Utopia and Dissent: Art, Poetry, and Politics in California - Softcover

Cándida Smith, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520206991 ISBN 13: 9780520206991

Publisher: University of California Press, 1996

Synopsis

A landmark study of California's visual arts and poetry, 1925 to 1975, Utopia and Dissent demonstrates the profound influence this regional culture had on American art and thought. Combining intellectual and cultural history, it traces the spread of ideas developed in California's pre-World War II bohemian enclaves to mainstream America, where they became a major current of 1950s and 1960s counterculturism.

The provincial nature of California's prewar arts institutions, Richard Cándida Smith shows, fostered an aesthetics stressing personal expression and the exploration of life's mysteries through creativity. These ideas found expression in the beat generation's soul-searching and informed a decade-long debate about conformity. When America exploded with sociopolitical protest in the 1960s, California quickly became a countercultural focal point for a nation redefining itself. People unfamiliar with the California avant-garde's actual works readily absorbed their ideas as they crossed the line into popular culture.

Cándida Smith introduces the major figures in California's visual arts and poetry movements: postsurrealists Helen Lundeberg and Lorser Feitelson; writers Kenneth Rexroth, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Wallace Berman; Vietnam War-era poets Gary Snyder and Denise Levertov. Unequalled in scope or depth of scholarship, this book will inform discussions of twentieth-century American arts, literature, and history for many years.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"The most important study of art in California, particularly in terms of avant-garde activity around mid-century, that I am aware of." (Paul Karlstrom, Smithsonian Institution)

About the Author:

Richard Cándida Smith is Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0520206991
• ISBN 13: 9780520206991
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560