Actor and Art Collector Steve Martin Organizes a Love Letter to LA for Hauser & Wirth

L.A. Story is the name of a 1991 movie written by Steve Martin that was once voted the greatest Los Angeles–set film of the 20th century by the Los Angeles Times. It will also become the name of a Hauser & Wirth show organized by Martin that kicks off the fall season in LA this year.

The show, due to open on September 12 at the mega-gallery’s West Hollywood location, will feature landscapes, abstractions, and more that all contain an Angeleno flavor, per the gallery. Although there were will be representations of Los Angeles landmarks to be found here, some works do not explicitly depict the city, since the show’s approach is “far from literal,” per its announcement.

Certain works, such as paintings of rippling water by David Hockney and Calida Rawles, will allude to the backyards of Los Angeles’s many homes that have swimming pools. And a Vija Celmins painting of a hand firing a gun will be enlisted here to speak to Hollywood genre filmmaking.

Naturally, a number of famed LA-based artists, from Mark Bradford to Ed Ruscha, will figure in the exhibition, which Martin organized in collaboration with curator Ingrid Schaffner and senior director Mike Davis.

Martin said in a statement, “I’m thrilled that ‘L.A. Story’ is the focus of so many wonderful artists and a wonderful gallery, Hauser & Wirth, which is just across the street from the Troubadour, where I first stepped foot on Santa Monica Blvd., which began my L.A. sojourn.”

Martin, who appeared several times on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list during the 1990s, has some prior curatorial experience: he helped organize the Hammer Museum’s Lawren Harris show in 2016.