious to see what was going on in New York, London, and Paris.

PL: Does your work contain any messages about society or are they purely about visual language?

JG: No, I don't think so–not consciously anyway. I select images or a series that I want to work on based on something that you can see through. It's always been that way, whether it's a glass and spoon where it's reflective, or a window, milk bottle, whatever. When I was young I had a daughter, a baby, and I'd come home from Chouinard at night and the milk bottles would be sitting on the steps, and basically that's where I got the idea to paint them; just what was around me. But it's been for the most part totally unconscious. I've always worked in a kind of series. From Milk Bottle paintings to [today's work] and, I've only realized this later, it always seemed like I was looking from here [Los Angeles] and looking "out out out out out. "