Katy Siegel

A fascinating account of the art of the US Bicentennial, offering wide-ranging perspectives on debates about national identity and history that remain pressing today In 1976 the United States celebrated its two hundredth year with festivals, exhibitions, works of art, and historical initiatives. Planning for the Bicentennial spanned postwar prosperity, political activism, and, toward the end, fear of national decline. The social alchemy of these conditions produced a national investment in shared cultural experience never matched before or since. Across wildly disparate venues, demographics, interests, presidencies, and geographies, Bicentennial cultural production contended with community, the environment, immigration, heritage, technology, and what it meant to be American. This outpouring of projects featured centrally in national debates, and it elicited mass participation in negotiating US history and imagining the nation’s future. What Was America? offers a prismatic view of American art and culture in the years leading up to 1976. Ten fascinating case studies examine the individual efforts of artists such as Benny Andrews; blockbuster exhibitions including A Nation of Nations at the Smithsonian; and popular community projects like protest quilts and time capsules. The authors consider issues that remain highly relevant today and offer new perspectives on the possibilities for art’s social role, exploring its use in defining the nation’s past and future, its purpose and its people.

Carrie Moyer consciously centres her painting as a practice about painting, with history as a subtext. Known for her incursions into Colour Field painting, Moyer also traces her influences to iconic female artists of the twentieth century, such as Georgia O Keeffe, and surrounding questions of taste, once quipping of her paintings that [Helen] Frankenthaler and [Fernand] Leger met in a dark corner and had Elizabeth Murray. Moyer s complex work merges abstract aesthetics and legible imagery: vividly coloured and textured forms are embedded with a range of historical, stylistic, and physical references to Surrealism, Modernism, 1960s and 70s counterculture graphics, and 70s feminist art. Moyer often works on the floor, pouring, rolling, stippling, mopping the paint, and embellishing with glitter. An exploration of acrylic s unique properties is a driving force in her work. Beginning as an intern at HERESIES, the pioneering feminist art magazine, Moyer has also engaged in critical practices beyond the studio. This monograph enriches a deep dive into Moyer s painting practice, in particular her work of the past decade, with a portfolio of the artist s agitprop from the 1990s, including Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!), one of the first lesbian public art projects.

A sweeping retrospective exploring the oeuvre of an incandescent artist, revealing the ways that Mitchell expanded painting beyond Abstract Expressionism as well as the transatlantic contexts that shaped her Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) was fearless in her experimentation, creating works of unparalleled beauty, strength, and emotional intensity. This gorgeous book unfolds the story of an artistic master of the highest order, revealing the ways she expanded abstract painting and illuminating the transatlantic contexts that shaped her. Lavish illustrations cover the full arc of her artistic practice, from her exceptional New York paintings of the early 1950s to the majestic multipanel compositions she made in France later in her career. Signature works are represented here along with rarely seen paintings, works on paper, artist’s sketchbooks, and photographs of Mitchell’s life, social circle, and surroundings. Featuring scholarly texts, in-depth essays, and artistic and literary responses, this book is organized in ten chronological chapters. Each chapter centers on a closely related suite of paintings, illuminating a shifting inner landscape colored by experience, sensation, memory, and a deep sense of place. Presenting groundbreaking research and a variety of perspectives on her art, life, and connections to poetry and music, this unprecedented volume is an essential reference for Mitchell’s admirers and those just discovering her work.Published in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtExhibition Schedule:San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (September 4, 2021–January 17, 2022) Baltimore Museum of Art (March 6–August 14, 2022) Fondation Louis Vuitton (October 5, 2022–February 27, 2023)