Lorser Feitelson
Life Begins1936

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Mixed-media work on two irregularly shaped cobalt blue panels combining a black-and-white photograph of surgeons, a painted star field with a white erupting column, and a small painted image of a pink rounded form on a pale blue disk

Artist or Maker: Lorser Feitelson
United States, 1898-1978
Title: Life Begins
Place Made: United States
Date Made: 1936
Medium: Oil and collage on masonite
Dimensions: 23 1/4 × 27 3/4 × 2 in. (59.06 × 70.49 × 5.08 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. W. H. Russell (by exchange), the Blanche and George Jones Fund, and the Modern and Contemporary Art Council, with the cooperation of the Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg Feitelson Arts Foundation and Tobey C. Moss Gallery
Accession Number: AC1996.103.1
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: The shaped canvas and placement of images in Life Begins directs the viewer’s eye, acting like a diagram relating three different births—of plants, of humans, and of the cosmos. Juxtaposing themes such as science, nature, and creation was central to the Post-Surrealism initiated in 1934 by Feitelson and his partner, painter Helen Lundeberg. The movement was unique to the West Coast and, as seen here, sometimes incorporated imagery from astronomical observatories such as the Griffith Observatory, which had opened in Los Angeles the year before this painting was made. Although the artists distanced themselves from Surrealism’s focus on sensuality and the unconscious, these elements are arguably present in Life Begins, as is wordplay: the photograph of a newborn baby was sourced from Life magazine’s inaugural issue, a birth of another kind.

Wall label, 2021.
Selected Bibliography: Kinkel, Marianne. "Cosmic Allegories: Post-Surrealism and Astronomy in Interwar Los Angeles." The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945 14 (2018). http://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-space-between-literature-and-culture-1914-1945/vol14_2018_kinkel.

Lorser Feitelson
Life Begins1936

On view:

Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Artist or Maker: Lorser Feitelson
United States, 1898-1978
Title: Life Begins
Place Made: United States
Date Made: 1936
Medium: Oil and collage on masonite
Dimensions: 23 1/4 × 27 3/4 × 2 in. (59.06 × 70.49 × 5.08 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by Mrs. W. H. Russell (by exchange), the Blanche and George Jones Fund, and the Modern and Contemporary Art Council, with the cooperation of the Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg Feitelson Arts Foundation and Tobey C. Moss Gallery
Accession Number: AC1996.103.1
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Modern Art
Curatorial Notes: The shaped canvas and placement of images in Life Begins directs the viewer’s eye, acting like a diagram relating three different births—of plants, of humans, and of the cosmos. Juxtaposing themes such as science, nature, and creation was central to the Post-Surrealism initiated in 1934 by Feitelson and his partner, painter Helen Lundeberg. The movement was unique to the West Coast and, as seen here, sometimes incorporated imagery from astronomical observatories such as the Griffith Observatory, which had opened in Los Angeles the year before this painting was made. Although the artists distanced themselves from Surrealism’s focus on sensuality and the unconscious, these elements are arguably present in Life Begins, as is wordplay: the photograph of a newborn baby was sourced from Life magazine’s inaugural issue, a birth of another kind.

Wall label, 2021.
Selected Bibliography: Kinkel, Marianne. "Cosmic Allegories: Post-Surrealism and Astronomy in Interwar Los Angeles." The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945 14 (2018). http://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-space-between-literature-and-culture-1914-1945/vol14_2018_kinkel.

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