In the first interview, Bischoff discusses the UC Berkeley Dept. of Art, 1960s, 1970s; Hans Hofmann influence; thoughts on the Breakfast Group and studio critiques; "Figure with Tree," 1972; thoughts on problems and pitfalls in painting. The second interview was conducted in 1977 by Paul J. Karlstrom of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

"Elmer Bischoff is one of the small handful of truly fine artists at mid-century and beyond working in Northern California. His art is of national importance. In Susan Landauer he has the author who can bring his life and art to us."—Walter Hopps, Twentieth Century Curator, The Menil Collection "This first substantial monograph on Elmer Bischoff offers a warm appraisal of a deacon of West Coast painters, justly celebrated for his lifelong navigation of the "tightrope" between abstract painting's sensual materiality and the ethical implications of a figurative art. Susan Landauer meets her own high standards of nuanced social history, and Bill Berkson's brief introduction is studded with gems."—Caroline Jones, author of Bay Area Figurative Art "Susan Landauer’s new monograph is a welcome addition to Twentieth Century Bay Area art history. She is a specialist, who explores the life and work, attitudes and ideals of this important artist, his European and American influences, in parallel with those of his famous colleagues, Richard Diebenkorn and David Park. She brings historical understanding and esthetic subtlety to the study as she digs into the artist’s esthetic and educational philosophy, the relation between painting and improvised jazz, temporary blocks and personal crises, as well as his complete reinventions of his drawing and painting. All this is set in the context of the life of art in the Bay Area community (1940-1990) and results in a readable work of value to professionals while remaining accessible to more casual readers."—Gerald Nordland, author of Richard Diebenkorn

A long overdue survey of this exceptional artist, a renegade in every sense of the word, celebrating her legacy as an original member of the Beat Generation in San Francisco and abstract painter in New York. This first comprehensive monograph on Remington (1930–2010) examines her extraordinary career through paintings, prints, and drawings. An enthusiastic participant in the Bay Area’s Beat scene in the early 1950s, Remington made her way to New York in 1965, where she joined the prestigious Bykert Gallery and quickly gained critical attention. Luminous and saturated, her hard-edged abstractions of the 1960s and 1970s are well known; yet the work from the last twenty-five years of her life is not as familiar to art world audiences. After a mid-career survey in 1983, Remington returned to a poetic, gestural sensibility that evoked the natural world and, eventually, her ailing body. This publication traces the arc of these evolutions through lavish illustrations as well as a broad range of texts that includes scholarly essays, remembrances, an interview, and a narrative chronology. Extensive research reveals the artist’s innermost thoughts, enhancing our understanding of the art world during her time. This long overdue examination of her career reveals a visionary artist untethered to the trends and art movements of her own lifetime and prime for rediscovery.

In this beautifully illustrated biography, compiled from comprehensive and sweeping interviews, Nancy Boas traces Parks resolute search for a new kind of figuration, one that would penetrate abstract expressionisms thickly layered surfaces and infuse them with human presence.

The Rat Bastard ProtectiveÊAssociation was an inflammatory, close-knit community of artists who livedÊand worked in aÊbuilding they dubbed Painterland in the Fillmore neighborhood of midcentury San Francisco. The artists who counted themselves among the RatÊBastardsÑwhich included Joan Brown, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo,ÊWallyÊHedrick, Michael McClure, and Manuel NeriÑexhibited a unique fusion of radicalism,Êprovocation, and community. Geographically isolated from a viable art market and refusingÊto conform to institutional expectations, theyÊanimated broader social andÊartistic discussions through their work and became aÊtransformative part of American culture over time. Anastasia Aukeman presents new and little-known archival material in this authorized account of these artists and their circle, a colorful cultural milieu that intersected with the broader Beat scene.

"Roy De Forest's brightly colored, crazy-quilted jungles dotted with nipples of paint and inhabited by a cast of characters uniquely his own (a perennial favorite being his wild-eyed, pointy-eared dogs) appeal to a broad spectrum of viewers from young to old, from the casual visitor to the most sophisticated art aficionado. OMCA's project aims to reassess De Forest's art-historical position, placing him in a national rather than solely regional/West Coast context. Landauer positions De Forest as part of a bicoastal alternative current of American art that has been poorly documented and deliberately ran counter to better publicized tendencies of the 1960s and 1970s, notably Pop, Minimalism, and post-painterly abstraction. Despite the playfulness of his work, close study of De Forest's art reveals deep layers of meaning. He was a fan of popular science fiction and adventure stories, but he was also well versed in Australian aboriginal art, ukiyo-e prints, poetry, literature, and the history of philosophy. He enjoyed secreting obscure art-historical references into his work: animals might assume postures found in Medieval or Renaissance art, or a drawing that appears to depict a comic-book character may in fact refer to Titian's triple-headed allegory of Prudence. This engaging publication presents gorgeous color reproductions of 150 of De Forest's finest artworks, plus a variety of figure illustrations that illuminate the artist's diverse sources and freewheeling social and creative milieu in Northern California."--Provided by publisher.