Light and Space and conceptual artist Joe Goode was a valuable contributor in establishing the early development of the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s and 70s, and he continues to show frequently with museums and galleries around the world. His “Milk Bottle” mixed-media works of the 1960s and “Torn Cloud” series of paintings in the 1970s explored the illusionism of painting, visual perception, color, and the qualities of the two-dimensional surface, subjects that he continues to elucidate upon to this day.

Goode moved to Los Angeles from Oklahoma City in 1959 on the tails of his childhood friend Ed Ruscha, whom he befriended in Catholic school in the second grade. On the West Coast, he quickly joined the clique of artists defining the early Los Angeles art scene. An attendee at Chinouard Art Institute, Goode studied under Light and Space artist Robert Irwin, and took classes with students including Larry Bell and Lynn Foulkes. While not at school, Goode shared a house and studio space with fellow Oklahomans Ruscha and photographer Jerry McMillan.

In 1962, legendary curator Walter Hopps included one of Goode’s “Milk Bottle” paintings in the Pop art exhibition New Painting of Common Objects at the Pasadena Art Museum, now the Norton Simon Museum. These paintings positioned actual milk bottles in front of monochrome canvases. The milk bottles were painted the same color as their respective canvases and seemed to float in space. The arrangement created a visual conundrum, forcing the viewer to consider the picture plane, and both its possibilities and its limitations.

Impacted by the Los Angeles atmosphere, Goode began to explore these same issues in his “Torn Sky” paintings. The physical slashes and tears upon the blue-tinted canvases functioned as visual queries and interruptions, just as the milk bottles previously had. Beginning in the 1980s, Goode created hypnotic canvases reminiscent of the ocean using saturated blues, with the occasional suggestion of pink or green. In the “Ozone” series of the 1990s, hazy, fluorescent sparks of orange were splashed upon placid blue skies, suggesting indeterminate atmospheric effects of global warming, smog, sun, and heat.                            

The J. Paul Getty Museum posited Goode as one of the founders of Light and Space art by including the artist’s 1972 Torn Sky Painting 73 in its 2011-2012 landmark exhibition Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970. His work is represented in major museum collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Smithsonian Institution; the Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Joe Goode.” Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. Getty.edu. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.
Symonds, Alexandria and Ed Ruscha. “Seven Decades: Joe Goode x Ed Ruscha.” Interview Magazine. Web. 20 Nov. 2014.