ABOUT THIS BOOK

Named a Best Art Book of 2017 by the New York Times and Artforum

In South of Pico Kellie Jones explores how the artists in Los Angeles's black communities during the 1960s and 1970s created a vibrant, productive, and engaged activist arts scene in the face of structural racism. Emphasizing the importance of African American migration, as well as L.A.'s housing and employment politics, Jones shows how the work of black Angeleno artists such as Betye Saar, Charles White, Noah Purifoy, and Senga Nengudi spoke to the dislocation of migration, L.A.'s urban renewal, and restrictions on black mobility. Jones characterizes their works as modern migration narratives that look to the past to consider real and imagined futures. She also attends to these artists' relationships with gallery and museum culture and the establishment of black-owned arts spaces. With South of Pico, Jones expands the understanding of the histories of black arts and creativity in Los Angeles and beyond.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Kellie Jones, a 2016 recipient of a MacArthur "Genius Grant," is Associate Professor of Art History at Columbia University and the author of several books, including EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art, also published by Duke University Press. Jones has curated numerous national and international exhibitions, including Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980 and Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties.

REVIEWS

"[A] deeply researched, panoramic depiction of how black artists made not only great art, but their own art world in Los Angeles during two crucial decades.... Quite simply, the history, not just of art in Los Angeles, but of modern American art generally will have to be reconceived on the basis of South of Pico and Now Dig This!."

-- Barry Schwabsky Hyperallergic

"South of Pico is a testament to the pioneers of African–American art in the twentieth century, who forged new paths to liberation and selfhood through their work. Jones shows how these artists pushed against their own obliteration, and generated a zeal for change that would escalate into the 1980s, 1990s and beyond."

-- Rachel Hurn Studio Museum

"Jones's book is a timely reminder that the United States has seen massive internal displacement within living memory and could again. But, more important, it's also a credible affirmation that from such sudden, painful movements something new and whole might yet be made."

-- Gary Dauphin Artforum

"Both a scholarly triumph and a fascinating read, this book provides the backstory for some of the most consequential artists to emerge from the Black Arts Movement and examines the work, projects, and initiatives they fostered."

-- Victoria L. Valentine Culture Type

"South of Pico is of broad use to the field of contemporary art history, from specialists to undergraduate students in advanced survey courses. . . . One of the most urgent if unanticipated demands for which Jones’s study may be useful is the increasing problem in Los Angeles of gentrification and the intra-urban migrations it forces. If gentrification is enabled by ignorance of the relationship between geography and cultural history, Jones’s book might be deployed by contemporary cultural and social activists as a weapon against forgetting and for the continued protection of the material and immaterial cultural heritage that is sited in one of the city’s most significant areas—south of Pico."

-- Natilee O. Harren CAA Reviews

"A touchstone for future scholars and readers with current investments in how narratives of black artists and the history of American art are written."

-- Bridget R. Cooks Art Journal

"South of Pico is stunningly broad ranging and critically detailed in its peopling of a movement and in its thorough close reading and contextualizing of art practice and objects."

-- Stephanie Leigh Batiste Journal of American History

"South of Pico presents a finely detailed picture of the black art community as it emerged in 1960s Los Angeles and struggled to gain the means of self-representation."

-- Ken D. Allan Art Bulletin

"Thanks to Jones's relentless efforts to provide go-to comparisons, there is now absolutely no reasons why any classroom lecture or museum exhibition on American modernism should lack examples of Black artists.'

-- Miguel de Baca Art History

“South of Pico is a tour de force, a potent intervention into the histories of postwar art, Los Angeles, and Black America. It teaches us, against the legacy and perpetuation of institutional violence, the profound significance of African American art as solidarity, community action, and inspiration.”

-- Michael Lang Journal of African American History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. South of Pico: Migration, Art, and Black Los Angeles 1
1. Emerge: Putting Southern California on the Art World Map 23
2. Claim: Assemblage and Self-Possession 67
3. Organize: Building an Exhibitionary Complex 139
4. In Motion: The Performative Impulse 185
Conclusion. Noshun: Black Los Angeles and the Global Imagination 265
Notes 277
Selected Bibliography 359
Index 379

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