One of the rewards of longevity in the art world, if one's lucky, is seeing one's own work re-discovered and appreciated by generations who were not around at its inception. Dennis Hopper, who died this May at age 74, did not live long enough to attend his upcoming summer retrospective at MOCA, but he did participate actively in its planning. And in his final years, he was able to enjoy some major accolades: a museum-scale survey at ACE gallery in 2006, and the selection of his iconic 1961 photograph Double Standard as the poster for the historic exhibition at the Pompidou Center in Paris, "Los Angeles 1955-1985: Birth of an Artistic Capital." A few years before, he began making paintings from his seminal photographs of billboards and artist friends from the 1960s, in essence re-engaging his own work of that era. In all his work, his love of the art world, and the artistic impulse, and his admiration for his artist friends, clearly resonates. Likewise, Jim Marshall, the influential rock photographer who also died this spring, used his discerning eye to create iconic images that epitomized both their subject and their era.

Artist Craig Kauffman, (one of Hopper's photographic subjects) who was central to the sculptural Pop-Minimalist ferment in the LA art scene of the 1960s, and to the fabled Ferus crowd, also died this May. Kauffman likewise had a memorable cameo role in the Pompidou Center retrospective in 2006 when one his signature luminous wall reliefs, belonging to LACMA, fell from its mount and broke. With assistance from the Pompidou, Kauffman recreated the 39-year-old work Ð a vibrant red-and-yellow lozenge of acrylic lacquer on vacuum-formed plastic Ð in 2008, with a new name: , Untitled Wall Relief, (cast by the artist from the irreparably damaged Untitled Wall Relief, 1967), 2008. Thus, like its maker, the work straddled eras. Until the end, Kauffman continued pressing forward his glowing vision; a show of his new sculptures at Frank Lloyd Gallery opened just before his death (and is reviewed in this issue).

While it makes for neat art history to attach an artist to the decade in which he or she came of age, it is also a gross simplification; while one could argue that these artists created their most seminal work in the '60s, their ongoing legacy was part of the current zeitgeist too. It is well worth noting that Louise Bourgeois, who died this spring in New York at the ripe survivor's age of 98 (and a half) was given scant attention during the first half-century of her life. Yet starting with her 1982 retrospective at MOMA in New York, Bourgeois became among the art world's most renowned (and, really, revered) figures. Even as she aged, her fire never dimmed. The unhealed wounds of her troubled family relationships as a child, the eloquence of her anxieties, and the sheer visceral dynamism of her sculptural and pictorial iconography kept her voice as fresh, raw, and bracing as any artist of any age.

Although they are gone, their work speaks (grins, glows, rocks, roars) for them.