About John McLaughlin
While John McLaughlin’s (1898–1976) work can be understood as descending from early abstractionists including Piet Mondrian, perhaps his greatest influence came from Eastern aesthetics, particularly Japanese art and culture. His life and work were inspired significantly by his experiences living in Japan, and his lifelong study of the art and language of the country. Recruited in intelligence and as a translator during the war, he developed an even more heightened sensitivity to Japanese customs and values, which guided his art after returning to civilian life in 1945.
McLaughlin strayed from the expected postwar language of Abstract Expressionism – instead, his experiences renewed his fascination with elusive states of feeling and contemplation that were consistent with visual stillness, simplicity, and geometry.
By the time McLaughlin arrived at Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles to make prints in October 1962, he was already regarded as a leader in Southern Californian postwar painting. Although McLaughlin created only 25 prints in his lifetime, each work is a poignant example of the artist’s mastery of form and color, and his meditations on emptiness, presence, and nature.
McLaughlin greatly influenced artists of the California Light and Space Movement, such as James Turrell, and his work is held in the collections of LACMA and The Whitney Museum among others.
John McLaughlin was born in 1898 in Sharon, Massachusetts. His mother had a very large collection of Japanese objects. McLaughlin’s education and exposure to Japanese culture shaped his personal interests and profoundly affected his professional choices later in life. He moved to Japan in 1935 and studied Japanese art and language, which was a rare opportunity for an American during this time.
Upon returning to Boston in 1938, McLaughlin opened an art gallery called The Tokaido, Inc. where he sold Japanese prints and imported objects from China and Japan. In 1946, McLaughlin moved to Dana Point in Southern California where he became one of the few American abstract artists. He created bilateral paintings with symmetry on the left and right sides of the canvas using vertical and horizontal rectangles. By creating a work that is completely abstract, McLaughlin strove to show the relationship of man to nature without becoming didactic or influencing the viewer’s thoughts.
McLaughlin’s first group exhibition was in 1949 at the Los Angeles County Museum. His first solo exhibition was in 1952 at the Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles. In 1963, the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Museum) exhibited McLaughlin’s first major museum retrospective. In 1975, the Laguna Art Museum held McLaughlin’s second museum retrospective. McLaughlin died on March 22, 1976, in Dana Point.