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William Leavitt (born 1941) is a conceptual artist known for paintings, photographs, installations, and performance works that examine "the vernacular culture of L.A. through the filter of the entertainment industry...drawing on 'stock environments' and designs of films as well as the literature of the place." [1]
Sep 3, 2019 · In the 1990s he made drawings and paintings of exteriors, portraying iconic Los Angeles buildings with irony, exaggerating their form and ornament to make them look incongruous, or illuminate...
- Annette Leddy
Three works by William Leavitt, from left to right: Residential B-2, 1995, Innuendo, 1995, and Planetarium Projector, 1987. Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology. February 9–May 18, 2014. Photography by Brian Forrest.
Mar 13, 2021 · Though the artist has frequently utilized the innate theatricality of a gallery setting - “My early installations were like fragments of stage sets…sort of like sculptures where I used trees and lights and sound.” – in this exhibition Leavitt confines the nature of his experimentation to his images.
Nov 9, 2022 · Redefinition of Art in Los Angeles, 1967-1978, Sam Francis Gallery, Crossroads School, Santa Monica Collection show , Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (catalogue)
WILLIAM LEAVITT will show his first New York installation at Artists Space May 5 through June 9. Leavitt, who is well known in Los Angeles where he lives, also exhibits regularly in Europe. The Artists Space installation is one of Leavitt's tableaux pieces that while self-contained, often become sets for actual plays or are projected as such.
William Leavitt lives in Los Angeles. The private space of domestic interiors can seem strikingly ordinary but also quietly unnatural, as if it exists partly in the past and partly in the future.
