Joe Goode

Goode is probably not that well-known to New York’s current art audience, but he was a seminal figure in the development of the Los Angeles art scene in the early 1960s. A colleague of Ed Ruscha, Goode was included in one of the very first exhibitions of Pop Art in America, “New Painting of Common Objects,” curated in 1962 by Walter Hopps at the former Pasadena (now Norton Simon) Museum. Goode’s work evolved over the ensuing years to include expansive painted views of the sky, which he then defaced by tearing away or gouging substantial portions of the image. Much like the slashed canvases of Italian abstractionist Lucio Fontana, Goode’s work focused on the space behind the painted surface. This show presents a small selection of his “Torn Cloud” and “Vandalism” series, dating between 1967 and 1976.