An introduction to the rich and diverse art of California, this book highlights its distinctive role in the history of American art, from early-20th-century photography to Chicanx mural painting, the Fiber Art Movement and beyond. Shaped by a compelling network of geopolitical influences including waves of migration and exchange from the Pacific Rim and Mexico, the influx of African Americans immediately after World War II, and global immigration after quotas were lifted in the 1960s, California is a centre of artistic activity whose influence extends far beyond its physical boundaries. Furthermore, California was at the forefront of radical developments in artistic culture, most notably conceptual art and feminism, and its education system continues to nurture and encourage avant-garde creativity. Organized chronologically and thematically with illustrations throughout, this attractive study stands as an important reassessment of Californias contribution to modern and contemporary art in the United States and globally.

Live Art in LA: Performance Art in Southern California , 1970-1983 documents and critically examines one of the most fecund periods in the history of live art. The book forms part of the Getty Institute’s Pacific Standard Time initiative – a series of exhibitions, performance re-enactments and research projects focused on the greater Los Angeles area. This extraordinary volume, beautifully edited by one of the leading scholars in the field, makes vivid the compelling drama of performance history on the west coast. Live Art in LA: moves lucidly between discussions of legendary figures such as Judy Chicago and Chris Burden, and the crucial work of less-celebrated solo artists and collectives; examines the influence of key institutions, particularly Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and the California Institute of the Arts – and the Feminist Art Programme established at the latter; features original and incisive essays by Peggy Phelan and Amelia Jones, and eloquent contributions by Michael Ned Holte, Suzanne Lacy and Jennifer Flores Sternad. Combining cutting-edge research with over 100 challenging and provocative photographs and video stills, Live Art in LA represents a major re-evaluation of a crucial moment in performance history. And, as performance studies becomes ever more relevant to the history of art, promises to become a vital and enduring resource for students, academics and artists alike.

Linda Besemer: StrokeRollFoldSheetSlabGlitch is published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name, organized by the Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, College of the Arts, California State University, Long Beach. February 12-June 25, 2022. The publication includes a foreword by Museum director Paul Baker Prindle, with essays by art historian Lex Morgan Lancaster and Museum curator Kristina Newhouse.StrokeRollFoldSheetSlabGlitch is the first monographic survey of artworks by Los Angeles-based artist Linda Besemer. This exhibition emphasizes Besemer's ongoing commitment to exploring alterity through conscious "othering" of abstraction and reflects on the artist's search for new meaning in painting over the past thirty-five years. Featuring 23 colorful artworks produced between 1993-2021, the museum showcases key moments in Besemer's career, taking visitors on a journey as she transitions from traditional gestural abstraction and culminating with the most recent "glitch" series.

An examination of the use of modernism in the twentieth-century battle for US hegemony, through the activities of the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom. Parapolitics confronts the contemporary fate of intellectual autonomy and artistic freedom by revisiting the use of modernism in the twentieth-century battle for US hegemony. It builds on a major exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2017–18) that took as its starting point the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)—an organization covertly funded by the Central Intelligence Agency in order to steer the Left away from its remaining commitment to communism. Paying particular attention to CCF activities in the non-European world during a period of decolonization and the Civil Rights Movement, Parapolitics assembles archival documentation from five continents alongside a selection of historical artworks to explore the context in which artists negotiated the framing and meaning of their work. A rich reference book for future researchers and everybody interested in the legacy of modernism, the publication also presents more than thirty newly commissioned contributions by contemporary artists and scholars.

The extraordinary story of the artists who propelled themselves to international fame in 1960s Los Angeles Los Angeles, 1960: There was no modern art museum and there were few galleries, which is exactly what a number of daring young artists liked about it, among them Ed Ruscha, David Hockney, Robert Irwin, Bruce Nauman, Judy Chicago and John Baldessari. Freedom from an established way of seeing, making, and marketing art fueled their creativity, which in turn inspired the city. Today Los Angeles has four museums dedicated to contemporary art, around one hundred galleries, and thousands of artists. Here, at last, is the book that tells the saga of how the scene came into being, why a prevailing Los Angeles permissiveness, 1960s-style, spawned countless innovations, including Andy Warhol's first exhibition, Marcel Duchamp's first retrospective, Frank Gehry's mind-bending architecture, Rudi Gernreich's topless bathing suit, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, even the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Doors, and other purveyors of a California style. In the 1960s, Los Angeles was the epicenter of cool.