California Video: Artists and Histories

Glenn Phillips

Hardcover | 24.13 x 3.81 x 29.85 cm | 328 pp

Getty Publications | 2008 | 9780892369225

Published to accompany a landmark exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2008, California Video presents the first comprehensive survey of the history of video art in California.

Since the late 1960s, California artists have been at the forefront of an international movement that has expanded video into the realm of fine art. Whether designing complex video installations, devising lush projections, experimenting with electronic psychedelia, creating conceptual and performance art, generating guerilla video, or producing works that promote feminism and other social issues, these artists have utilised video technology to express revolutionary ideas.

This illustrated volume focuses on fifty-eight artists, from early video pioneers such as John Baldessari, Bruce Nauman, and William Wegman, to Martha Rosler, Diana Thater, Bill Viola, and other established and emerging talents. Thirty-five interviews shed new light on these artists, their influences, creative processes, and impact. Together with commissioned essays, rare reprints, and unpublished video transcripts, California Video chronicles a distinctly West Coast aesthetic located within the broader history of video art.