Between 1957 and 1966, at a time when New York City was the center of the art world, a small, off-the-beaten path Los Angeles gallery showed some of the most innovative work of that period.

The Ferus Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard was founded by the unpredictable Walter Hopps – who had a degree in biochemistry, an expansive vision, and a keen curatorial eye – and the renegade assemblage artist Edward Kienholz. He had no formal artistic training but used his skills as a carpenter and a mechanic in his collage work and tableaus. In 1958, Kienholz left to concentrate on his own work full-time, and his share in the gallery was taken over by silky-smooth Irving Blum, who spoke like Cary Grant and eventually, after a series of intense art-world twists and turns, made the inevitable move to New York and made off with the epic profits that Hopps and others abandoned in more innocent times.

The Cool School documents a key pattern familiar to art-world scholars of any area: the transition from a diverse group of committed, bohemian artists into a self-conscious avant-garde “scene,” and then, ultimately, a commerce-driven establishment. The socioeconomic changes in Los Angeles through the 1950s and 1960s; the evolution of pop art, abstract expressionism, and other key movements of the era; as well as the fascinating personalities and oeuvres of the Ferus artists make The Cool School worthy viewing for artists, art historians, and other scholars of cultural history – especially the excellent, extensive interviews of Hopps and Blum.

However, The Cool School is a less-than-ideal introduction to art-world issues for audience members who come to the film without an earlier interest in late-1950s American visual arts. As a documentary, it sometimes loses focus – taking on too much, becoming occasionally repetitive, and introducing tantalizing subject matter (for example, the transition of Venice Beach from a center of outsider culture to a wasteland) only to abandon it too quickly to cover more ground.

Celebrity interviews with people who weren’t at all integral to the scene waste valuable screen time. While the names Dennis Hopper, Dean Stockwell, and Frank Gehry might attract more viewers, these figures have little of substance to say, and the narration by Jeff Bridges doesn’t add much to unify the film. At 86 minutes long, The Cool School drags a bit and feels more like two hours – a pity, since there is probably enough rich material here to produce a gripping seven-hour series. This was an ambitious project, and the filmmakers needed to narrow and deepen their approach.

Ultimately, The Cool School’s archival strengths outweigh its cinematic weaknesses. It’s a rare commentary on the LA art scene, but it also tells a more universal art-world story – the mainstreaming of the avant-garde and the usurpation of art-for-art’s-sake by profit motives. Elizabeth Bachner
March 28, 2008