Art of Engagement : Visual Politics in California and Beyond
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
Art of Engagement takes the first comprehensive look at the key role of California's art and artists in politics and culture since 1945. Tracing the remarkably fertile confluence of political agitation and passionately engaged art, Peter Selz leads readers on a journey that begins with the Nazi death camps and moves through the Bay Area's Free Speech Movement of 1964, the birth of Beat and hippie countercultures, the Chicano labor movement in the San Joaquin Valley, the beginning of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and some of the most radical manifestations of the women's movement, gay liberation, Red Power, and environmental activism. It also deals with artists' responses to critical issues such as censorship and capital punishment. Selz follows California's outpouring of political art into the present with responses to September 11 and the war in Iraq. In the process, Selz considers the work of artists such as Robert Arneson, Hans Burkhardt, Jerome (Caja), Enrique Chagoya, Judy Chicago, Llyn Foulkes, Rupert Garcia, Helen and Newton Harrison, Wally Hedrick, Suzanne Lacy, Hung Liu, Peter Saul, Miriam Schapiro, Allan Sekula, Mark di Suvero, Masami Teraoka, and Carrie Mae Weems. Abundantly illustrated and beautifully produced, Art of Engagement showcases many types of media, including photographs, found objects, drawings and prints, murals, painting, sculpture, ceramics, installations, performance art, and collage. Readers will come away from the book with a historical sense of the significant role California has played in generating political art and also how the state has stimulated politically engaged art throughout the world.
Copub: San Jose Museum of Art
From the Back Cover
"The Art of Engagement represents a singular contribution to debates about the politics of art in California and far beyond."--Derrick R. Cartwright, author of Benjamin West: Allegory and Allegiance and co-author of Luis Gispert/Loud Image, and An Interlude in Giverny
"This book's combination of California as a subject, especially the social and political components, with the visual arts, makes it of wide interest to both scholars and general readers."--Paul J. Karlstrom, editor of On the Edge of America: California Modernist Art, 1900-1950 "This is an extremely important and valuable volume. The analysis is fresh and compelling throughout, and the material reflects the contributors' broad knowledge and sensitivity to ongoing developments in the region."--T.J. Pempel, director, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
"There is no competing work with this breadth, depth, up-to-date coverage, and absolute top drawer of China specialists. Superior scholarship is apparent in the high level of insight and information throughout this outstanding, superbly written work."--Allen Whiting, The University of Arizona
"This book's combination of California as a subject, especially the social and political components, with the visual arts, makes it of wide interest to both scholars and general readers."--Paul J. Karlstrom, editor of On the Edge of America
Art of Engagement : Visual Politics in California and Beyond
Art of Engagement : Visual Politics in California and Beyond,Peter Selz,University of California Press,0520240537,American - General,Art,Art & Art Instruction,Art & Politics,Art And Society,Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions - Museum,Criticism,History - General,United States - State & Local - General,Art / General,The Arts
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