Californian Mainstay Revels in the Duplicity of Evolving Narrative Forms

    California’s eternal-summer utopianism, despite being regularly lead off-course by its dysfunctional, innovative, and—like many of artist William Leavitt’s interpretations—glamorously habitual social tendencies, is alive and well. An example: Mr. Leavitt—whose four-decade long CV includes playwriting, photography, set building, painting, installation, and drawing—shares on his first retrospective at MOCA from its stylish courtyard this gorgeous Friday afternoon; softly stirring 72 degree air, cloudless skies, the sun romantically dancing across a bronzed memorial bench, a sweet hum amongst the exhibition preview’s patrons, and the grating thump of a jackhammer splitting apart the traffic-packed pavement of the very nearby Grand Ave.
    You see, the oft-ironic, oft-irreverent subtext of society’s endless narratives are typically at the core of Leavitt’s somewhat publicly unsung oeuvre. “For me,” he says, “story gets diverted into playwriting, and [regarding Leavitt’s theatre-within-a-gallery scenarios] I’d be asked, ‘Are you writing for theatre, or are you doing this as an example of theatre, this sort of object of theatre? And subsequently, I did spend a lot of time working on plays that I wrote up, trying to juggle my point of view as an artist, and say, the demands of writing something for theatre—it was sort of an excuse to do them both, then tie them together.”
    Thus, a tangle of public expectation and Leavitt’s methodic, nuanced expression of modern living comprise the retrospective. A stroll through reveals movement from the latter half of the 20th century’s celebration of new riches and forms, to Leavitt’s later, more naturalistic, wildlife creations. Between the two expressions: the banal, spot-lit stages of the era’s melodramatic dreamers and dramas, while the cadence of a forest, in surround sound, reminds you of what swallows up our urban edges (and/or what was bulldozed to erect such expansion). Regards his work from the early period, Leavitt’s bending of mid-century, world warring lines into the imaginative, wavy forms of the space age, the venues of the jet set cocktail party, the artist says, “It was futuristic, but it kind of has this retro feel—like a future of the past. I sometimes think that the artwork of that period was quite positive, at least some of it, and this was a way ahead for humanity—these new ideas and forms to propel us to a better world.” He jokes, “And now we know differently.”
    Despite its prevalence in Leavitt’s work, the suppressed and fractured story is not typically L.A.’s target export. No, the city specializes in ideal arcs and quick-sell thrills for the numb, popcorn public. But historically, for what artists that did amass here, and chose to stay, the product’s been packaged differently. Leavitt is grouped with California “Conceptualists” John Baldessari, Chris Burden, David Lamelas, and so forth. When asked how he identifies with his contemporaries, he remarks, “I feel like they’re subject to the same influences as myself. We shared that disconnect between the consumer story of Hollywood and the possibility to work underneath it, the possibility where we don’t have the need to make it commercially successful, to tweak it in that way, so that it can be more of an investigation of its narrative.”
    Sixty-nine years on the planet, rooms full of dreamily dynamic work in a world museum, and a handful of admirers milling about, waiting for this interview’s conclusion. Is there lucidity in this? Has there been a lucid moment in the lead up? Is such a thing even attainable? “That kind of clarity is so elusive,” Leavitt concludes, “You can see it as a specific example, to be able to sort of clarify the words coming in, and perhaps talk around it, give it some sort of ground, but I’ve had to investigate on my own. There wasn’t that kind of clarity in how to justify dealing with narrative and narrative spaces. With something like that, it’s a daily battle just to figure out how you’re going to do that.” He laughs, “Maybe it’s better to practice your instrument or your handwriting.”