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  • Published: 7 February 2023
  • ISBN: 9781635423167
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $49.99

Out of Sight

The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties





A social and cultural history of Los Angeles and its emerging art scene in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

A social and cultural history of Los Angeles and its emerging art scene in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s

The history of modern art typically begins in Paris and ends in New York. Los Angeles was out of sight and out of mind, viewed as the apotheosis of popular culture, not a center for serious art.
Out of Sight chronicles the rapid-fire rise, fall, and rebirth of L.A.’s art scene, from the emergence of a small bohemian community in the 1950s to the founding of the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1980. Included are some of the most influential artists of our time: painters Edward Ruscha and Vija Celmins, sculptors Ed Kienholz and Ken Price, and many others.

A book about the city as much as it is about the art, Out of Sight is a social and cultural history that illuminates the ways mid-century Los Angeles shaped its emerging art scene—and how that art scene helped remake the city.

  • Published: 7 February 2023
  • ISBN: 9781635423167
  • Imprint: Other Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $49.99

Praise for Out of Sight

“In Out of Sight, William Hackman calls 1962 Los Angeles’s annus mirabilis…[Out of Sight] capture[s] the era…comprehensively and clearly.” Wall Street Journal

“It has the texture of life as it is actually lived...One of [Outs of Sight’s] chief pleasures is Hackman’s careful and extensive use of the voluminous oral histories that have been recorded over decades by artists, dealers, critics, collectors, curators and more, and which are archived at UCLA, the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art and elsewhere. The author also has a personal trove of interviews he conducted, some more than 25 years ago. Sundry distinct voices are stitched together to shape the unfolding narrative.” Los Angeles Times

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