Edited by Diana Burgess Fuller and Daniela Salvioni
Art/Women/California, 1950–2000
Parallels and Intersections
$65.00, £44.95 hardcover
9780520230651
Available Now
$39.95, £27.95 paperback
9780520230668
Available Now
397 pages, 8-1/2 x 10 inches, 60 duotones, 53 color illustrations
May 2002, Available worldwide
Also in: California & The West: Art & Architecture; Women's Studies
May 2002, Available worldwide
Also in: California & The West: Art & Architecture; Women's Studies
Art/Women/California 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections is an unprecedented examination of the impact that specific women artists, working in California in the second half of the twentieth century, have had on broadening the definition of art. Twenty preeminent scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds investigate how the vast sociopolitical changes of the post-World War II era affected these women and how the ensuing events influenced the art that they produced. This book outlines the role these pivotal artists and their work played in reshaping the California cultural profile into what it is today.
Illustrated with more than one hundred color plates and duotones, Art/Women/California 1950-2000 reveals the richness of this fifty-year period by contrasting and comparing the artists and their varied artistic practices in relation to the larger sociopolitical context. The book employs a variety of historical perspectives to reflect the distinct and parallel experiences of California's major cultural communities while revealing points of intersection by analyzing shared themes and practices.
Because California serves as a gateway for a myriad of immigrants and an epicenter for the feminist movement, and because of its history of activism, its culture of experimentation, and its reputation for innovative technology and media, the state has evolved into a crucial and inspirational environment for women artists. Their work continues to transform our perceptions and revitalize art's connections to its surrounding environment and community. Exploring the conjuncture between place and artistic activity from multiple perspectives, this book stands as a testament to the rich diversity that is contemporary California culture.
This book is a copublication with the San Jose Museum of Art
Illustrated with more than one hundred color plates and duotones, Art/Women/California 1950-2000 reveals the richness of this fifty-year period by contrasting and comparing the artists and their varied artistic practices in relation to the larger sociopolitical context. The book employs a variety of historical perspectives to reflect the distinct and parallel experiences of California's major cultural communities while revealing points of intersection by analyzing shared themes and practices.
Because California serves as a gateway for a myriad of immigrants and an epicenter for the feminist movement, and because of its history of activism, its culture of experimentation, and its reputation for innovative technology and media, the state has evolved into a crucial and inspirational environment for women artists. Their work continues to transform our perceptions and revitalize art's connections to its surrounding environment and community. Exploring the conjuncture between place and artistic activity from multiple perspectives, this book stands as a testament to the rich diversity that is contemporary California culture.
This book is a copublication with the San Jose Museum of Art
"The far-reaching scope of this study finds its roots in an earlier symposium, and the resulting book retraces a half-century of art produced by women in California, seamlessly linking critical understanding with social analysis in essays by art historians and scholars from diverse disciplines and cultures."—Booklist
"An impressive and illuminating survey of art by women in California during the last half of the 20th century. Some of the images are intentionally shocking and unsettling, some are fanciful and lyrical, some are unashamed works of agitprop, and a few are all of these at once. . . . The art . . . always speaks for itself, and thus allows us to understand what the essayists are trying to say."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"An impressive and illuminating survey of art by women in California during the last half of the 20th century. Some of the images are intentionally shocking and unsettling, some are fanciful and lyrical, some are unashamed works of agitprop, and a few are all of these at once. . . . The art . . . always speaks for itself, and thus allows us to understand what the essayists are trying to say."—Los Angeles Times Book Review
"This is the book on women's art I've been waiting for—smart, deeply rooted, and up-to-date, with an overdue focus on women of color that fills in the historical cracks. Read it and run with it."—Lucy R. Lippard, author of The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays on Feminist Art
"More than merely beautiful and ground-breaking, Art/ Women/ California 1950-2000 is also about the enriching interventions created by diverse women artists, the effect of whose work is not only far-reaching, but has also opened up the very definition of American art. It is about intellectual interdisciplinality and the dialectical relationship between art and social context. It is about the way various California cultures—Native, Latino, Asian, feminist, immigrant, politically active, and virtual, which are so different from the trope of the Western cowboy—have intervened in that entity we imagine as 'America.' "—Elaine Kim, editor of Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism
"Rich and provocative. A pleasure to read and to look at."—Linda Nochlin, author of The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity
"This book should greatly help everyone understand the remarkably diversified evolution of art in California, which is largely due to the great influx of women and the transformative effect of a new feminist consciousness."—Arthur C. Danto, author of Philosophizing Art: Selected Essays
"More than merely beautiful and ground-breaking, Art/ Women/ California 1950-2000 is also about the enriching interventions created by diverse women artists, the effect of whose work is not only far-reaching, but has also opened up the very definition of American art. It is about intellectual interdisciplinality and the dialectical relationship between art and social context. It is about the way various California cultures—Native, Latino, Asian, feminist, immigrant, politically active, and virtual, which are so different from the trope of the Western cowboy—have intervened in that entity we imagine as 'America.' "—Elaine Kim, editor of Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism
"Rich and provocative. A pleasure to read and to look at."—Linda Nochlin, author of The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity
"This book should greatly help everyone understand the remarkably diversified evolution of art in California, which is largely due to the great influx of women and the transformative effect of a new feminist consciousness."—Arthur C. Danto, author of Philosophizing Art: Selected Essays
Preface
Diana Fuller
Forward
Susan Landauer
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Art in Context
Daniel Salvioni
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
"I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus"
Adrienne Rich
Reflecting on Histories as Histories
Whitney Chadwick
"Kopid'taya (A Gathering of Spirits)"
Paula Gunn Allen
Other Landscapes
Angela Y. Davis
PARALLELS
Reconsidering the Terrain: Five Historical Perspectives
"Coal"
Audre Lorde
Liberating Blackness and Interrogating Whiteness
Phyllis J. Jackson
"Yes, We are Not Invisible"
Janice Mirikitani
What Is an Asian American Woman Artist?
Karin Higa
Excerpt from "The Poet in the World"
Denise Levertov
Constructing a New Paradigm: European American Women Artists in California, 1950-2000
Laura Meyer
"To We Who Were Saved by the Stars"
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Califia/Califas: A Brief History of Chicana California
Amalia Mesa-Bains
"Revolutionary Letter #21"
Diane di Prima
Uncovering/Recovering: Indigenous Artists in California
Jolene Rickard
INTERSECTIONS / Ley Lines
Burning Down the House: Feminist Art in California
(An Interview with Amelia Jones )
Daniela Salvioni and Diana Burgess Fuller
A Collective History: Las Mujeres Muralistas
Terezita Romo
Indigenous Visionaries: Native Women Artists in California
Theresa Harlan
How The Invisible Woman Got Herself on the Cultural Map: Black Women Artists in California
Judith Wilson
INTERSECTIONS /Themes and Practices
Landing in California
Jennifer Gonzalez
Women Artists in California and Their Engagement with Photography
Sandra S. Phillips
California Filming: Re-Imagining the Nation
Rosa Linda Fregoso
Construction Sites: Women Artists in California and the Production Space-Time
Pamela Lee
Exchanges
Moira Roth and Suzanne Lacy
Women, Art, and Technology: A Brief History
JoAnn Hanley
What Do We Want? The Subject Behind the Camera: Women Video Artists and Self-Articulation
Nancy Buchanan
Epilogue
The Baby or the Bath Water; Being an Inquiry into the Nature of Woman,Womyn, Art, Time, and Timing in Five Thousand Words or Less
Allucque Rosanne Stone
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
Index
Diana Fuller
Forward
Susan Landauer
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Art in Context
Daniel Salvioni
CULTURAL OVERVIEW
"I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus"
Adrienne Rich
Reflecting on Histories as Histories
Whitney Chadwick
"Kopid'taya (A Gathering of Spirits)"
Paula Gunn Allen
Other Landscapes
Angela Y. Davis
PARALLELS
Reconsidering the Terrain: Five Historical Perspectives
"Coal"
Audre Lorde
Liberating Blackness and Interrogating Whiteness
Phyllis J. Jackson
"Yes, We are Not Invisible"
Janice Mirikitani
What Is an Asian American Woman Artist?
Karin Higa
Excerpt from "The Poet in the World"
Denise Levertov
Constructing a New Paradigm: European American Women Artists in California, 1950-2000
Laura Meyer
"To We Who Were Saved by the Stars"
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Califia/Califas: A Brief History of Chicana California
Amalia Mesa-Bains
"Revolutionary Letter #21"
Diane di Prima
Uncovering/Recovering: Indigenous Artists in California
Jolene Rickard
INTERSECTIONS / Ley Lines
Burning Down the House: Feminist Art in California
(An Interview with Amelia Jones )
Daniela Salvioni and Diana Burgess Fuller
A Collective History: Las Mujeres Muralistas
Terezita Romo
Indigenous Visionaries: Native Women Artists in California
Theresa Harlan
How The Invisible Woman Got Herself on the Cultural Map: Black Women Artists in California
Judith Wilson
INTERSECTIONS /Themes and Practices
Landing in California
Jennifer Gonzalez
Women Artists in California and Their Engagement with Photography
Sandra S. Phillips
California Filming: Re-Imagining the Nation
Rosa Linda Fregoso
Construction Sites: Women Artists in California and the Production Space-Time
Pamela Lee
Exchanges
Moira Roth and Suzanne Lacy
Women, Art, and Technology: A Brief History
JoAnn Hanley
What Do We Want? The Subject Behind the Camera: Women Video Artists and Self-Articulation
Nancy Buchanan
Epilogue
The Baby or the Bath Water; Being an Inquiry into the Nature of Woman,Womyn, Art, Time, and Timing in Five Thousand Words or Less
Allucque Rosanne Stone
List of Contributors
List of Illustrations
Index
Exhibition Art/Women/California 1950-2000: Parallels and Intersections will be at the San Jose Museum of Art, June 22 - November 3, 2002
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