Reading California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000

by Stephanie Barron, Ilene Susan Fort, Sheri Bernstein

This companion volume to the exhibition Made in Art, Image, and Identity,1900-2000 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art offers in-depth, illustrated essays on the making of California culture in the twentieth century. Written by a stellar cast of art historians and scholars in the humanities, the essays look closely at the forces that shaped fine art and material culture in California. The contributors weave their subjects around themes that are central to the milestone the California landscape—both the natural and built environments—and the state's cultural and political relationships with Latin America and Asia.

These provocative essays cover topics such as counterculture architecture, Watts Towers, border culture, identity and gender issues, the role of schools in California art, auto tourism, Hollywood, music, Beat culture, politics, literature, photography, and much more. Accessibly written and intellectually engaging, these essays sharpen our understanding of California in the twentieth century and bring together many diverse, yet interrelated, aspects of its art and culture.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Stephanie Barron is chief curator of modern and contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. During her thirty-two years at LACMA, she has been responsible for several international loan exhibitions, including “The Avant-Garde in Russia: 1910-1930,” “German Expressionist Sculpture,” “David Hockney: A Retrospective,” “German Expressionism 1915-1925: The Second Generation,” “Exiles and Émigrés: The Flight of European Artists from Hitler,” and "Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures". She co-organized LACMA’s millennium project, “Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000.” Barron has received the Order of Merit First Class and the Commander’s Cross from the German government, the John J. McCloy Fellowship, and an NEA Fellowship for museum professionals. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be honest, I probably read less than half of this book. That is a reflection not of the quality of the scholarship but of my personal interests, which lie in earlier history. I think I skipped most of the WWII and later parts except for some skimming (and the first article, which makes me want to read McWilliams' California The Great Exception).