Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000

This opulent and expansive volume, published in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's monumental exhibition Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity,1900-2000, charts the dynamic relationship between the arts and popular conceptions of California. Displaying a dazzling array of fine art and material culture, Made in California challenges us to reexamine the ways in which the state has been portrayed and imagined. Unusually inclusive, visually intriguing, and beautifully produced, this volume is a delight throughout—both in image and in text—and will appeal to anyone who has lived in, visited, or imagined California. Drawn from the exhibition, which gathers more than 1,200 artworks and pieces of ephemera from many public and private collections, Made in California is an image-driven look at the past century, featuring more than 400 works in a range of media, from painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, and photographs to furniture, fashion, and film. The book also includes more than 150 cultural artifacts such as tourist brochures, posters, labor union tracts, personal letters, and government reports that convey the richness and complexity of twentieth-century California. Arranged provocatively by theme, these objects take us on a visual tour of a state that was promoted as a bountiful paradise early in the century; as a glamour capital by Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s; as a suburban utopia in the late '40s and '50s; as a haven for counterculture in the '60s and '70s, and as a multicultural frontier in the '80s and '90s. The book's exploration of how these themes were reflected and contested in California's visual culture deepens our understanding of the state's artistic traditions as well as its fascinating history. The volume is divided into five twenty-year sections, each including a narrative essay discussing the history of that era and highlighting topics particularly relevant to its visual culture. Two overarching themes emerge that have been crucial for how we imagine and understand California: first, the landscape, including both the natural and built environment, and second, the multifaceted relationships California has had with Latin America and Asia. Geographer Michael Dear has contributed a sweeping overview of the social history of California that examines the vibrant and sometimes turbulent conditions out of which the culture emerged. Essayist Richard Rodriguez closes the volume with a uniquely personal meditation on the Golden State.

Arts & Photography

Barron, Stephanie

Fort, Ilene Susan

Bernstein, Sheri

Fox, Howard N.

History & Criticism

University of California Press

Exhibition catalog. Beautiful color illustrations. Preface by Toshio Hara. Contributions by Judith Connor Greer and Kiyoko Mitsuyama. Artists: Koichi Ebizuka, Toshikatsu Endo, Chuichi Fujii, Tadashi Kawamata, Takamasa Kuniyasu, Emiko Tokushige, Shigeo Toya, Kimio Tsuchiya, and Isamu Wakabayashi. 144p.

A Primal Spirit: Ten Contemporary Japanese Sculptors

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

Content: A Contemporary Focus, 1974-1984

Tenth anniversary exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum surveyed the art scene of the preceding decade.

Content: A contemporary focus, 1974-1984

Published for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden by the Smithsonian Institution Press

This is the first comprehensive survey of paintings by Lari Pittman (b. 1952), a Los Angeles artist believed by many to be one of the most significant American painters today. Since his first solo exhibition, in Los Angeles in 1982, his art has been widely exhibited in the U.S. and Europe. However, the public has seen his work for the most part only in periodic exhibitions, and the critical response while almost universally favorable, has been largely limited to reviews. In this mid-career retrospective exhibition the Los Angeles County Museum of Art brought together Pittman's most ambitious and seminal works to offer an overview of his stylistic and thematic development. Pittman received his MFA from the Cal Arts in 1976. In David Pagel's interview with Pittman, he concludes that Pittman's paintings include "imaginary organic forms, runaway arrows, and arabesques, transform ornamentation into a contemporary narrative of life and death, love and sex." He also believes "Pittman's operatic pictures propose that the world's complexity does not override passion, sincerity, and individuality." When talking about his own work, Pittman states: "at times, I purposefully orchestrate the work so that you do have that comfortable laughter when looking at it-it's full-hearted and enjoyable internally-but it's also a laughter linked to nervousness. And that's the laughter I particularly like cultivating, parlor laughter, where there's always the subtext of conversation going on, but everyone is very agreeable."

Lari Pittman

Hickey, Dave

SCHIMMEL, PAUL

Individual Artists

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Large non-fiction paperback.  Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2006.   175 pages, profusely illustrated in color.

Glass, Material Matters

LACMA

Kenneth Snelson

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

This book celebrates Carlos Almaraz, one of the most influential Los Angeles artists of the 1970s and 1980s. Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz is the first full length monograph devoted to an artist known for both his politically engaged cultural production as well as his vibrant, highly sought-after studio art, particularly his scenes of car crashes and pastoral depictions of L.A.’s Echo Park. Among the leading figures whose artistic, cultural, and political motivations catalyzed the Chicano Art movement in the 1970s, Almaraz began his career with works for the United Farm Workers and cofounded the important artists collective Los Four. Although he saw himself as an activist, Almaraz straddled multiple—and often contradictory—identities that drew from divergent cultures and approaches, and his work became less overtly political and more personal, psychological, dreamlike, and even mystical as he evolved artistically. The book features more than 60 works, mostly from the late 1970s through 1989, the year of the artist’s untimely death at age 48, as well as selections from his journals and recollections from numerous colleagues and friends who knew him throughout his career.

Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz

Prestel

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