When the Ferus Gallery began exposing the rest of the country to Los Angeles art in the fifties, New York art people quickly observed that everyone seemed to be obsessed with perfection in L.A. The frames had to be perfect—the backs of the frames, even. “The Finish Fetish” it was called. Like the Beach Boys of that same mode when all that harmony fell out of the sky in seamless clouds. Rock and roll in L.A. tries even now not to be so gorgeous, to be raunchy and soulful, but it won’t work. Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles and Jackson Browne can’t scare anyone. Like the art from the old Ferus,
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