David Evans Frantz

This survey brings together three decades of work by contemporary Native American artistGerald Clarke (Cahuilla). Utilizing wit and humor to expose historical and present-day injustice, Clarke brings a decolonial perspective to urgent cultural and political issues facing our world. Gerald Clarke is an artist, university professor, Cahuillatribal leader, cowboy, and Indian (the artist’s preferred identity). Combining various media in his sculptures, paintings, works on paper, videos, performances, and installations, Clarke derives artistic inspiration from his cultural heritage, expressing traditional ideas in contemporary forms that are both poetic and politically urgent. Clarke’s artistic output resonates with histories of assemblage, pop, and conceptual art produced by both Native and non-native artists. This amply illustrated catalogue introduces Clarke’s work at a moment when it is profoundly necessary.

Working between the 1960s and early 1990s, the artists profiled in this compendium represent a broad cross section of L.A.'s art scene. With nearly 400 illustrations and ten essays, this volume presents histories of artistic experimentation and reveals networks of collaboration and exchange that resulted in some of the most intriguing art of late 20th-century America. From "mail art" to the rise of Chicano, gay, and feminist print media; the formation of alternative spaces to punk music and performance; fashion culture to the AIDS crisis-the artists and works featured here comprise a boundary-pushing network of voices and talents.