The Artist in the Counterculture: Bruce Conner to Mike Kelley and Other Tales from the Edge

Thomas Crow

Published by Princeton University Press 2023

The Artist in the Counterculture

Bruce Conner to Mike Kelley and Other Tales from the Edge

Thomas Crow

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691236261

Overview
Contents

About this book

How California’s counterculture of the 1960s to 1980s profoundly shaped—and was shaped by—West Coast artists

The 1960s exert a special fascination in modern art. But most accounts miss the defining impact of the period’s youth culture, largely incubated in California, on artists who came of age in that decade. As their prime exemplar, Bruce Conner, reminisced, “I did everything that everybody did in 1967 in the Haight-Ashbury. . . . I would take peyote and walk out in the streets.” And he vividly channeled those experiences into his art, while making his mark on every facet of the psychedelic movement—from the mountains of Mexico with Timothy Leary to the rock ballrooms of San Francisco to the gilded excesses of the New Hollywood. In The Artist in the Counterculture, Thomas Crow tells the story of California art from the 1960s to the 1980s—some of the strongest being made anywhere at the time—and why it cannot be understood apart from the new possibilities of thinking and feeling unleashed by the rebels of the counterculture.

Crow reevaluates Conner and other key figures—from Catholic activist Corita Kent to Black Panther Emory Douglas to ecological witness Bonnie Ora Sherk—as part of a generational cohort galvanized by resistance to war, racial oppression, and environmental degradation. Younger practitioners of performance and installation carried the mindset of rebellion into the 1970s and 1980s, as previously excluded artists of color moved to the forefront in Los Angeles. Mike Kelley, their contemporary, remained unwaveringly true to the late countercultural flowering he had witnessed at the dawn of his career.

The result is a major new account of the counterculture’s enduring influence on modern art.

Author / Editor information

Thomas Crow is the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. His many books include The Long March of Pop: Art, Music, and Design, 1930–1995 and The Hidden Mod in Modern Art: London, 1957–1969.

Reviews

“The Artist in the Counterculture is art history with a soundtrack. One of our most eminent historians of American art here joins impeccable scholarship with an abiding love of blues, rock, and punk to spin the tale of California artists’ surprisingly central role in a cultural revolution.”—Carrie Lambert-Beatty, author of Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Prologue: Neuroplasticity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
One. Peyote frontier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
Two. Movies and Mexico Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
Three. Boston and the Leary Lure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
Four. Psychedelphic oracle Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
Five. Living up to their reputations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Six. Bearing witness to war Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Seven. From war abroad to oppression at home Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
Eight. Toward 1970: “the ever-deepening spiral of politics” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
Nine. The art of disappearance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
Ten. Noir vortex Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Eleven. Secret ceremonies Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
Twelve. Last artist of the counterculture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	250
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	266
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	268
Illustration and copyright credits Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	278

Language: English
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Pages
- Main content: 288
Illustrations
- Other: 90 color + 52 b/w illus.
Keywords: California art; 1960s; Haight-Ashbury; psychedelic; LSD; psylocibin; mescaline; Timothy Leary; Wallace Berman; Dennis Hopper; Easy Rider film; Land Art; James Turrell; Bas Jan Ader; Chris Burden; Sister Corita; Vietnam War; Black Panthers; Chinatown (film); Sun Ra; Iggy Pop; Senga Nengudi; David Hammons; Asco

eBook

Published: January 24, 2023
ISBN: 9780691236261