The Artist In The Counterculture

"An examination of the counterculture movement in California and how it both influenced and was influenced by art"--

Recovering the art and lifestyle of the counterculture in the American West in the 1960s and '70s

Art Gangs explores the work of artists groups in New York City after 1968. From the Art Workers Coalition through Art & Language, Colab and Group Material in the 1980s, in Soho and the Lower East Side, these collectives built the postmodern art world. This is the key background story of today s politicized international art world with its constellations of collectives, a scholarly text written in an accessible style -- Back cover.

The Taste of Art offers a sample of scholarly essays that examine the role of food in Western contemporary art practices. The contributors are scholars from a range of disciplines, including art history, philosophy, film studies, and history. As a whole, the volume illustrates how artists engage with food as matter and process in order to explore alternative aesthetic strategies and indicate countercultural shifts in society. The collection opens by exploring the theoretical intersections of art and food, food art’s historical root in Futurism, and the ways in which food carries gendered meaning in popular film. Subsequent sections analyze the ways in which artists challenge mainstream ideas through food in a variety of scenarios. Beginning from a focus on the body and subjectivity, the authors zoom out to look at the domestic sphere, and finally the public sphere. Here are essays that study a range of artists including, among others, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Daniel Spoerri, Dieter Roth, Joseph Beuys, Al Ruppersberg, Alison Knowles, Martha Rosler, Robin Weltsch, Vicki Hodgetts, Paul McCarthy, Luciano Fabro, Carries Mae Weems, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Janine Antoni, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Liza Lou, Tom Marioni, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Rakowitz, and Natalie Jeremijenko.

In this critical history, DeForrest Brown, Jr "makes techno Black again" by tracing the music's origins in Detroit and beyond In Assembling a Black Counter Culture, writer and musician DeForrest Brown, Jr, provides a history and critical analysis of techno and adjacent electronic music such as house and electro, showing how the genre has been shaped over time by a Black American musical sensibility. Brown revisits Detroit's 1980s techno scene to highlight pioneering groups like the Belleville Three before jumping into the origins of today's international club floor to draw important connections between industrialized labor systems and cultural production. Among the other musicians discussed are Underground Resistance (Mad Mike Banks, Cornelius Harris), Drexciya, Juan Atkins (Cybotron, Model 500), Derrick May, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Detroit Escalator Co. (Neil Ollivierra), DJ Stingray/Urban Tribe, Eddie Fowlkies, Terrence Dixon (Population One) and Carl Craig. With references to Theodore Roszak's Making of a Counter Culture, writings by African American autoworker and political activist James Boggs, and the "techno rebels" of Alvin Toffler's Third Wave, Brown approaches techno's unique history from a Black theoretical perspective in an effort to evade and subvert the racist and classist status quo in the mainstream musical-historical record. The result is a compelling case to "make techno Black again." DeForrest Brown, Jris a New York-based theorist, journalist and curator. He produces digital audio and extended media as Speaker Music and is a representative of the Make Techno Black Again campaign.

As long as there has been culture, there has been counterculture. At times it moves deep below the surface of things, a stealth mode of being all but invisible to the dominant paradigm; at other times it’s in plain sight, challenging the status quo; and at still other times it erupts in a fiery burst of creative–or destructive–energy to change the world forever. But until now the countercultural phenomenon has been one of history’s great blind spots. Individual countercultures have been explored, but never before has a book set out to demonstrate the recurring nature of counterculturalism across all times and societies, and to illustrate its dynamic role in the continuous evolution of human values and cultures. Countercultural pundit and cyberguru R. U. Sirius brilliantly sets the record straight in this colorful, anecdotal, and wide-ranging study based on ideas developed by the late Timothy Leary with Dan Joy. With a distinctive mix of scholarly erudition and gonzo passion, Sirius and Joy identify the distinguishing characteristics of countercultures, delving into history and myth to establish beyond doubt that, for all their surface differences, countercultures share important underlying principles: individualism, anti-authoritarianism, and a belief in the possibility of personal and social transformation. Ranging from the Socratic counterculture of ancient Athens and the outsider movements of Judaism, which left indelible marks on Western culture, to the Taoist, Sufi, and Zen Buddhist countercultures, which were equally influential in the East, to the famous countercultural moments of the last century–Paris in the twenties, Haight-Ashbury in the sixties, Tropicalismo, women’s liberation, punk rock–to the cutting-edge countercultures of the twenty-first century, which combine science, art, music, technology, politics, and religion in astonishing (and sometimes disturbing) new ways, Counterculture Through the Ages is an indispensable guidebook to where we’ve been . . . and where we’re going.

The Graphic Art of the Underground: A Countercultural History takes the reader on a dazzling journey through the visual art and design of alternative and youth cultures from the 1950s to the present day. Ian Lowey and Suzy Prince ’s compelling account draws upon the work of an array of artistic figures – many of whose lives have proved as colourful as their work– such as Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth, Kenny ‘Von Dutch’ Howard, Robert Williams, Robert Crumb, Martin Sharp, Jamie Reid, Linder Sterling, Gee Vaucher, Winston Smith, Barney Bubbles, Mark Ryden, Shag, Camille Rose Garcia, Marion Peck and Pete Fowler among numerous others.

Though more than a generation has passed since the revolutionary fervor of the Summer of Love of 1967, the 1960s in many ways seem with us still. From recurring debates over the war in Vietnam to the perpetually appealing music of the Beatles and the Rolling Stone to the concern about youth drug use, the legacy of the 1960s is ubiquitous in contemporary life. The Summer of Love brings together an impressive group of historians, artists, and cultural critics to present a rich and varied interpretation of this seminal decade and its continuing influence on politics, society, and culture. The Summer of Love, which accompanies an exhibition at Tate Liverpool, pays particular attention to the wildly creative psychedelic art of the era. Perceptive essays on psychedelic comics, graphic design and typography, light shows, and film successfully rescue psychedelic art from the fog of nostalgia and unjust critical neglect. Distinguished contributors also explore the role of 1960s fashion and architecture, and they consider anew the central influence of hallucinogenic drugs on the art of the era. Running throughout the essays are the elements of epochal change—from sexual liberation to student revolutions—that still form the backdrop of our collective consciousness of the 1960s. An incisive collection of writings on all aspects of 1960s art and culture, tempered by time and critical distance, The Summer of Love will be indispensable for those who wish they had been there—or for those who were, but can't remember it.