The Santa Barbara Museum of Art recently hosted Jenni Sorkin, UC Santa Barbara professor of history of art and architecture, to speak about her newest book, “Art in California,” as part of its Art Matters lecture series.
With “Art in California,” Sorkin focuses on California’s contributions to art history and how historic events have set the stage for art production in the state and vice versa.
“Many art historians, including myself, are trained on the East Coast, that is largely where most of the graduate programs are centered in this country. … So, the narrative of the 20th century in American art has an extreme East Coast bias for that reason,” Sorkin said. “What I sought to do here is really change the dialogue and push everything westward and showcase how California is a radical progenitor of multiculturalism, of ethnic identity, of community belonging and community building.”
She spoke about how migration and exchange in California largely contributed to and influenced art in the state and how, with this book, she seeks to apply revisionism.
“[Revisionism] is about the re-interpretation of the historical record in which we seek to change traditional views and ideas by adding in people, events, and histories who were present but remained consistently overlooked,” Sorkin said. “They are most often women and people of color because the art world has privileged — and still continues to privilege — production by white men and white people in general.”
One of Sorkin’s starting points for the book, which she spoke about during the Jan. 5 lecture, was Mexican Muralism and “los tres grandes” — muralists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros — all of whom eventually came to California to create their art.
One of Siqueiros’s murals — “Portrait of Mexico Today,” which he painted in 1932 on a wall on film director Dudley Murphy’s property in exchange for shelter and food — now stands in front of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, after being conserved and relocated in 2001.
Sorkin starts “Art in California” with the 1916 formation of the National Park Service, which made way for landscape painting and photography of the California wilderness.
Sorkin also emphasized her intentional inclusion of photography in her book, as several other art or photography teachings separate the two mediums, when they are actually very interconnected.
“I thought I was starting this book in 1929 when Orozco first came to California, and I decided to go back a generation so that I could include this group of Japanese-American photographers who were all modernists and who are making the most beautiful and exquisite abstract prints,” Sorkin said. “[They] have largely become completely lost to history because they faced deportation to concentration camps and internment camps and they end up losing their small businesses, which are largely photographic studios in Little Tokyo, in Japan Town in Sacramento and that is where they cluster in groups and form camera clubs.”
Other topics Sorkin focuses on in the book include studio craft, textiles and much more, as well as a chapter dedicated to “Art as Power” and the social movements between 1968 and 1978.
Within the chapter, Sorkin explores and discusses the art created during and influenced by the social movements of the times, including the Asian American Movement, the American Indian Movement, the Black civil rights and Black Power movements, the Chicano civil rights movement, the Free Speech Movement, Gay Liberation, and more.
Some of Sorkin’s previous publications include “Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community” and “Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women Artists, 1947-2016,” as well as several essays in journals and exhibition catalogs.
“Art in California” is available to buy in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art store, and more information on Sorkin can be found on UCSB’s website.
