Escape Artists

The art collection at Shutters on the Beach features leisurely works by blue-chip artists.

Image of “Coca Cola Girl” (2019), color silkscreen on Saunders Waterford 425 gsm paper by Alex Katz (born 1927), courtesy of Lococo Fine Art Publishing

Text by Lindsey Kesel

The spaces we inhabit during our great escapes should blend the novel with a dash of the familiar. Fine-art advisor Cynthia Greenwald let this notion guide her when choosing the art for Shutters on the Beach during its inception in 1994. She pored over the floorplan to bathe the walls of the luxury beach house retreat in contemporary works that would enhance the guest experience. Ultimately, she went with artists that were at the top of the genre and images that were at once “comfortable, familiar, and elegant.”

The Shutters collection embodies the carefree spirit of a day at the beach, and showcases heavyweights of contemporary art, including Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Yayoi Kusama and David Hockney. “I wanted recognizable imagery by blue-chip artists, so when guests walk in, they feel at home,” Greenwald says.

Mirroring the beauty of the Southern California coast, the 28 works of art on display at Shutters are conversation pieces marked by an element of curiousness: the simplicity of the Walt Disney Concert Hall one-color lithograph by its L.A. architect Frank Gehry; the Hollywood glam of Richard Hamilton’s “My Marilyn,” a silkscreen picturing Marilyn Monroe posing for a photo shoot; the oddity of Claes Oldenburg’s “Slicing Strawberry Shortcake,” an etching of a giant slice of cake lazily floating down a river.

Greenwald regularly adds new pieces or reconfigures the collection with the aim of balance. Her most recent acquisition is “Coca Cola Girl 1” by New York pop artist Alex Katz, who pioneered the iconic “flat pop” painting style. For this nostalgic lithograph of a blonde model in a white swimsuit against a cherry-red backdrop, Greenwald found a spot in Shutters’ lobby area, just outside the sundry shop—so perfect, she says, it seemed as if “Coca Cola Girl 1” belonged there from day one: “She’s so vibrant.”

To learn more about the Shutters on the Beach art collection, contact Cynthia Greenwald at (310) 433-9310 or 
[email protected].