Tom Moran and Tom Sewell Fantasy by the Sea Peace Press: Culver City, CA, 1980 (1979) (Originally published by Beyond Baroque Foundation with a grant from the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts), 1960s
"The Aragon again fell into disrepair. It was reopened in the late 1960s as a rock music hall known as the Cheetah. Jim Morrison, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge and The Seeds were booked into the large hall, now psychedelically refurbished. The house band, called The Gnads was later to gain fame under the name Alice Cooper."
" . . ."
Art
"The Venice area was attracting another element . . . Artists, lured by the availability of low-rent studio space and good light, began to move into the older commercial buildings. In many cases they had national or international reputations. Their ranks included Billy Al Bengston, Claire Falkenstein, Charles and Ray Eames, Ron Cooper, Larry Bell, Chuck Arnoldi, Guy and Laddie Dill, Alexis Smith, Chris Burden, Ann McCoy, Peter Alexander, Linda Benglis, DeWain Valentine, Robert Irwin, Eric Orr, Loren Madsen, Chris Georgesco, Tom Wudl, Martha Alf, Gloria Kisch, and John McCracken.
"The artists of the 60s and 70s were not united by any pronounced exterior philosophy or life-style as the earlier "beats" were. Although there was social and professional contact between them, the Venice artists worked individually and resisted the easy application of geographic or regional labels. Except for the wall murals created by artists such as Terry Schoonhoven and the L.A. Fine Arts Squad, these artists left very little outward manifestation in Venice of their work.
"And yet their presence was soon recognized and commercialized when property owners began offering new specially-designed and expensive artist's studios on the real estate market. The low costs that had originally enticed the creative personalities to the beach area were fast disappearing and many of the artists found themselves displaced to areas away from Venice.