William Leavitt (born 1941) is a conceptual artist known for paintings, photographs, installations, and performance works that examine "the vernacular culture of L.A. through the filter of the entertainment industry...drawing on 'stock environments' and designs of films as well as the literature of the place.
"Over the last 40 years, William Leavitt has made a name for himself as an influential artist while staying so far out of fame's spotlight that his hard-to-categorize works have been all but invisible to the public," wrote the LA Times.
[5] Leavitt is a contemporary to artists like Allen Ruppersberg, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari, Bas Jan Ader, Guy de Cointet, and William Wegman, a generation that "distinguished their work from most melancholic Minimal/Conceptual art made in New York and Europe by using deadpan humor, slapstick comedy and the cliche as a way to, as Baldessari put it, 'take conceptual art off of its pedestal, so to speak.
Despite Leavitt's long history of exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and abroad, the Theater Objects retrospective was described as "a revelation" by art critic Christopher Knight.
[3] In addition to painting, photography, and installation work, the multi-talented Leavitt writes plays, builds theatrical sets, and handcrafts cellos on which he performs with local groups.