California Dreamin': Thirty Years of Collecting

ISBN-10
0981674380
ISBN-13
9780981674384
Series
California Dreamin'
Category
Art
Pages
47
Language
English
Published
2014
Author
Steven A. Nash

Description

California Dreamin' : Thirty Years of Collecting includes a retrospective of artworks purchased by the Palm Springs Art Museum with funds provided by the Contemporary Art Council (CAC) and other contributors since1984. The acquisitions are by contemporary artists who worked in California or have been influenced by spending time in California during their artistic careers. (One exception is the German artist Anselm Kiefer whose painting was selected while on a CAC art tour to Paris.) This is the first time these artworks have been on view together. As well as a celebration of the commitment of the CAC to growing the museum's collection of significant contemporary artists, this exhibition is a mini survey of California art since the 1980s. By this time it was recognized that New York was no longer the art capital it had once been, and as California's social and cultural mix grew ever more diverse, multiple views of the state began to emerge. Several art movements significant to California's art history are represented, including the Bay Area Figurative movement with paintings by Nathan Oliveira and Christopher Brown. Robert Arneson, along with William Allan, Roy DeForest, Robert Hudson, Peter Voulkos, and William Wiley were instrumental in the development of the Funk Art movement in Northern California. Several of those artists work with the Pop Art iconography that is also associated with Southern California assemblage artists Lynn Foulkes and Michael McMillen. Light and Space artist Helen Pashgian explores the perceptual effects of industrial materials through experiments with metals concealed in cast epoxy while Jim Isermann combines elements of art and design to create site-specific installations. Ronald Davis's floating abstract geometric forms are painted in explosive colors with astonishing perspectives. Ed Ruscha's keen observation of contemporary culture and his intuitive word paintings straddle the sensibilities of Conceptual and Pop Art as does Robert Therrien who is inspired by everyday objects that he transforms into artworks of gigantic proportion. Artists have also responded to California's climate of social and cultural contentiousness, as seen in Mark Bradford's multilayered collages and

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