RACHEL ROSENTHAL

“Thanks was a piece that also used people and animals that I had known and with whom I had had dealings that required gratitude, both sincere and ironic, and that for one reason or another I had never had a chance to thank. And so I used people in the audience—gave them a lit taper and turned them into the particular recipient of my gratitude and then I explained what the reason was for the gratitude and I thanked them and I gave them a little present each. And with each instance, of course, some relationship or some event in my past surfaced.”

Rosenthal’s collages are personal and familial, highlighting her investigation into the relationships between the body, spirituality, sexuality and the home as both residence and refuge. Early childhood experiences of exile and forced displacement informed much of her adult experiences and appear as overlapping themes in her work. This exhibition aims to show her collages as works in progress - that is, open to interpretation - by accentuating the expansive nature of Rosenthal’s practice. Materially influenced by the Avant-garde and 1950s Modern Art, they feature energetic and gestural lines, nontraditional materials, radical subject matter and a shift of the pictoral surface from vertical to horizontal.

A prolific artist and generous friend, Rosenthal’s large social group was vibrant. While in New York, she was connected with prominent members of the Second Wave of Abstract Expressionists in the early 1950s before decamping to Los Angeles, where she then became involved with the nascent modern art scene surrounding Ferus Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard. Many of her works created during this time incorporate material elements from her close friends and peers, as seen in the titular work Untitled (1975). An archival photograph sees Rosenthal, centered between her French classmates, flanked by twin portraits of her taken by artist and experimental filmmaker Wallace Berman. A Star of David pendant hangs over a drawing of a stone, which radiates lines outwards to small multi-colored geometric shapes. The overall effect is that of a levitating mass suspended by the sun’s rays.

Stones, especially in their rough, natural state, were very special to Rachel; the daughter of a pearl merchant and jeweler, her father would have undoubtedly distilled this enduring interest and appreciation of the natural world, and its transformative qualities, in her as a child. The collage 5 Decades (1975), marking her 50th year, shows five stones arranged in an arching formation and deftly painted in crisp watercolor. Stylistically, they bring to mind comparisons to the floral compositions of painter Jan Davidsz, the intricate prints and watercolor sketches by Albrecht Dürer, or even the ornithological renderings of naturalist illustrator John James Audubon. Rosenthal also employed stones and rocks in her sculptural altars and totem poles made during this time, and made clay sculptures which took on similar characteristics, which can be seen in the photograph collaged within 5 Decades (1975).