Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

If you happened to be watching late night TV in 1990, it’s possible that you might’ve inadvertently been exposed to contemporary art: airing in commercial spots during shows including “Late Night with David Letterman,” Marilyn Minter’s 100 Food Porn videos brought the artist's visceral, sensual paintings into living rooms everywhere. Directed by Ted Haimes, the videos intersperse close-ups of Minter's paintbrush with shots of her studio and “pornographic” paintings of food, from shrimp to corn. “I think with porn,” Minter has said, “I was taking from an abusive history and trying to create humor and pleasure.”

“I wanted to be the first artist that advertised an art show on TV, because I saw people were advertising on NPR,” Minter recalled in an interview with the Time Sensitive podcast. “I don’t know what I was trying to do, but I knew sooner or later people were going to make TV commercials to advertise a commercial show, and I wanted to be the first one. That was really my goal. So, I made these “Food Porn” paintings, and I traded—I had no money, so I traded the paintings for production. The director used to be an MTV director. MTV was everything back then, and he worked on Decade. So, everybody I worked with were MTV people, like Tomandandy did the sound. They came over and recorded the sound of the projectors being on, and I paid everybody off with those “Food Porn” paintings...The art world didn’t know what to make of it.”

Married in 1965, Ruth and Jacob “Jake” Bloom purchased their first piece of art together in 1966—a Renoir print given as a gift to their inlaws. Over the course of the decades that followed, the couple would emerge as leading collectors and supporters of contemporary art in Los Angeles, voracious art lovers and philanthropists whose generosity and genuine passion for avant-garde artists helped shape the cultural cutting edge. Reflecting their deep involvement in post-World War II creative movements, The Jake and Ruth Bloom Collection features major works from Robert Longo, Marilyn Minter, Gregory Crewdson, among many others, and showcases the Blooms’ savvy, intrepid, and influential approach to the field of contemporary art.

“We inhaled art,” Jake once said. “We ended up with some very, very significant pieces in our collection.” 

While the term “power couple” might get thrown around, it is an apt descriptor for the Blooms: Jake was a legendary entertainment lawyer, who counted Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Jerry Bruckheimer among his clients. Bloom was among the founding members of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Los Angeles, where Ruth would also serve on the board for more than a decade. Indeed, the pair would establish MoCA’s Ruth and Jake Bloom Young Artist Fund, which would help the institution acquire works from new emergent artists at pivotal moments in their careers. “We inhaled art,” Jake once said. “We ended up with some very, very significant pieces in our collection.”