1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910495957703321

Titolo

On the edge of America : California modernist art, 1900-1950 / / edited by Paul Karlstrom [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c1996

ISBN

0-585-16237-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xvii, 308 p., [8] p. of plates ) : ill. (some col.) ;

Altri autori (Persone)

KarlstromPaul J

Disciplina

709/.794/09041

Soggetti

Modernism (Art) - California

Art, American - California

Art, Modern - 20th century - California

Art, American - California - 20th century

Modernism (Art) - 20th century - California

Visual Arts

Art, Architecture & Applied Arts

Visual Arts - General

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

"In association with the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco."

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The elusive quest of the moderns / Richard Cándida Smith -- Painting under the shadow : California modernism and the Second World War / Susan Landauer -- Politics and modernism : the trial of the Rincon Annex murals / Gray Brechin -- The impact from abroad : foreign guests and visitors / Peter Selz -- Mexican art and Los Angeles, 1920-1940 / Margarita Nieto -- Wood studs, stucco, and concrete : native and imported images / David Gebhard -- Early modernism in Southern California : provincialism or eccentricity? / Bram Dijkstra -- Journey into the sun : California artists and surrealism / Susan M. Anderson -- Visual music and film-as-an-art before 1950 / William Moritz -- Modernist photography and the Group f.64 / Therese Thau Heyman.

Sommario/riassunto

To many, California's social and cultural identity has set it apart from the rest of the nation. Identified almost exclusively with Hollywood and popular culture, the entire region has been denied a meaningful relationship to mainstream twentieth-century modernism. This



groundbreaking collection emphatically challenges that assumption. In essays about California art during the first half of the century, the contributors evoke a culture, now recognizable as modernist, that reflects the actual circumstances of contemporary West Coast artistic experience in all its richness. The subjects include painting, murals, sculpture, film, photography, and architecture. The issue of regionalism is central to this remarkable collection. How do we build a cultural portrait of an area that reveals its distinctive character while recognizing its participation in the larger art historical framework? Through the essays runs the theme of an alternative culture that transformed modernism to suit its own regional imperatives. Compelled by a sense of distance and the need for reinvention, California artists created traditions for a new cultural landscape and society. On the Edge of America is an enlightening and visually exciting addition to the growing literature on California art and culture. Through its fresh and expanded view of modernism, it is also well suited to the formulation of a truly national cultural narrative, one that embraces the edges as well as the center of American creative life. Publishers's description.