Renaissance & Rebellion - Flipbook - Page 69
Tourjé has played music all of his adult life, his early history beginning in the late ‘70s in L.A. and Santa
Barbara’s eclectic punk and blues scenes. By the mid ‘80s he played guitar in the influential underground band The
Dissidents, with Melinda Mohn, Daniel Davis and Ralph Gorodetsky, landing on MTV’s Basement Tapes rotation
and were acknowledged at the 1985 MTV Music Awards as one of LA’s best unsigned bands. They played shows
with many other top bands such as The Minutemen, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs, Saccharine Trust, Camper
Van Beethoven and others. Tourjé also did band graphics and showed his art around the L.A. punk scene in places
like the Anti Club and other underground spots. A musician and fine artist, music informs his art and vice versa
in his multidisciplined “high and low brow” art practice which now includes painting, film, music, sculpture and
furniture making. His 2002 Dream Kitchen show at the Riverside Art Museum, which spanned 15 years of his
paintings (1987-2002), contended with the multiplicity of all these issues.
Bojórquez blazed the trail as one of the first artists to go from the street to gallery walls in L.A., concurrent and
intertwined with the powerful punk and post-punk movements of the 1980s. These facts were not coincidental,
but part of the same evolution, preceding the current Street Art explosion by decades and explains why he is
considered the “Godfather of West Coast Graffiti.” He employed stencils in his tags decades before Banksy and
others would make the technique famous, practicing his techniques in solitude on the walls of the Arroyo Seco
River near Avenue 43 in Northeast L.A. His consequential influence on contemporary street artists such as
RETNA, Mister Cartoon, Defer and others has been acknowledged internationally.
Surfing, which had been a popular sport in the Southland for decades, developed into a
significant subculture by mid-century with its own associated music, cars, fashions and jargon. The
surfing lifestyle of the Westside was especially popular in Palos Verdes and the South Bay where
Van Hamersveld grew up and around Malibu where Wisdom lived. Surf culture was impactful for
each of the Locos in their own ways, and its influence can be seen in their work today in various
manifestations. This is especially true with Van Hamersveld, whose Endless Summer image has become
the singular image that embodies surf culture internationally, and his more recent “Wave Series” which
reflects his long involvement in it.
Previously used by surfers to “sidewalk surf,” the first official skateboard was released in the late
1950s. Skateboarding and its winter parallel, snowboarding, would evolve into influential sports
and subcultures over the next few decades, especially embraced by Tourjé as an original pool skater
of the mid-70s and snowboarder of the early ‘80s. Each of the Locos identify with skateboarding in
various ways and to this day the Locos use the skateboard as their art and communication “vehicle”
through their association with skateboard design leader Nano Nobrega, via collaborations with
artists like Robert Williams, Mister Cartoon, Rick Griffin and others. Nobrega and Tourjé met at
the urging of Van Hamersveld in 2015, launching a non-stop collaborative relationship continuing
to this day in the world of international skate. Nobrega’s involvement as Creative Director for the
Locos’ “art and culture” brand has been instrumental in the success they now see internationally.
For Wong, music, performance and painting are interchangeable vehicles for artistic communication. His
affinity for jazz and blues music is mirrored in the energetic brush strokes and calculated manifestations in his
art. He is considered a legend of L.A. blues as the bandleader “Charlie Chan” and his deep involvement with
the major players of the ‘60s postmodern art movements emanating from the Chouinard Art Institute speaks to
his importance within them. His close involvement with the seminal artists of the ‘60s such as Ed Ruscha, Rick
Griffin, Allen Ruppersberg, Doug Wheeler, John Van Hamersveld and others has helped underpin the origins
of postmodern art in L.A. not to mention the influence of his current work.
Wisdom, as the originator of “performance painting,” developed his signature style of live painting to
music during the 1980s with the punk band Panic, and has since performed with musical ensembles across
the spectrum including George Clinton, Flea, Mike Watt, Llyn Foulkes and many others, yet he is also an
acclaimed third generation Abstract Expressionist in his easel practice. In this regard, Wisdom is well known for
his meditation on the “Proscenium Trapezoid,” some paintings taking decades to finish and which have been
collected by major collectors and museums for decades.
Van Hamersveld is a legend who made a career of designing iconic album covers, logos, concert posters and
more that have defined a generation, including The Beatles (Magical Mystery Tour), The Rolling Stones (Exile on
Main Street) and the Grateful Dead (Skeletons in the Closet) to name only a few. In his collaboration with art dealer
and curator Alida Post, he has become a leading NFT artist and public muralist which perfectly aligns to his digital
approach over the last 20 years, and he is being celebrated internationally in museum venues such as his Era of
Cool: The Art of John Van Hamersveld retrospective at the Westmoreland Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, 2019. His
history in SoCal is cemented as one and the same having designed the iconic Endless Summer image in 1963.
John Van Hamersveld with Endless Summer
CALIFORNIA 132
LOCOS
Nano Nóbrega and Dave Tourjé, first meeting, 2015
