LOS ANGELES — When artists Louise Bonnet and Adam Silverman floated the idea of an exhibition of their work at Hollyhock House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Los Angeles commission last year, they had no hope. “We thought they were just going to say no, but we were going to give it a shot,” Silverman said. The Los Angeles-based couple were looking for a place to show off their work — Bonnet is a painter and Silverman a ceramicist — outside of a traditional white cube. “We were interested in something domestic,” says Bonnet. “The only place we had ever seen our work together was in our house.” To their surprise, Hollyhock House curator Abbey Chamberlain Brach accepted, and last month their two-person show Tangles opened, the first such contemporary art exhibition in the building since it became a house museum half a century ago.
Completed in 1921, Hollyhock House was commissioned by Aline Barnsdall, an experimental theater producer, committed feminist and oil heiress who envisioned it as part of a 36-acre arts complex perched on a hill at the border of East Hollywood and Los Feliz. Her relationship with Wright, the architect she hired for the job, was antagonistic and combative, and he was eventually fired from the project, replaced by his assistant Rudolph Schindler, who was to become a seminal figure in the modernist architecture of the southern California. Barnsdall only lived in the house for a brief period before donating it to the town in 1927.
“It was an adversarial but productive relationship. She didn’t let herself be pushed around,” Bonnet says. “The fact that this house came out of it interested us.”
“They were like a couple getting married and divorced over and over again,” Silverman adds.
The couple made a conscious decision to work independently as they prepared for the show. “We both went to our studios and we didn’t see what the other was doing until the end,” says Bonnet.
Yet collaborative tensions have crept into their daily lives. Also being involved and invested in the show “got a bit claustrophobic,” Silverman says of their evening debriefs.
The resulting works respond to both the history and structure of the house while seeming slightly at odds with the period decor, like a funky party guest that you can’t quite place. Bonnet, who is known for her grotesque but seductive body imagery, contributed two large paintings and a drawing on paper, each depicting bulbous hands with intertwined gnarled fingers, their bumps and crevices resembling brains. Because artists were prohibited from putting new nails into the walls, the works are placed in the exact places where Barnsdall hung paintings from his extensive art collection, verified by archival photographs. In “Hollyhock Green” and “Hollyhock Gold” (both from 2022), Bonnet references the walls’ distinctive color scheme.
With their rough exteriors, dents and cracks, Silverman’s stoneware vessels display an aesthetic tension similar to that which Bonnet explores in his canvases. Several works feature two or more fused pots, a physical embodiment of tumultuous interdependence. He also incorporates the site, incorporating ash from nearby olive trees and seaweed from the Pacific Ocean into his glazes. The land the house sits on was originally called Olive Hill, and Silverman notes that it was oriented so that the Pacific Ocean was visible. Then there is the simple material connection, as the Mayan Revival residence was built using clay blocks as concrete was too expensive. “It’s a big pot,” Silverman says of the building.
The artists had to tackle not only the stormy relationship of the creators of the building, but also the peculiarities of the spaces. Ceiling heights vary from cramped to bulky, with some rooms bathed in light while others are shaded. “In many ways it’s generous, and in many ways empowering,” Silverman says. “In a museum, they get rid of problematic items.”
These challenges add a degree of drama to the exposition, framing it in dueling personalities, styles, and time periods.
“One thing that surprised us was how well the work was received by the house. He absorbed it in a weird way. He could have faced each other and fought,” says Bonnet. “It would have been interesting if it didn’t work out.”
