As you know if you follow OTN, we are big Andy Warhol fans so imagine us driving down La Cienega and seeing a sign saying FERUS. This was the site of the original Ferus Gallery that held Andy Warhol’s first exhibition of the soup can paintings in July 1962. The top floor of the building was Artforum’s office at the time. The photograph of the building as it is today was taken from the middle of La Cienega, thanks to it being a Sunday and a truck that kindly stopped, well slowed down, so as not to kill the photographer. The big bonus was that when we got to the glass door and looked inside, there was the space virtually unchanged and empty. Half close your eyes and you could see the soup can paintings placed around the walls on their narrow wooden shelves.
Images: Top, the Ferus Gallery today. Middle, left as it was around 1965 with Ed Ruscha in the doorway from Kristine McKenna’s The Ferus Gallery. Right, a cartoon in the LA Times at the time of Warhol’s Ferus Gallery exhibition. Bottom, a shot through the door of the gallery as it is today and as it pretty much was then. (click on images to enlarge)
