Description
Book SynopsisA social and cultural history of African American arts activity in Los Angeles between the Second World War and the 1992 riots.
Trade Review“[An] often-dazzling and truly interdisciplinary study. . . . What truly dazzles about Widener's book is its range of concerns and competencies: music, theater, visual arts, film, literature, social history, intellectual history, urban studies, politics, and on and on. . . .
Black Arts West is an often-brilliant, certainly essential study for anyone interested in the black arts movement and, indeed, late twentieth-century U.S. cultural politics. “ - James Edward Smethurst,
Journal of American History“The invitation of
Black Arts West is to allow the reader a historic and discursive remapping of black Los Angeles so that among the ashes and debris of its most sensational and destructive moments—the Watts Riots of 1965 and the Rodney King Uprising of 1992—we see a much more complex, dynamic, and affirmative network of creative activities that date back to the influx of blacks to this region during the Second World War. Not only does he offer a remapping of the region, but also he argues that a particular aesthetic emerged as a result of the deliberate efforts of black artists to move forward by staying put in Los Angeles.” - Nicole R. Fleetwood,
Art Journal“
Black Arts West presents fresh, bold perspectives on race, class,
power, and identity in Los Angeles. Buy a copy and dwell on it. Widener’s book will definitely get your intellectual and political juices flowing. For that and more, we are in his debt.” - Douglas Flamming,
Pacific Historical Review“Widener is an extremely perceptive and subtle historian. By placing jazz and visual art alongside literature and theater while also paying attention to the relationship between race and class, his work does great service to the understanding of the interrelatedness of art and politics in the postwar
period.” - Joe Street,
American Historical Review“There is so much to recommend Daniel Widener’s
Black Arts West it is hard to know where to start. . . . Widener meticulously documents the struggles of local artists and community organizations in a manner that illuminates national and even international struggles around cultural production and thus makes this book an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on postwar African American culture. It constitutes an important addition to local and regional studies of the Black Arts Movement, and to scholarly analyses of black radicalism and its relationship to African American expressive culture,
the African American avant-garde, and the social movements and community organizations that created one of the most significant periods of African American artistic expression.” - Amy Abugo Ongiri,
Journal of African American History“Drawing on a wide range of sources, including small arts journals, original and archived oral histories with artists, and archival documents related to the city's arts policy, Widener's narrative is detailed, fluid, and analytically complex. . . . One of the many strengths of
Black Arts West is Widener's deft analysis of cultural texts across a range of genres. He is equally comfortable discussing the poetry of Jayne Cortez and Harry Dolan, the music of Horace Tapscott and Bobby Bradford, the visual art of John Outterbridge and Betye Saar, or the films of Charles Burnett and Billy Woodberry. These artists and many others are part of the tremendous wealth of information Widener presents on black arts in Los Angeles.” - Matt Delmont,
American Quarterly“
Black Arts West knocked my socks off. Daniel Widener’s exciting account of the ‘Watts Renaissance’ fundamentally revises our picture of contemporary L.A. art and literary scenes, and adds a crucial new chapter to the history of Black cultural radicalism during the 1960s and 1970s.”—
Mike Davis, author of
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
“Daniel Widener’s study provides a much needed, basic analysis of the complex and turbulent black arts and culture scene in Los Angeles during the 1960s and 1970s, and the dynamic mix of politics that fueled it.”—
Amiri Baraka“This is an ambitious, far-reaching, and original work that explores the meaning and importance of black culture from the post–WWII years through the Bradley years and successfully argues for the centrality of culture to African Americans’ search for freedom. It is a book that should be read by scholars and students of African American history, cultural history, and the history of Los Angeles.” -- Robert Bauman * Western Historical Quarterly *
“
Black Arts West presents fresh, bold perspectives on race, class, power, and identity in Los Angeles. Buy a copy and dwell on it. Widener’s book will definitely get your intellectual and political juices flowing. For that and more, we are in his debt.” -- Douglas Flamming * Pacific Historical Review *
“[An] often-dazzling and truly interdisciplinary study. . . . What truly dazzles about Widener's book is its range of concerns and competencies: music, theater, visual arts, film, literature, social history, intellectual history, urban studies, politics, and on and on. . . .
Black Arts West is an often-brilliant, certainly essential study for anyone interested in the black arts movement and, indeed, late twentieth-century U.S. cultural politics. “ -- James Edward Smethurst * Journal of American History *
“Drawing on a wide range of sources, including small arts journals, original and archived oral histories with artists, and archival documents related to the city's arts policy, Widener's narrative is detailed, fluid, and analytically complex. . . . One of the many strengths of
Black Arts West is Widener's deft analysis of cultural texts across a range of genres. He is equally comfortable discussing the poetry of Jayne Cortez and Harry Dolan, the music of Horace Tapscott and Bobby Bradford, the visual art of John Outterbridge and Betye Saar, or the films of Charles Burnett and Billy Woodberry. These artists and many others are part of the tremendous wealth of information Widener presents on black arts in Los Angeles.” -- Matt Delmont * American Quarterly *
“The invitation of
Black Arts West is to allow the reader a historic and discursive remapping of black Los Angeles so that among the ashes and debris of its most sensational and destructive moments—the Watts Riots of 1965 and the Rodney King Uprising of 1992—we see a much more complex, dynamic, and affirmative network of creative activities that date back to the influx of blacks to this region during the Second World War. Not only does he offer a remapping of the region, but also he argues that a particular aesthetic emerged as a result of the deliberate efforts of black artists to move forward by staying put in Los Angeles.” -- Nicole R. Fleetwood * Art Journal *
“There is so much to recommend Daniel Widener’s
Black Arts West it is hard to know where to start. . . . Widener meticulously documents the struggles of local artists and community organizations in a manner that illuminates national and even international struggles around cultural production and thus makes this book an invaluable contribution to the scholarship on postwar African American culture. It constitutes an important addition to local and regional studies of the Black Arts Movement, and to scholarly analyses of black radicalism and its relationship to African American expressive culture, the African American avant-garde, and the social movements and community organizations that created one of the most significant periods of African American artistic expression.” -- Amy Abugo Ongiri * Journal of African American History *
“Widener is an extremely perceptive and subtle historian. By placing jazz and visual art alongside literature and theater while also paying attention to the relationship between race and class, his work does great service to the understanding of the interrelatedness of art and politics in the postwar period.” -- Joe Street * American Historical Review *
Table of ContentsIllustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Acts of Culture, or, Maybe the People Would Be the Times 1
Part I. Cultural Democracy in the Racial Metropolis
1. Hollywood Scuffle: The Second World War, Los Angeles, and the Politics of Wartime Representation 21
2. The Negro as Human Being? Desegregation and the Black Arts Imperative 52
3. Writing Watts: The Rise and Fall of Cultural Liberalism 90
Part II. Message from the Grassroots
4. Notes from the Underground: Free Jazz and Black Power in South Los Angeles 117
5. Studios in the Street: Creative Community and Visual Arts 153
6. The Arms of Criticism: The Cultural Politics of Urban Insurgency 187
Part III. Festivals and Funerals
7. An Intimate Enemy: Culture and the Contradictions of Bradleyism 221
8. How to Survive in South Central: Black Film as Class Critique 250
Epilogue 283
Notes 291
Works Cited 329
Index 353
