For all its glass-walled Case Study houses, its golden-hour sunlight, its frothing bougainvillea, its nodding coconut palms and distant snow-capped mountains, Los Angeles can be astonishingly ugly. The street on which artist Robert Therrien chose to build his home-studio, in 1989, might be among its least prepossessing. In an area south of downtown dominated by aggressive security fencing, window grilles and low-rise industrial units, Therrien’s front gate scarcely draws a second glance. Except, perhaps, for its colour: it is painted a fetching shade of dusty peach-pink.
Therrien, who died in 2019 at the age of 71, is not often thought of as a colourist. The sculptures for which he is best known are his giant tables and chairs, big enough for an adult to walk beneath and gaze up in childlike wonder. Under the Table (1994), permanently on display at The Broad museum in Los Angeles, is a realistic but drab shade of chocolate brown. Other pieces by him, such as his towering stacks of Brobdingnagian ceramic dishes, are usually rendered either in off-white or in utilitarian shades of pale pink or blue.
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