Art and the City: Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in Los Angeles

Sarah Schrank

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2009

Art and the City

Civic Imagination and Cultural Authority in Los Angeles

Sarah Schrank

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812204100

Overview
Contents

About this book

Art and the City explores the contentious relationship between civic politics and visual culture in Los Angeles. Struggles between civic leaders and modernist artists to define civic identity and control public space highlight the significance of the arts as a site of political contest in the twentieth century.

Author / Editor information

Sarah Schrank is Associate Professor of History at California State University, Long Beach.

Reviews

"Sarah Schrank's Art and the City could not be more timely. In her thoughtful, prescient, and well-researched book, she details the vivid and rich history of Los Angeles's art world and explains the political and cultural dynamics that have shaped the city's artistic identity and, at times, may have prevented the city from becoming a globally recognized art mecca in the first place. . . . Schrank's book does a service to history and urban planning. Most importantly, it offers an authentic account of Los Angeles's rich artistic legacy. . . .A mainstream audience of art aficionados, urbanists, and policymakers would find Art and the City a fascinating and fresh account of a complicated and dazzling city that is far greater than the sum of its parts."—Journal of American Planning Association

"Art and the City provides a much-needed synthesis of the meaning of art and place in Los Angeles and serves as a reminder that civic identity is forged in the conflict between the rhetoric of power, the desire to belong, and the difficult realities of community-building."—College Art Association Reviews

"Sarah Schrank's richly detailed Art and the City provides a long-overdue social historical context for the city's much-touted status in recent years as a global art capital. It also refutes the notion that Los Angeles's arts scene emerged ex nihilo in the 1960s. Schrank posits, instead, that decades of reactionary cultural politics—not to mention spatial isolation and sprawl—were among the forces driving the city's artistic ascent."—Journal of American History

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. Boosters, Early Moderns, and the Artful Civic Imaginary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
Chapter 2. Modernism in Public Spaces Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
Chapter 3. Painting the Town Red Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	64
Chapter 4. Bohemia in Vogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Chapter 5. Imagining the Watts Towers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	165
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	203
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 224
Illustrations
- Other: 42 illus.
Keywords: American History; American Studies; Fine Art; Architecture; Garden History

eBook

Published: October 1, 2014
ISBN: 9780812204100