The modern moves west : California artists and democratic culture in the twentieth century / Richard Cándida Smith

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: dilemmas of professional culture -- The case for modern art as a distinct form of knowledge -- Modern art in a provincial nation -- Modern art and California's progressive legacies -- From an era of grand ambitions -- Becoming postmodern -- California assemblage: art as counterhistory -- Learning from the Watts Towers -- Contemporary art along the U.S.-Mexican border -- Conclusion: improvising from the margins.

In The Modern Moves West, accomplished cultural historian Richard Candida Smith contends that the Watts Towers provided a model to succeeding California artists that was no longer defined through a subordinate relationship to the artistic capitals of New York and Paris.

English