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Union Station today is a celebrated architectural icon and vibrant centerpiece of Los Angeles’s regional transportation network. Designed by John and Donald B. Parkinson, its mission revival architecture speaks to a mythic vision of Spanish heritage, but with streamline moderne and art deco details. At first glance this masterpiece, conceived as a magnificent gateway to the growing metropolis, offers no hint of the civic, financial, and legal battles surrounding its development, siting, style, and construction—battles that were waged across decades in the early twentieth century and that went as high as the U.S. Supreme Court. Los Angeles Union Station explores this compelling example of how transit and corporations disrupted regional balances of power and political economies. Aided by new research and beautiful drawings from the Getty Research Institute’s archive, the authors demonstrate how contentious politics informed architectural design—and the many ways in which Union Station was at the heart of the rise of Los Angeles. The book accompanies the exhibition No Further West, on view at the Los Angeles Public Library from May 2 through August 10, 2014.
In 1938, China City opened near downtown Los Angeles. Featuring a recreation of the House of Wang set from MGM's The Good Earth, this new Chinatown employed many of the same Chinese Americans who performed as background extras in the 1937 film. Chinatown and Hollywood represented the two primary sites where Chinese Americans performed racial difference for popular audiences during the Chinese exclusion era. In Performing Chinatown, historian William Gow argues that Chinese Americans in Los Angeles used these performances in Hollywood films and in Chinatown for tourists to shape widely held understandings of race and national belonging during this pivotal chapter in U.S. history. Performing C...
Widely regarded as the most influential curator of the second half of the twentieth century, Harald Szeemann (1933–2005) is associated with some of the most important artistic developments of the postwar era. A passionate advocate for avant-garde movements like Conceptualism and Postminimalism, he collaborated with artists such as Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra, and Cy Twombly, developing new ways of presenting art that reflected his sweeping vision of contemporary culture. Szeemann once stated that his goal as an exhibition maker was to create a “Museum of Obsessions.” This richly illustrated volume is a virtual collection catalogue for that imaginary institution, tracing t...
The Getty Research Journal showcases the remarkable original research underway at the Getty. Articles explore the rich collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and Research Institute, as well as the Research Institute's research projects and annual theme of its scholar program. Shorter texts highlight new acquisitions and discoveries in the collections, and focus on the diverse tools for scholarship being developed at the Research Institute. This issue includes essays by Scott Allan, Adriano Amendola, Valérie Bajou, Alessia Frassani, Alden R. Gordon, Natilee Harren, Sigrid Hofer, Christopher R. Lakey, Vimalin Rujivacharakul, and David Saunders; the short texts examine a Nuremberg festival book, translations of a seventeenth-century rhyming inventory, the print innovations of Maria Sibylla Merian, Karl Schneider's Sears designs, Clement Greenberg's copy of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, the Marcia Tucker papers, a mail art project by William Pope.L, the L.A. Art Girls' reinvention of Allan Kaprow's Fluids, and Jennifer Bornstein's investigations into the archives of women performance artists.
Much of how World War I is understood today is rooted in the artistic depictions of the brutal violence and considerable destruction that marked the conflict. Nothing but the Clouds Unchanged examines how the physical and psychological devastation of the war altered the course of twentieth-century artistic Modernism. Following the lives and works of fourteen artists before, during, and after the war, this book demonstrates how the conflict and the resulting trauma actively shaped artistic production. Featured artists include Georges Braque, Carlo Carrà, Otto Dix, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka, Käthe Kollwitz, Fernand Léger, Wyndham Lewis, André Masson, László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Nash, and Oskar Schlemmer. Materials from the Getty Research Institute’s special collections—including letters, popular journals, posters, sketches, propaganda, books, and photographs—situate the works of the artists within the historical context, both personal and cultural, in which they were created. The volume accompanies a related exhibition on view at the Getty Research Institute Gallery from November 25, 2014, to April 19, 2015.
This richly illustrated book examines the making of one of the earliest modern catalogues--La galerie électorale de Dusseldorff. Published in 1778, the revolutionary two-volume publication showcases one of the most important European painting collections of the eighteenth century, reflecting a pivotal moment in the history of art as well as the history of the art museum. In two essays, the authors analyze the process by which the catalogue was produced and shed light on the historical and cultural context that gave rise to an innovative and didactic way of displaying paintings--and, by extension, to art history as a discipline. The volume accompanies an exhibition of the same name to be held at the Getty Research Institute from May 31 to August 21, 2011.
The Mogao grottoes in northwestern China, located near the town of Dunhuang on the fabled Silk Road, constitute one of the world’s most significant sites of Buddhist art. Preserved in some five hundred caves carved into rock cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert are one thousand years of exquisite wall paintings and sculpture. Founded by Buddhist monks in the late fourth century, Mogao grew into an artistic and spiritual center whose renown extended from the Chinese capital to the far western kingdoms of the Silk Road. Among its treasures are 45,000 square meters of murals, more than 2,000 statues, and over 40,000 medieval silk paintings and illustrated manuscripts. This sumptuous catalogu...
In the most comprehensive investigation of the Los Angeles Public Library’s early history and architectural genesis ever undertaken, Kenneth Breisch chronicles the institution’s first six decades, from its founding as a private library association in 1872 through the completion of the iconic Central Library building in 1933. During this time, the library evolved from an elite organization ensconced in two rooms in downtown LA into one of the largest public library systems in the United States—with architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue’s building, a beloved LA landmark, as its centerpiece. Goodhue developed a new style, fully integrating the building’s sculptural and epigraphic progra...
"A selection of 60 photographs of Los Angeles by the photographer Julius Shulman (American, 1910-2009)."--Provided by publisher.
Consists of essays about the avant-garde journal Dyn, which was produced in Mexico in the 1940s - and its editor, Austrian painter and theorist, Wolfgang Paalen.