The LA Review of Books has created a twelve-minute video about the life and work of Noah Purifoy, the LA-based African-American sculpture and neo-Dadaist who cofounded the Watts Towers Arts Center shortly before the Watts Riots of 1965. You can check out the video below, or by going to the LARB website. A retrospective of Purifoy’s work, entitled “Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada,” is currently showing at the LA County Museum of Art through September 27, 2015. Here’s a description of the video from LARB:
The video includes interviews with Franklin Sirmans, Yael Lipschutz, and Lowery Stokes Sims, each of whom talks about Purifoy’s influence not only as a pivotal Los Angeles artist but also as a force in the history of the neo-Dadaist and assemblage movements. His interest in making sculptures from found objects acutely reflected the environments in which they were created, and they also significantly encouraged a method by which people could overcome socioeconomic barriers to making fine art. In fact, Purifoy’s lifetime of work, which included time spent at the Watts Towers Art Center and on the California Arts Council, shows great emphasis on arts education and finding ways to make art a catalyst for social change.