How artists' magazines, in all their ephemerality, materiality, and temporary intensity, challenged mainstream art criticism and the gallery system.

Reports for 1980-19 also include the Annual report of the National Council on the Arts.

"Should be the classic, central, definitive work on the emergence of Bay Area Figurative painting."--Paul Mills, author of The New Figurative Painting of David Park

An immense contribution to scholarship on Ed Ruscha and his pioneering artistic practice, offering thorough documentation of his works on paper This highly anticipated book—the first in a series of three—comprehensively chronicles the first two decades of Ed Ruscha’s (b. 1937) work on paper, which comprises the largest component of his production of original works. Over 1,000 works on paper are documented, all created between 1956 and 1976, and they encompass a wide range of formats, materials, themes, and styles. Included are collages, ephemeral sketches, preparatory studies for paintings, oil on paper works, and drawings executed in a variety of inventive materials, including gunpowder and organic substances. Ruscha came to prominence in the early 1960s as part of the Pop art movement, although his work equally engages the legacies of Dada, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism as well as the Conceptual art that emerged later in the decade. He has long enjoyed international standing and admiration, and his work is widely known. Despite this recognition, this volume contains hundreds of works that have infrequently, or never, been exhibited or published. Each work is catalogued with a color reproduction, collection details, full chronological provenance, exhibition history, and bibliographic references. Essays by Lisa Turvey and Harry Cooper complete this extraordinary survey, which expands and enriches our understanding of Ruscha’s pioneering exploration of the written word as a subject for visual art and his witty assessment of the iconography of Los Angeles, both real and imagined.

The beautiful catalogue that accompanies the critically-acclaimed exhibition currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum Best known for her striking drawings of ocean surfaces, begun in 1968 and revisited over many years both in drawings and paintings, Vija Celmins (b. 1938) has been creating exquisitely detailed renderings of natural imagery for more than five decades. The oceans were followed by desert floors and night skies--all subjects in which vast, expansive distances are distilled into luminous, meticulous, and mesmerizing small-scale artworks. For Celmins, this obsessive "redescribing" of the world is a way to understand human consciousness in relation to lived experience. The first major publication on the artist in twenty years, this comprehensive and lavishly illustrated volume explores the full range of Celmins's work produced since the 1960s--drawings and paintings as well as sculpture and prints. Scholarly essays, a narrative chronology, and a selection of excerpts from interviews with the artist illuminate her methods and techniques; survey her early years in Los Angeles, where she was part of a circle that included James Turrell and Ken Price; and trace the development of her work after she moved to New York City and befriended figures such as Robert Gober and Richard Serra.

A fully illustrated history of modern and contemporary art in California from the early twentieth century to the present day. This introduction to the art of California focuses on the distinctive role the state played in the history of American art, from early twentieth-century photography and Chicanx mural painting to 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 center of artistic activity whose influence extends far beyond its physical boundaries. Including work by artists Yun Gee, Helen Lundeberg, Henry Taylor, Richard Diebenkorn, Albert Bierstadt, Chiura Obata, and Judith Baca, among many others, art historian Jenni Sorkin tells California’s story as a place at the forefront of radical developments in artistic culture. Organized chronologically and thematically with full-color illustrations throughout, this attractive study stands as an important chronicle of California’s contribution to modern and contemporary art in the United States and globally. In one stunning volume, Art in California addresses the vast appetite for knowledge on contemporary art in California.