Making Things You Can Feel: An Interview of Larry Bell

Larry Bell with Pacific Red II. Photography by Matthew Millman, San Francisco 

introduction by Isabella Bernabeo
interview by Bill Powers

For over six decades, Larry Bell has skillfully molded contemporary art in America. Born in Chicago in 1939, Bell moved to the West Coast to study at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, the historic precursor to CalArts. 

There, Bell became a member of Los Angeles’s Cool School, a rebellious group of artists, largely represented by Walter Hopps and Irving Blum of Ferus Gallery in the 1950s and ’60s, who brought modern-day avant-garde to the West Coast. Alongside Ed Ruscha and Robert Irwin, Bell is one of the last living members of the School. As a foundational figure in the Light and Space movement, Southern California’s take on Minimalism, which often employed industrial materials and aerospace technology to explore the ways that volume, light and scale play with our sense of perception, Bell made innovative work that experimented with the interconnections of glass and light and their relations to reflection and illusion. 

His most notable works involve his creation of semi-transparent cubes made out of vacuum-coated glass to form an immersive experience as the art melts into space. Recently, six of Bell’s cubes have been installed in Madison Square Park, where they will be on view until March 15, 2026. Improvisations in the Park carries on Bell’s legacy, but with a twist. Instead of their typical white cube environment, they have been placed outside to interact with the constantly changing elements, causing a new perception almost every hour. 

This idea, related to the flexibility of perception, is also highlighted in Bell’s recent series of collage works, Irresponsible Iridescence, on view now at the Judd Foundation in New York. These collages poured out of Bell after the passing of his wife two years ago, sharing a more emotional side of his work with audiences. They also subtly allude to the close friendship between Bell and the late Donald Judd. It was Bell who convinced Judd to build this now-historic organization in Marfa, Texas, rather than El Rosario, Mexico, impacting American art history forever.  

Blues from Aspen, 2018 
Lagoon and true fog laminated glass 
Each pane: 72 x 92 x 92 inches (182.9 x 233.7 x 233.7 cm) 
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts. Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Timothy Schenck. 

BILL POWERS: How does your work operate differently when it’s outside?

LARRY BELL: I’m just finding out for myself because the Madison Square Park project is the first installation I’ve done with rocks and trees and grass around. I’ve had work outside in courtyards and walled-in areas and next to swimming pools, but never in a jungle like this with squirrels hopping along and birds shitting on them.

POWERS: In Rose Macaulay’s book, The Pleasure of Ruins (1953), she says that a man-made object only knows its worth when it is left to battle it out in the elements without custodianship.

BELL: Everything has its time of being and a right to patina. Some people don’t like to see a patina on a sculpture because they think it alters the work somehow. I’m from a different point of view.

POWERS: In the same vein, I don’t think I’ve seen a Marcel Duchamp where the glass hasn’t cracked by now. That doesn't mean MoMA is throwing them away.

BELL: You know Marcel Duchamp came to visit my studio in 1962. He came with Richard Hamilton and the surrealist painter William Copley.

POWERS: William Copley also had a short-lived gallery in Beverly Hills where he exhibited Man Ray and Joseph Cornell. I believe Duchamp was an unofficial advisor for the gallery.

BELL: I was maybe twenty-two years old and there was a knock on my front door in Venice. Now, I ignored it because only building inspectors would try that entrance. All my friends knew to come through the back. So, after twenty minutes of this gentle rapping on my front door, I look out through this peephole and see three guys outside who don’t look like building inspectors. I open up and instantly Copley puts his hand out and says, “Walter Hopps sent us to see you.” Now Walter was a dear friend of mine so I invited them inside.

Blues from Aspen, 2018 
Lagoon and true fog laminated glass 
Each pane: 72 x 92 x 92 inches (182.9 x 233.7 x 233.7 cm) 
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts. Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Timothy Schenck. 

POWERS: And did you recognize Marcel Duchamp?

BELL: See, the thing is, I was a bit deaf even back then. When Copley introduced the other guests I didn’t really catch the name and just figured they were rich collectors or something.

POWERS: Probably better not to know you had living legends visiting you.

BELL: So, I’m giving them a tour of my studio and Hamilton is explaining to the other two men how something was made.

POWERS: The fabrication of it?

BELL: Yes, but in fact he was incorrect in his assumption so I jumped in the conversation to clarify when Copley says, “Now Marcel didn’t you do this in a certain way,” I heard the name Marcel and finally put two and two together. I must have completely frozen up because they left a minute later. The studio visit was over. I couldn’t talk anymore. Duchamp was in town, I found out later, to discuss his Pasadena Museum show with Walter Hopps.

POWERS: And that was your last encounter?

BELL: No, a couple of years later, I did a show in New York at Sydney Janis—a group exhibition on 57th Street—and Duchamp invited me over for tea. His wife, Teeny, answered the door and said, “Marcel is waiting for you in the parlor.” I walked into this incredible little room and there he was: a Brancusi to my right, a Man Ray to my left, a Max Ernst over here. He greeted me warmly and then Teeny brought out a tray of milk and cookies.

POWERS: Wow, a couple of real bad boy artists, huh?

BELL: We chatted a while and then I asked him if he was doing any shows and when he had made the work. And Marcel said, “Ooh, when I was six or seven.” He was saying he started the work when he was six or seven years old.

POWERS: A joke about how all creativity springs from childhood.

BELL: I remember he smoked these little cigars, which he held between his ring finger and his middle finger. I smoked cigars back then too but I never saw anyone hold them like that.

Installation view Irresponsible Iridescence, September 29, 2025–January 31, 2026, Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, New York. Photo Timothy Doyon ©️Judd Foundation. Art ©️Larry Bell. Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

POWERS: Was the Venice Beach Mafia a term you accepted being grouped into? Meaning the group of artists working in that area in the 1960s: you, Ken Price, Billy Al Bangston, Charles Arnoldi, Ed Ruscha.

BELL: I’ve actually never heard that term before but it sounds like the type of thing Judy Chicago might have called us.

POWERS: What is the rarest kind of light? Some might argue it’s the Northern Lights but I would say it’s the green flash at sunset.

BELL: I’ve seen that in Venice. More than once. At first I thought something was wrong with my eyes. I believe it’s related to the sunlight going through the water at eye level for a split second.

POWERS: Are there any colors you gravitate towards?

BELL: I like reds and blues. They do things to your eye. The blues are close to ultraviolet and the reds are close to infrared. You can’t see ultraviolet and you can’t see infrared either, but there are energies at work with those colors you can feel. I like the idea of making things that you can feel.

POWERS: Ellsworth Kelly has some color combinations like that, which dance in your eye and are almost impossible to photograph.

BELL: He was a friend of mine, Ellsworth. a gentleman.

Blues from Aspen, 2018 
Lagoon and true fog laminated glass 
Each pane: 72 x 92 x 92 inches (182.9 x 233.7 x 233.7 cm) 
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth, and Anthony Meier Fine Arts. Commissioned by Madison Square Park Conservancy. Photo: Timothy Schenck. 

POWERS: One of your art catalogues is named Time Machines. Is that after the book?

BELL: Have you ever read “The Invisible Man” by HG Wells? There’s a scientist named Griffin whom I feel a certain kinship with. In the story he develops a potion, which makes tissue invisible. The effect is that the body no longer absorbs light. It will pass through it. But no one from the establishment believes in his invention. He was met with ridicule and I empathize with the character. Anyway, before he tries out the potion on a person he feeds some to his landlady’s cat, which makes the animal invisible except for the pupils of its eyes. I had a large sculpture at my studio I’d just made and my daughter who was six years old walked into the center of it, and all I could see through the glass were the pupils of her eyes. So, I named the sculpture “The Dilemma of Griffin’s Cat.”

POWERS: You have said that glass does three things with light: absorb, transmit, and reflect. Which is most essential to activating your work?

BELL: I can say that the most tenuous of the three is absorbed light—that which penetrates and sticks with you.

POWERS: How did you come up with that pink carpet for your Dia Beacon piece?

BELL: It started because the building is an old factory. The room where my sculpture is situated is where they used to print the boxes for animal crackers. When they removed all the heavy machinery, there were big holes in the floor. So, I said, “We can’t do this project unless we have a pedestal or carpet underneath to level out the surface. Finally the curator agreed, and while we were sitting there she asks me, “What color are you going to make the carpet?” At that moment, her assistant was walking by wearing a pink sweater. I pointed at it and said, “THAT color!”

POWERS: Thank god the woman didn’t wear a gray turtleneck to work that day.

BELL: It was intuition and spontaneity and happenstance all rolled into one. I learned that from my teacher Robert Irwin: as an artist you have to trust yourself.

POWERS: You have a show opening at Judd Foundation in SoHo.

BELL: Don [Judd] was the first artist in New York to buy a work from me out of the studio.

Irresponsible Iridescense is on view through January 31 @ Judd Foundation 101 Spring St, New York

Improvisations in the Park is on view through March 15 @ Madison Square Park

Installation view Irresponsible Iridescence, September 29, 2025–January 31, 2026, Judd Foundation, 101 Spring Street, New York. Photo Timothy Doyon ©️Judd Foundation. Art ©️Larry Bell. Donald Judd Art © Judd Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 

The Credible Image: An Interview of Anna Weyant On The Occasion Of Her Solo Exhibition Loose Screw

Anna Weyant Buffet, 2020 Oil on linen 36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 centimeters) © Anna Weyant, Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo

Anna Weyant
Buffet, 2020
Oil on linen
36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 centimeters)
© Anna Weyant, Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo

interview by Bill Powers

Falling, living, laughing, touching—the still, subdued, painterly fantasies of Anna Weyant sway to and fro from the warmly resplendent hues of the Dutch Masters, to the madness of Otto Dix, to the gold of an Instagram selfie’s golden hour. The work, much of it created under the shadow of a global pandemic, are prime moments of a zeitgeist suddenly hollowed by the screeching halt of life as we know it: backgrounds are blackened out, clouds obscure, and curtains drape with muted uncertainties. Everything is vague and everything is a warm oblivion, like the sand of an hourglass exploded and the grains took the shape of a world that resembled its former self. But time doesn’t stop on a dime, it lurches, chugs forward with ghostlike animation even when your foot is on the break, which is what makes Weyant’s paintings so exciting—brushstroke by brushstroke, they are full of that potential energy. In the following interview, Bill Powers and Anna Weyant discuss her upcoming show at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles.

BILL POWERS: Tell me about your solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

ANNA WEYANT: The show is called Loose Screw, which is also the name of the first painting I made for it. Some people assume it’s a self-portrait, but I was actually thinking about Ellen Birkenblit’s screaming woman series, that type of silhouette. I liked the title because it’s kind of a joke on me, but when I told my mom she was like, “Honey, don’t ruin your show with such an ugly name.” Sorry, mom.

POWERS: Why are most of your paintings some shade of sepia?

WEYANT: I don’t want to be distracted by color. I prefer a more muted palette.

POWERS: Do you ever worry about being too close in your painting style to John Currin?

WEYANT: I wish. He’s so much better than me. I remember going to a book signing he did at the Marc Jacob’s store on Bleecker Street. When I got to the front of the line, John asked me if I wanted the book inscribed to anyone in particular. I was so starstruck that I just smiled like an idiot and said nothing.

 
 

POWERS: I ask because a painting of yours like “Slumber,” the shape of the figure’s mouth reminds me of the central figure in Currin’s Thanksgiving painting, the oval of the lips.

WEYANT: It’s such a different scenario, though. My painting is of a woman having an orgasm in her sleep. I was nervous it might be too cheesy, so I folded her arms across her chest almost like she’s laying in state, funerary. A little creepiness can save a painting sometimes. And then the gravity of the candle flicker behind her is off which makes you question the reality of the narrative.

POWERS: You have made some paintings of very young girls: one stuffing her bra, another in underwear. Do you worry about the sexualization of children?

WEYANT: I think of it more along the lines of a before and after picture or a Clark Kent vs. Superman situation. I can remember being a little girl and wanting boobs and craving the power of womanhood. I imagined a level of agency and confidence that I would one day inhabit, which—if I’m being honest—eludes me even now. So those paintings are about looking back. And then, sometimes I like to make companion paintings so the girl stuffing her bra might be the same person we see in my painting “Head,” which is heavy on cleavage.

 
Anna Weyant  Falling Woman, 2020 Oil on linen 48 x 36 inches (121.9 x 91.4 centimeters) © Anna Weyant, Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo

Anna Weyant
Falling Woman, 2020
Oil on linen
48 x 36 inches (121.9 x 91.4 centimeters)
© Anna Weyant, Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles/New York/Tokyo

 

POWERS: And there was a hot stove composition you made two versions of.

WEYANT: Well, I did a drawing that was almost like a PSA of a young girl’s finger burning on a hot coil. Then, for the painting of the same scene, I made it a woman’s index finger only she’s really pressing down on the hot stove as if to assert it’s her prerogative to hurt herself.

 
Anna Weyant Untitled, 2019 Colored pencil on paper 15 x 11 in. Courtesy of the artist and Half Gallery

Anna Weyant
Untitled, 2019
Colored pencil on paper
15 x 11 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Half Gallery

 

POWERS: Do you always make a study of the painting first?

WEYANT: I make a sketch, but it might not be rendered in great detail. And, of course, the image can change as I develop the narrative. I wanted to make a painting of a woman falling down a flight of stairs. It started with an Edward Gorey picture of a girl tripping down this very grand staircase. In my painting, I dressed the woman in more formal attire and I cropped in tightly. She appears upside down, almost like a Baselitz figure, only the pose is meant to be naturally-occuring, not intentionally flipped as he does. The idea was that artifice can’t prevent you from making a complete fool of yourself. Even in a Balenciaga dress, there’s still a chance you might face-plant down a flight of stairs holding a glass of champagne. I guess embarrassment can be a real equalizer in that way.

POWERS: I loved the still life of flowers you made with a straw sticking out of the bouquet.

WEYANT: I could paint flowers all day long. I thought it was interesting to add a straw like someone was trying to suck the water out of the vase. If you look at that painting as memento mori then the addition of the straw is almost an accelerator to kill the flowers faster. In another still life, I cut all the buds off the top so it’s like a murdered bouquet with just beheaded stems sticking out and a sharp knife resting on the table beside them. Of course, all cut flowers are dead and there’s an inherent violence in how they became so. The first flower painting I ever showed with Blum & Poe was called “JAWS.” It was such a traditional painting that I found it unnerving. And I always liked that line from the movie about there’s something in the water. The sinister can often be masked by beauty or even tranquility.

 
 

POWERS: Your first solo show in 2019 was called Welcome to the Dollhouse. Was that meant to be an overt reference to your own childhood?

WEYANT: I did make a dollhouse painting, but more as an homage to Robert Gober. Memories by nature are a kind of container. And I love when you see dollhouses in murder mysteries or horror movies. They are never used as symbols of comfort. It’s always a bad omen somehow. And it’s weird how when you paint something in miniature it creates a kind of emotional distance that lets you get freakier with the particulars: a set of legs poking out from under a bed.

POWERS: Who would you cite as contemporary influences on your work?

WEYANT: I mean, we already discussed John Currin. I named a painting John once after him, only it was of a little girl with a candelabra. I was referencing a painting he had made called Anna so I thought of it like an inside joke—you know, trading names—even though it’s impossible for anyone but me to get the joke. And even then, it’s not very funny. The other artist I think about a lot is Francesca Woodman, the mood of her photographs and how she captured a woman’s body, the bends and folds against the light.

POWERS: You did a portrait of the painter Cynthia Talmadge for your first solo show as well.

WEYANT: Yes, I worked as her studio assistant one summer and I always thought she had a timeless look about her, like she could have been transported from the 1940s. I love when people have a sensibility about them that reminds you of some bygone era. It’s rare.

POWERS: How do you decide if a work is successful?

WEYANT: I think it needs to feel credible as an image. Often humor is another good indicator. I made a painting of a white pencil snapped in half and called it “Lines” because at first glance it looks like two lines of cocaine. Art is my drug!

Loose Screw is on view by appointment March 23 - May 1 @ Blum & Poe 2727 S. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles

 
Anna Weyant Stepped on a spider, 2020 Oil on canvas 20 x 16 in. Courtesy of the artist and Half Gallery

Anna Weyant
Stepped on a spider,
2020
Oil on canvas
20 x 16 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Half Gallery