Performances

CHRONOLOGY OF WAGNER DRIVES

Performances of the Wagner Drives were executed exclusively by Hockney from the 90s onward until I documented and reperformed them in 2015. Since then the music critic Alex Ross and the art historian James Elkins have performed versions of the Malibu Canyon Road Drive based on my documentation. Perhaps others have used the information from Ross's 2021 New Yorker story to perform their own Wagner Drives. Ways of capturing and presenting the drives have evolved over the years. Its status has changed from artistic experience for friends of the artist to museum video to experiential artwork accessible to any driver in Los Angeles. Most recently, Hockney included a brief nod to the Wagner Drives in his 2023 immersive exhibition at the Lightroom in London.

1990s

Hockney develops the drive in the Santa Monica Mountains

There are brief written accounts of the drives from passengers in the 1990s, such as Trip Gabriel's 1993 piece in the New York Times and Lawrence Weschler's 1997 piece in Los Angeles magazine.

In 1993 longtime friend Bing McGilvray films a Wagner Drive on a hand-held video camera. His home movie is never exhibited, excerpted, or otherwise made public.

2012

Hockney makes a three-camera video of a Wagner Drive in the San Gabriel Mountains. The video is exhibited at A Bigger Exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco from October 2013-January 2014. It is available on the Hockney Foundation website under the year 2012.

Wagner_Drive_2012.mp4

2015

I, Arthur Kolat, reperform the Malibu Canyon Road Drive and film it for a three-channel video installation.

Right: Documentation of Stunt Road video installation.

Below: three single-channel excerpts of the drive that cut between different camera angles.

Excerpt 1

Driving along PCH listening to America from West Side Story

Excerpt 2

Driving along Piuma Road listening to the Prelude of Wagner's Parsifal

Excerpt 3

Listening to Siegfried's funeral music from Wagner's Götterdämmerung in the mountains as the sun sets into the horizon of the Pacific Ocean

2021

New Yorker music critic Alex Ross performs the Malibu Canyon Road Drive.

2022

The art historians James Elkins and Margaret MacNamidhe perform a Wagner Drive. Jim supervised my art history master's thesis on the subject.

2023

Hockney includes the Wagner Drives in a montage of his life's work at his immersive exhibition at the Lightroom in London.

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