celebrating eight decades of l.a. youth culture, from pachucos to post-punks

Earlier this month, Gil Veni Vici opened East Side Story, a group exhibition that saw the model, designer, and curator celebrate his East Los Angeles neighborhood’s rich history by embodying aspects of its vibrant culture and tradition. In one black-and-white portrait, Gil posed in front of a 50s car, dressed in a sharp suit; in another, he rocked a Tommy Jeans jacket, reminiscent of the excellent workwear one might find flipping through @veteranas_and_rucas — a public archive of Southern California’s Chicano youth. Tastemakers & Earthshakers: Notes from Los Angeles Youth Culture 1943 – 2016, a recently opened exhibition at L.A.’s Vincent Price Art Museum, considers similar subject matter. But Tastemakers & Earthshakers‘s approach is as anthropological as it is artistic. The exhibition collects eight decades of photographs, paintings, drawings, installations, sculpture, television footage, print media, clothing, ephemera and music — an immersive sociological survey of youth culture’s dynamic evolution.

Gusmano Cesaretti, Mosca 1975 East L.A., 1975, archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.

Tastemakers & Earthshakers begins in the early 40s, with the Zoot Suit Riots (a violent series of racially-motivated clashes between youth who wore baggy zoot suits and docked Marines who saw the suits’s excessive fabric as an unpatriotic luxury). The exhibition not only sketches the sounds and styles of the decades that followed, but demonstrates the ways in which these forms of youth expression interface with social and political issues. “The exhibition is not a historical overview, but is instead a presentation of kaleidoscopic group experiences and subcultural genres, emphasizing the creativity, inventiveness and diversity characterizing the World War II/post-war period to the present,” its release reads.

Janette Beckman, The Rivera Bad Girls East LA 1983, 1983. Courtesy of the artist.

The show — which features contributions from esteemed documentary photographer Janette Beckman and Guadalupe Rosales, the creator of the aforementioned @veteranas_and_rucas archive — is divided into distinct areas of focus. These sections include “the collapse of musical genres with social identities and street fashion,” “the emergence of social spaces,” and perhaps most fascinatingly, “a look at connections between Los Angeles and British youth cultures and the dialog between the two.” (Yes, Morrissey and his passionate L.A. fanbase are well represented).

Patssi Valdez, DeDe Diaz and Anthony Villarreal, 1980s. Courtesy of the artist.

Tastemakers includes post-punks, rave-loving “party crews,” dapperly suited dandies, queer Latino men that adopted gangster dress codes, Rockabilly low riders, house music heads, and everyone in between. It’s a colorful, ambitious, and much-needed exploration of a community and culture that powerfully resists marginalization and stereotyping, then and now.

‘Tastemakers & Earthshakers: Notes from Los Angeles Youth Culture, 1943 – 2016’ is on view at Vincent Price Art Museum through February 25, 2017. More information here.

Janette Beckman, Hoyo Maravilla, East LA 1983, 1983. Courtesy of the artist.

Deputy Sheriff Bartley Brown of East Los Angeles inspects the haircut of prisoner Alex Largo Rodriguez, who is wearing an $85.00 zoot suit, 1943. Courtesy of the Associated Press.

Gregory Bojorquez, Rocking Out At The Roxy, Sunset Strip, 2010, archival pigment print.Courtesy of the artist.

Credits

Text Emily Manning