Goodbye, Connor Everts
“The Flanneries – Another Day” (2002), by Connor Everts
A Canvas as Large as Life
Remembering Torrance artist Connor Everts (1928-2016)
I remember one day when Norman Zammitt made the comment that Connor Everts looked like Fidel Castro. Out of the corner of my eye I glanced over at Connor and, sure enough, he did seem to resemble the Cuban revolutionary.
Well, Connor was a revolutionary himself, someone who pushed art and ideology to its limits and then, in various ways, paid the price. This past Sunday, at the age of 88, he passed away in his Torrance home, surrounded by an audience of family members and loved ones.
Connor Everts with his wife, Judy
One of his good friends, Michelle Deziel Hernandez, a former curator at the Norton Simon Museum, wrote an excellent obituary about Connor, seemingly on the spur of the moment. Much of what follows is from her hand, some of it is from Connor’s website, with the salacious parts contributed by yours truly.
To convey an inkling of L.A. art history, we’ll start in 1956 when Connor founded the Exodus Group and Gallery. It was a progressive artist cooperative based in San Pedro. But more than just an exhibition space, Exodus also provided a working place for established and emerging artists. Like who? you’re asking. Well, for starters Los Angeles artists like Wallace Berman and Ed Kienholz. In 1957, Everts made the controversial move to remount an exhibition of works by Berman at the Exodus Gallery that had just been censored and shut down by police at the Ferus Gallery for breaking the city’s anti-obscenity laws.
These days, when one can post almost anything, while finding everything, on the internet, it’s hard to imagine what kind of censorship laws were in the books half a century ago.
In 1964, Connor found himself in the center of one of the most notorious events in Los Angeles art history. Police raided and shut down an exhibition of his work at the Zora Gallery in Los Angeles. On display were nine lithographs comprising a series titled “Studies of Desperation.” They were works created in response to the chaos of the times following the assassination of President Kennedy. Reflecting on the series, the artist said the images were his renderings of someone looking out from the womb and choosing not to be born until the world was a better place. Fair enough, right?
While these works are now widely regarded and seen to embody the psychic and political turmoil of the era, at the time, well, uh-no, these prints were considered offensive and vulgar. Connor was arrested and tried for obscenity. The outraged Los Angeles art community united and rallied behind Connor in support. After a second trial, the first one being dismissed in a hung jury, the artist was exonerated.
But only in some quarters. Although he was not convicted, Connor was terminated from his teaching position at Chouinard. He also suffered a subsequent beating by police that caused permanent nerve damage to his drawing hand.
That’s pretty powerful stuff. Imagine if someone pulled John Baldessari out into the road and gave him a few kicks to the midriff. We wouldn’t hear the end of it. But Connor endured all that. He walked the walk, talked the talk, and lived to tell the tale.
Connor Everts in 2012. In the book, that’s him on the left, with his artwork on the right. Photo
But Connor wasn’t just a feisty youngster in those days. Early on he was recognized as an artist to be reckoned with. For example, he was awarded a prestigious painting prize from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1955 and regularly exhibited his work at galleries and museums along the West Coast, including one-man shows in San Francisco, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum).
Connor Everts in his studio. Photo by Naomi Wegner
I neglected to say that Connor was built like a longshoreman… largely because he’d spent quite a few years working as one. You see, after World War II he attended universities in the United States, Mexico, and England on the G.I. Bill, and then supported himself during the day by lifting 50 ton cargo containers with his bare hands, and by night devoting himself to his art. He had dozens of girlfriends, many wives and children, but clearly the cherry on the cupcake was Judy Colman Everts, to whom he was married for 20 years. Their house near Old Torrance is right next door to an old corner market, The Market, that Connor converted into his working studio.
Connor’s teaching career didn’t end with his dismissal from Chouinard (now CalArts). During the late 1960s and 1970s he was a guest artist and instructor at the San Francisco Art Institute, University of Southern California, and California Institute of Technology. He spent time working in Japan in 1968, traveled and lectured extensively throughout Europe, and spent five years beginning in 1976 as Artist in Residence at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan.
“Exodus Diminished” (2010), by Connor Everts
He left teaching in 1980, according to his website, and returned to his studio to become a semi-recluse and part-time bon vivant. However, if you knew Connor during his latter years you might say he was a full-time bon vivant. He had a sharp sense of humor and was never at a loss for a good pun, and some bad ones too. His kids and his grandkids loved him, because he knew how to entertain everyone. Perhaps he was a born raconteur, but he could also talk knowledgeably and at great length about art, and his conversation was always enlivening, spiced with whimsy and wit. Even in his later years he’d get up in the middle of the night and go next door to his studio to work. He had that fire. I remember the twinkle in his eye and his laugh. A person like that is a rarity, and an example we don’t want to forget. Connor Everts is going to be missed, but he’ll always be a part of L.A. art history. And to think, we had him right here in Torrance. ER