Joe Goode

Joe Goode (born 1937) is an American artist who attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1959–1961.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Goode made a name for himself in Los Angeles through his cloud imagery and milk bottle paintings which were associated with the Pop Art movement.

Joe Goode was born on March 23, 1937, in the middle of the Great Plains of Oklahoma immediately following the Dust Bowl and at the tail end of The Great Depression.

He has a younger brother named Dick who was born just twelve months after.

Goode and his brother were raised Catholic as his father, William Goode, had wished.

Though his parents divorced when Goode was eleven years old, his father had a great influence on his artistry.

He too was an artist who made signage for a department store in town and painted portraits.

The two would sketch various actors on screen when the family got a television and Goode would attempt to emulate his father’s ability to capture likenesses.

During the summer Goode’s mother would ship him and his brother off to visit their grandparents on a ranch in Arlington, Texas.

Goode explains that the perceived leisure quickly turned into child labor as the Goode boys were put to work picking potatoes on Sproull’s Ranch.

Joe Goode had little ambition and little cultural exposure as a child, but upon graduating high school his interests in the unknown world around him began to peak which compelled him to move to Los Angeles.

He lived with four other Oklahomans and shortly after enrolled in Chouinard Art Institute marking the start of his artistic career.

In December 1959, Goode traveled to Los Angeles, California, from Oklahoma and began to make his name in the burgeoning Los Angeles art scene.

He embraced American Pop Art and became part of a group of young artists living and working in California.

This group included notable artists such as Ken Price, Ed Kienholz, and Ronald Davis.

The American Pop scene had a fascination with modern consumer culture and utilized the subject matter in many of their works.

Goode and his contemporaries were also interested in graphic images, like those being created at Gemini Ltd.

(now Gemini G.E.L.), a company dedicated to collaborating with artists to produce prints, lithographs, and other graphic art.

During his early career, Goode worked alongside Gemini Ltd. to produce his own prints.

The artist is also closely associated with Light and Space, a West coast movement of the early 1960s.

He currently creates and resides in Los Angeles, California.

Goode has been exhibiting his work in group and solo exhibitions since 1960.

His very first group show, two years prior to "The New Paintings of Common Objects," took place in Oklahoma City at the Oklahoma Art Center.

In 1962, Joe Goode was exhibited alongside artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Edward Ruscha at The Pasadena Art Museum (now Norton Simon Museum) in California.

The exhibition, "The New Paintings of Common Objects," was an early display of the art movement eventually referred to as Pop Art.

“Common Objects” was curated by Walter Hopps and is considered the first museum show in the United States to exhibit Pop Art.

This show featured Goode's paintings, Milk Bottle Painting (Green) and Milk Bottle Painting (Two-Part Blue). Composed of thickly painted canvases and milk bottles, Goode's two works draw inspiration from Surrealism and Assemblage.

They exemplify a specific feeling of small-town America, with the placement of the milk bottle on the floor and the canvas hung low, reminding one of milk left on a doorstep.

The paintings also invite a sense of loneliness, providing extra commentary on life in a small town.

His first solo exhibition took place in 1962 in Los Angeles, CA, at the Dilexi Gallery.

Cloud and Self Portrait, both created in 1965, were the first two pieces he made at Gemini.

1966 saw Goode’s inclusion in an exhibition entitled How The West Has Done!

A Wild Wild West Show, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, hosted by the Arts Council and curated by Audrey Sabol.

The exhibition explored the art being created on the West Coast and brought to light the self-contained nature of the California Art Scene.

In 1967, he completed the English still life series, a series of shifting glasses and spoons.

Meanwhile, he participated in group shows throughout California from 2012 until the present.

In 2022, Goode's work was a part of the exhibition, "Dissolve," at the Jack and Shanaz Langson Institute and Museum of California Art at the University of California, Irvine.

On average, his paintings sell for $109,000, his print work sells for $2,000, and his works on paper sell for $6,000.

From 2015 to 2021 Goode exhibited in four solo shows, two of which were held at the Peter Blake Gallery (2016 and 2018).

His other two solo exhibits were held at the Kohn Gallery in 2021 and the KOKI ARTS gallery in Tokyo Japan (2015).