‘British Invasion’ of U.K. Painters in California Takes High Desert Museum by Strategy

Steve Silkin

Not to be confused with the recent “London Calling” at the Getty, the “British Invasion” has landed at the Museum of Art and History in the high desert town of Lancaster at the far north reach of Los Angeles County. While “London Calling” allowed Angelenos to get caught up on the big painters of Britain, “British Invasion” explores the works of British artists who have set up shop in California.

The 25 British-born artists on display through Jan. 22 all came to work on the West Coast. The leading figure among them is David Hockney, known for his vivid paintings, photo collages – and even the designs on the bottom of the pool at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel in the center of Los Angeles. (The poolside bar offers an opportunity to view his work while imbibing; viewers of “British Invasion” will want to stop by either before or after their trip to Lancaster.)

Christopher Isherwood, the gay author of “I Am a Camera” – a novel that become the musical “Cabaret” was an early L.A. pioneer, introducing Hockney to the scene here. Both were from Northern England, and they had more in common, too: their love for California, but even more so for California boys.

Hockney’s series of portraits of the British artists who stopped in at his L.A. studio in the early 1990s is one of the centerpieces of the exhibit. The video stills, “112 L.A. Visitors” documents the migration of these post-modernists, many of whom stayed and became as Californian as the natives. (Any Angeleno who’s lived in London will tell you: It’s great. For a year or two. Then the sunshine beckons and you must come home.)

Among the artists represented in the show are David Eddington, Max Presneill, Kate Savage and Jon Measures. Eddington, who paints in Venice, is represented by “Summer,” a dreamy desert oasis landscape of pastels that nonetheless evokes menace through the placement of a skull and crossbones and other human remains. Prenseill, curator at the Torrance Art Museum, shows three abstract canvases. Savage, born in Britain but raised in New York, displays a painting of a woman in indigenous headgear, alongside the “hair hat” that inspired the work.

Measures, an artist, graphic designer, and teacher, contributes another of the exhibit’s showpieces: a montage of about three dozen painted box forms, called “It Is What It Is.” The raised paintings show street scenes and other vistas of life in his chosen home of Los Angeles.

Many residents of Southern California only go to the high desert on the way to Vegas, Mammoth or Death Valley, or for the annual poppy viewing. This exhibit is an additional draw.

“British Invasion” at the Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, 665 W. Lancaster Blvd., is Nov. 19 – Jan. 22.