WATTS TOWERS
[binder title]
Seymour Rosen [Photographer] et al.
Seymour Rosen [Photographer]: WATTS TOWERS [binder title]. Los Angeles: The Towers of Simon Rodia & Associated Arts Center, [ c. 1962]. Original edition. Leatherette [Ful-Vu CB-10] presentation binder with typed title label taped to front panel, black endpapers, parallel wire binding and 9 plastic sleeves housing 16 items hand assembled as an advocacy presentation package to showcase the towers at a crucial point in their ongoing debate within the greater Los Angeles cultural community.
The 16 items include [10] 8 x 10 silver gelatin prints with Seymour Rosen’s studio stamps to versos; [2] single page typescripts; [2] single page offset lithograph fact sheets; one copy of SIMON RODIA’S TOWERS IN WATTS [ Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1962]; and one copy of THE WATTS TOWERS [The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts, Los Angeles, 1961]. Leatherette covers with tape repaired spine, chipped corners and loosening front endsheet. Non-archival plastic sleeves splitting at fore edges. Rosen’s silver gelatin prints all uniformly well preserved. Contents overall very good and housed in a fair to good retail presentation binder.
Contents:
- Kurt W. Meyer, FAIA: single page typescript (with dated penciled notation).
- The Towers of Simon Rodia & Associated Arts Center, Watts, CA: single page offset lithograph fact sheet with two line art reproductions.
- Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts: single page offset lithograph site plan (prepared by The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts).
- Seymour Rosen [Photographer]: SIMON RODIA’S TOWERS IN WATTS. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1962. First edition [sponsored by the Contemporary Art Council and the Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts]. Tall octavo. Perfect bound photo illustrated wrappers. 48 pp. Fully illustrated with black and white and color photographs. Wrappers soiled, but a very good copy. 5.165 x 10-inch exhibition catalog with 48 pages devoted to Seymour Rosen’s photography of Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers. Catalog published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to coincide with the exhibit of the same name in 1962—the first devoted to this unique work of architecture and art.
- The Committee for Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts: THE WATTS TOWERS. Los Angeles, 1961. Original edition. 16mo. Photo illustrated thick stapled wrappers. Printed vellum endsheets. [16] pp. 12 black and white photographs. A very good copy.
- Seymour Rosen [Photographer]: [10] 8 x 10 silver gelatin prints, each with Studio ink stamp, Reproduction ink stamp, and pencil file number notation to versos.
- Simon Rodia biography: single page typescript (with dated penciled notation).
“Rosen’s photoessay conveys both the august and the intimate aspects of the towers. It includes grand, now-iconic images of the towers’ imposing skeletal frames, which seem both ancient and modern silhouetted against the sky, as well as keenly focused details, often showing the personal vision and hand of the artist. There are incised dates when Rodia began certain sections, impressions of the simple tools he used, and abstract decorative elements formed from household items. Multicolored tiles made of broken glass, crockery, and other cast-off materials give the cement surfaces a subtle, scintillating glow.
“The catalogue essay, by Paul M. Laporte, provides insights into the character of Simon Rodia, a skilled construction worker with no formal artistic training. The essay also gives a detailed overview of the structure of the work and recounts the towers’ early history, including bureaucratic attempts to tear them down. This early publication showcases the towers at a crucial point in their ongoing cultural journey.” —LACMA
Seymour Rosen [Chicago, 1935 – 2006] moved with his parents to Los Angeles in the early 1950s; his older brother, Jerry, was in the military in Germany at the time. “The 50s [were] a perfect time for a youngster of 17 to come to Los Angeles,” Seymour wrote, and, invigorated by the “new tastes and smells” as well as by “novel forms of creativity,” he asked his brother to bring him back a German camera. “No one knew what impact [Seymour] would have in the photographic community once he had a camera in his hands,” Jerry later wrote.
Rosen attended Phoenix University in Los Angeles for a couple of years and also informally apprenticed to the noted photographer Marvin Rand. Rand had been photographing Simon Rodia’s Towers in the Watts section of Los Angeles, among other subjects, and suggested that Seymour try to photograph them himself. At his first attempt, Rosen walked around and around, finally snapped three photographs, and then gave up; remembering this occasion later, he described his surrender to the Towers’ intensity as “falling in love.” Seduced by their beauty and undaunted by their complexity, he was to return again and again for fifty more years, and his photographs of the Towers have become some of the most iconic—as well as historically valuable—images ever made of these spectacular constructions. Although he was drafted shortly thereafter and sent to Korea, this experience had already determined the path for his life’s work.<p>
Upon his return, Rosen became a photographer for the seminal Ferus Gallery, and his images of some of the most important figures in the contemporary art scene of that time continue to be referenced and reproduced. He pursued his ongoing documentation of the Towers as well, and these images were soon complemented by his expanding interest in popular, creative, and folk arts of all kinds. He captured images of custom hot-rod cars, store-front churches, street happenings such as the “love-ins” of the sixties, parades, murals, neon signs, graffiti, and gang signs, reveling in the boundary-busting aesthetic expressions of those who would never describe themselves as artists. Above all, however, was his fascination—in his words, “obsession”—with the art environments, and he worked diligently in support of Rodia’s masterpiece he was beginning to be aware of the fact that other art environments—numerous others—existed elsewhere as well.
In 1962 Rosen was given his first major solo photographic exhibition, Simon Rodia’s Towers in Watts, at the Los Angeles County Museum; this was followed four years later by the exhibition I am Alive, designed to “stimulate awareness of the creative and celebratory events of the life of Los Angeles.” Anxious to expand an experiential approach to the arts among the young, he became instrumental in establishing the Junior Art Center in Barnsdall Park; there, he developed curriculum and exhibitions, taught, and established an archive. He and his colleagues invented imaginative ways to stimulate creativity, using, among other media, lasers, holograms, and inflatable objects, along with the more standard paints and clay. — Jo Farb Hernández
A work of monumental architectural sculpture, the Watts Towers are constructed of a structural steel core, wrapped in wire mesh which has been covered with mortar, and inlaid with tile, glass, shell, pottery, and rocks. Set in only a fourteen-inch foundation, the tallest of the towers is ninety-nine and a half feet tall.
The west tower, begun in 1921, contained the longest reinforced concrete columns in the world upon its completion, an important record in the history of architecture. The stability of the entire monument is ensured by its innovative architectural design embodying universal structural principles found in nature.
This integrated series of works, combining artistic elements of sculpture and architecture, is an unparalleled example of an art environment constructed by a single, self-taught artist. Since coming to the world’s attention in 1959, the site has become the focus of cultural and aesthetic movements addressing issues of social and economic justice. To this day, the Watts Towers serve as a symbol of freedom, creativity, and initiative for the local African-American and Latino community and beyond.
Watts Towers is a National Historic Landmark, that is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, California State Historic Monument, California State Historic Park, and a Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Monument.
The Watts Towers attract over 40,000 visitors yearly from across the nation and around the world including artists, poets, musicians, architects and social and cultural historians. As host and guardian of the site, the 55-year old Watts Towers Arts Center offers continuing arts and music education and exhibitions year-round for the local community. — ca.gov