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

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. xxvi, 536 pages, [8] pages of plates, illustrations (some colour); 24 cm. Tight, clean copy. "A landmark study of the visual arts and poetry in California from 1925 to 1975, Utopia and Dissent demonstrates the profound influence this regional culture had not only on the arts but on the shape of American thought. As much an intellectual as a cultural history, the book traces the spread of ideas developed in California's bohemian enclaves before the Second World War into mainstream American society, where they became one of the major currents of 1950s and 1960s counterculturism. The provincial nature of California's prewar arts institutions, Richard Candida Smith shows, forced experimental artists to concentrate on their personal visions. This led to an aesthetics that stressed the importance of personal expression, the struggle to balance the private and public realms, and a view of the creative process as a means of exploring life's deeper mysteries. Most important, the arts became a source for developing new subjective models of the self. / Richard Candida Smith is Assistant Professor of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor." - Publisher.. Paperback. Fine. 8vo.