Noah Purifoy; Watts artist
Hyfler/Rosner
March 9, 2004 Tuesday
Noah Purifoy, 86; Assemblage Artist
Scott Timberg, Times Staff Writer
Noah Purifoy, the renowned assemblage artist and Watts
Towers Arts Center co-founder, died Friday in a fire at his
home in Joshua Tree. He was 86.
Purifoy was found on the floor next to his wheelchair Friday
morning by his caretaker, who called San Bernardino County
sheriff's deputies and firefighters to the home.
A coroner's office spokesman said that the artist may have
fallen asleep while smoking. An autopsy will be conducted
later this week to determine the cause of death.
Purifoy was best known for "66 Signs of Neon," a traveling
exhibition of sculptures made from 3 tons of rubble from the
1965 Watts riots. His works have been part of the
collections of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the
Whitney Museum in New York and the California African
American Museum in Los Angeles.
Purifoy's work was large and sprawling -- unwieldy but
artful combinations of bicycle wheels, bowling balls, train
tracks, old refrigerators -- making it nearly impossible to
sell or collect.
Most of it was assembled on 7 1/2 acres in the high desert,
owned since 1998 by the Noah Purifoy Foundation, a group
dedicated to maintaining his open-air studio, gallery and
museum.
"The idea of taking found objects and putting them in the
harsh conditions of the desert added a strange dimension to
his work," said artist Ed Ruscha, who donated much of the
land. "It marked a big decision on his part to take that
on -- the sun and wind and weather change."
Purifoy, the 10th of 13 children, was born in rural Alabama,
where his parents were farmers, and moved to Birmingham at
age 3.
"As a child, I wasn't conscious of racism," he told The
Times in 1995, "but I was aware something was going on.
Once, when I was 5, my mother was taking me to the store,
and there was a parade in the street. People had hoods on,
and when I asked my mother what was happening, she said,
'That's the Ku Klux Klan.' "
The family moved to Cleveland when Purifoy was 12. He later
studied at Alabama State Teachers College, taught shop in
Montgomery, fought in the South Pacific during World War II
and earned a master's degree in social work at Atlanta
University.
In 1952, after several years doing social work in Cleveland,
Purifoy moved to Los Angeles, a city he had first glimpsed
while in the Army. On a whim, he enrolled at the Chouinard
Art Institute, a Disney-funded art school in Lafayette Park.
In 1964, he co-founded the Watts Towers Arts Center, an
outreach program.
Purifoy's embrace of assemblage came the following year,
during the Watts riots, when he and colleagues collected and
later assembled debris for "66 Signs of Neon." His burst of
interest in creating assemblage -- sparked in part by the
artist's fascination with Dada -- faded as the '70s began.
Appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to the then-new California
Arts Commission in 1976, Purifoy abandoned much of his own
work and toiled for a decade in Sacramento in arts and
education programs.
He moved to Joshua Tree in 1989, at the urging of friends.
"I wanted to do an earth piece," he recently told the Desert
News of Palm Springs, "and you can't get that much land in
Los Angeles to do an earth piece." His interest in creating
work blossomed again, and he entered an extremely productive
period.
Despite his roots in the African American arts movement,
Purifoy identified himself less as an African American
artist and more as an assemblage artist, working to earn
respect for that sometimes-overlooked genre. In the Desert
News interview, he went on at length about the roots of
assemblage in Picasso's collage, and complained about "a
unique art form not even recognized in universities."
By contrast, he brushed past a reference to his identity as
an African American. "He didn't like being called a black
artist," said friend and arts advocate Bob Silva. "It
diminished the art."
Nor was his work -- with the exception of some pieces like a
"colored" drinking fountain and a recent unfinished piece
called "Gallows," with its hints of lynching -- overtly
political. Sue Welsh, secretary of the Noah Purifoy
Foundation and a Purifoy friend of 40 years, said his recent
work was increasingly whimsical.
Still, artist John Outterbridge, who ran the Watts center
with Purifoy and remembered Purifoy's hunger for late-night
conversation, emphasized that his art came out of the black
experience.
"Because we weren't wealthy people, everything around us
became part of our palette," Outterbridge said. "He grew up
in a part of the South where a pair of pants was never too
old to wear."
Described by some as soft-spoken and philosophical, Purifoy
was also well-connected in the high desert arts community.
"Noah drew people to him," said Welsh, who added that the
foundation would continue to maintain the site and work.
"Every artist I ever introduced him to came away with the
impression that they had just met a longtime friend," Silva
said. "After talking to him for five minutes, you felt you
knew him -- or he'd known you -- all your life."
In the last few years, Purifoy had become a kind of
godfather to younger conceptual artists who had begun
settling near his Joshua Tree-area compound. The artist
Andrea Zittel, for instance, told The Times in 2002 that she
moved to the area because of Purifoy's example; she later
included some of his work in twice-yearly desert art shows
called High Desert Test Sites.
Ruscha, too, said he had been inspired by Purifoy's
longevity and continued enthusiasm for his work.
"He was working up until the very last," said Ruscha, who
said the last year had been difficult for Purifoy because of
a broken hip and other medical problems. "Any artist who's
lived that long and still wants to keep working -- support
that person."
Purifoy is survived by four sisters, Ophelia Jeffries, Mary
Lewis, Lucille McDaniel and Esther Purifoy, all of the
Cleveland area.
No service is planned, though memorials are being planned in
Joshua Tree and Los Angeles. Information is available from
Sue Welsh of the Noah Purifoy Foundation at (213) 382-7516
or www.noahpurifoy.com.