Table of Contents

Contents

Foreword: Memory as Model
Lucy R. Lippard
Introduction. The Countercultural Experiment: Consciousness and Encounters at the Edge of Art
Elissa Auther and Adam Lerner
I. Communal Encounters
1. How to Build a Commune: Drop City’s Influence on the Southwestern Commune Movement
Erin Elder
2. Collective Movement: Anna and Lawrence Halprin’s Joint Workshops
Eva J. Friedberg
3. The Farm by the Freeway
Jana Blankenship
4. San Francisco Video Collectives and the Counterculture
Deanne Pytlinski
II. Handmade Worlds
5. Handmade Genders: Queer Costuming in San Francisco circa 1970
Julia Bryan-Wilson
6. Libre, Colorado, and the Hand-Built Home
Amy Azzarito
7. Craft and the Handmade at Paolo Soleri’s Communal Settlements
Elissa Auther
8. Pond Farm and the Summer Craft Experience
Jenni Sorkin
9. Expanded Cinema in Los Angeles: The Single Wing Turquoise Bird
David E. James
10. Paper Walls: Political Posters in an Age of Mass Media
Tom Wilson
III. Cultural Politics
11. The Print Culture of Yolanda M. López
Karen Mary Davalos
12. The Countercultural "Indian": Visualizing Retribalization at the Human Be-In
Mark Watson
13. Goddess: Feminist Art and Spirituality in the 1970s
Jennie Klein
14. The Revolution Will Be Visualized: Black Panther Artist Emory Douglas
Colette Gaiter
15. Out of the Closets, Into the Woods: The Post-Stonewall Emergence of Queer Anti-urbanism
Scott Herring
IV. Altered Consciousness
16. Naked Pictures: Ansel Adams and the Esalen Institute
Suzanne Hudson
17. Techniques of Survival: The Harrisons and the Environmental Counterculture
Amanda Boetzkes
18. Countercultural Intoxication: An Aesthetics of Transformation
Mark Harris
19. Everywhere Present Yet Nowhere Visible: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Dharma Art at the Naropa Institute
Bill Scheffel
20. Signifying the Ineffable: Rock Poster Art and Psychedelic Counterculture in San Francisco
Scott B. Montgomery

Acknowledgments
Contributors
Index

About the Author

Elissa Auther is associate professor of contemporary art at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She is the author of String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art (Minnesota, 2010).

Adam Lerner is director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and chief animator in the Department of Fabrications.

Lucy R. Lippard is an internationally known writer, activist, and curator. She is the author of eighteen books on contemporary art and has written art criticism for Art in America, The Village Voice, and Z Magazine, among other publications.

Reviews

"West of Center is an overview of the rich and complicated countercultural moment when different artistic practices shared a belief in and dedication to alternative methods and materials. From Drop City to Anna and Lawrence Halprin’s workshops, from Paolo Soleri to Newton and Helen Harrison’s ecological projects, this volume makes connections across disciplines and describes multi-faceted influences on the art of today." —Chip Lord, Founder and partner with Ant Farm, 1968 - 1978

One of a number of recent publications on West Coast art, this book examines various expressions of the 1960s and '70s counterculture, from happenings and communes to political posters and protests. As editors Auther (contemporary art, Univ. of Colorado, Colorado Springs; String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art) and Lerner (director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver) explain, this volume seeks to invest the counterculture with a renewed significance. Decades of abuse-accusations from the left of political escapism and from the right of moral degeneracy-have reduced it in the minds of many to empty cliche. Moreover, despite a current artistic interest in the experiential and the interdisciplinary, countercultural art has received little scholarly attention. In response, many of the book's contributors seek to forge new links between this moment and the present day. For example, curator and writer Erin Elder places the Drop City commune in relation to contemporary participatory, project-based art, while other writers question received notions about anarchistic, countercultural politics. VERDICT A well-conceived and thought-provoking essay collection, highly recommended for any enthusiast or scholar of American art of the 1960s.-Jonathan Patkowski, CUNY Graduate Ctr. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.