Main Space

Lewis Baltz's Picturesque (November 22, 2009 - January 17, 2010)

In the 1970s, Lewis Baltz (b. 1945, Newport Beach, California) realized several photographic series that documented tract house developments and industrial parks in California and Utah. The works were remarkable at the time for being so unremarkable: the compositions are geometric, the images flat, and the lifeless subjects are treated with a matter-of-factness that echoes the concerns of both Minimalism and Conceptual Art.

Baltz insists that these series be exhibited intact and in predetermmined sequences. The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California (1974), shown here, was first exhibited at Leo Castell Gallery in 1975. It was hung in a grid and accompanied by a limited-edition book of the same title.

"The mission of photography was to deliver the world and all its contents into the category of the picturesque. None of which has anything to do with art. -- Lewis Baltz