Joan Didion’s Legacy Lives on in Los Angeles | Smart News

“California is a spot by which a boom mentality and a way of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; by which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things higher work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.”

Joan Didion wrote those words in 1965, in an essay titled “Notes From a Native Daughter.” Over 50 years later, an excerpt from that essay can be displayed on a wall of Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum. The quote is highlighted as a part of “Joan Didion: What She Means,” an expansive exhibition opening this month that celebrates the American author’s life and work.

The retrospective arrives lower than a 12 months after Didion passed away last December, at age 87. In her long profession, which spanned greater than six a long time, Didion wrote a wealthy collection of books and essays, and have become known for her vivid, insightful depictions of American politics, society, culture and counterculture. In her later work, including 2005’s The Yr of Magical Pondering and 2011’s Blue Nights, Didion meditated on illness, aging and grief.

“What She Means” was curated by a fellow author: Hilton Als, a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and staff author on the Latest Yorker whom Didion counted as a friend. Als, who wrote the foreword to Didion’s last essay collection, 2021’s Let Me Tell You What I Mean, has previously curated shows on writers James Baldwin and Toni Morrison for Manhattan’s David Zwirner Gallery. He pitched the Didion show in 2019, and received her blessing.

Though Didion spent much of her life in Latest York, Als found it vital to anchor an exhibition about Didion’s legacy in California. Didion was born in Sacramento in 1934 and went to varsity on the University of California, Berkeley. She spent her life moving between California and Latest York; in 1988, after over 20 years in California, she moved back to Manhattan and stayed there for the remaining of her life.

Still, Als considers her to be a “uniquely California person,” he tells the Latest York Times’ Adam Nagourney. “To pitch it in California was really the purpose,” Als, who himself splits his time between Latest York and Berkeley, where he teaches writing on the University of California, says. “I just thought it was a tremendous place for her.”

That sentiment is shared by those aware of Didion, including Tracy Daugherty, a Didion biographer and professor at Oregon State University. “Didion clearly had a posh relationship with California, but she never lost the assumption that it, or its myths, had shaped her absolutely, and she or he was its daughter-in-exile,” he tells the Latest York Times.

Though Didion is originally from northern California, many consider her to be an “emblematic Los Angeles author and Los Angeles figure,” as former book critic for the Los Angeles Times David L. Ulin tells the Latest York Times, because she spent a few years living in and writing in regards to the star-studded city. To Ulin, Los Angeles is the perfect location for a Didion show.

“What She Means” is specified by 4 chronological sections: “Holy Water: Sacramento, Berkeley (1934–1956),” “Goodbye to All That: Latest York (1956–1963),” “The White Album: California, Hawai‘i (1964–1988),” and “Sentimental Journeys: Latest York, Miami, San Salvador (1988–2021).” The show spans 10,000 square feet of gallery space and features 215 items.

“It didn’t start out that big,” Connie Butler, the Hammer’s chief curator, tells the Latest York Times. “Hilton’s a voracious curator. He would still be adding things if he could.”

Included in those tons of of things are photos of Didion, akin to a 1996 image taken by Brigitte Lacombe. In it, Didion’s face is hidden, burrowed into her black turtleneck. The one visible parts of her are her hands, her bangs and her bob.

The exhibition also features 50 artists, including painters Vija Celmins, Ed Ruscha and fellow Sacramentan Wayne Thiebaud, in addition to photos by Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon. Lots of the chosen artworks evoke California each as a spot and a way of thinking, as Didion’s writing often did. Also included within the exhibition are film posters for A Star Is Born, the 1976 version starring Barbra Streisand, and The Panic in Needle Park, which Didion wrote the screenplays for along with her husband, John Gregory Dunne.

Such a large breadth of things is fitting for the primary major exhibition on Didion following her passing: She explored any subject that called to her, from John Wayne to the Vietnam War. “She was open to the world,” Als tells the Latest York Times, “and wrote about experiences apart from her own, all in an effort to grasp what made us, and thus herself, and why.”

“Joan Didion: What She Means” is on view on the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles through January 22, 2023.