The Avant/Garde Diaries: Aaron Rose Talks Watts Towers
It's impossible to forget the first time you visit Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. I remember being confronted by the beauty of the spires that look dreamlike and fragile at first until you realize how strong and robust they in fact are upon closer inspection. Th
It’s impossible to forget the first time you visit Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. I remember being confronted by the beauty of the spires that look dreamlike and fragile at first until you realize how strong and robust they in fact are upon closer inspection.
They are one of the masterpieces of 20th C. folk architecture but also so much more than that label entails.
Built over the course of 33 years (1921–54) beside the train tracks of a neighborhood more often associated with 1960s race riots than artistic genius, the Towers of Simon Rodia are the work of an Italian American whose vision of beauty was realized through the accumulation of broken tiles, plates, bottles and cups on armatures of mess, mortar and pipes. He wasn’t popular with his neighbors, who obviously didn’t understand his artistic obsession.
Rodia’s work, like a cathedral to artistic independence, is the subject of the latest installment of The Avant-Garde Diaries featuring Aaron Rose, who is most famously associated with the “Beautiful Losers” movement of art, skateboarding, music and design.
Rose shares his love for this monument far ahead of its time. It is a work that wasn’t built for crowds or the elite, but born from the dreams of an individual who felt compelled to create. It is the most remarkable form of art.
