A People's Art History of the United States : 250 Years of Activist Art and Artists Working in Social Justice Movements
ISBN: 9781595589316
Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / The New Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time
Subjects: Fine Arts;

This latest addition to the New Press's People's History series, with a preface by Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States), is both readable and instructive. Rather than writing a comprehensive history of social-justice-movement art, Lampert, an activist artist himself, focuses on "examples that were complicated, where the decisions made by artists were controversial and confounding," his premise being that "analyzing histories that are deeply complicated helps us learn." His examples range from an examination of the changing uses of wampum belts between Native Americans and Europeans to the contemporary Yes Men's audacious hoaxes that expose corporate and capitalist culture. Encouraging readers to consider how art can instigate-or dilute-activism and social change, and emphasizing lessons that can be learned and techniques that can be borrowed from earlier activists, the book is a useful and thought-provoking text for history and art students. It may also inspire activists, artist or otherwise, to maximize their effectiveness. 236 b&w illus. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Nicolas Lampert is a Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist and author whose work focuses on themes of social justice and ecology. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum, among others. Collectively, he works with the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative. Lampert is a full-time faculty member (academic staff appointment) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

hidden image for function call