Art and the city: The transformation of civic culture in Los Angeles, 1900--1965 (California)

Unlike other metropolitan centers, Los Angeles has been perceived by critics as artistically underdeveloped and lacking in high culture, creative communities, and public art. An examination of Los Angeles' civic culture from 1900 to 1965, however, reveals that art has long been a volatile site for public debate over what kind of city Los Angeles would be and who would be represented in it. Rather than a dearth of civic art, Los Angeles hosts a rich history of creative representation from communities as diverse as elite urban boosters to minority muralists.; In the early twentieth century, anxiety about Los Angeles' status relative to other American cities, the rise of mass culture, and the increasing number of non-white residents prompted the city's elite and middle-class to advance their own vision of a unified civic culture—a vision that focused on the promotion of high art while obscuring a regional legacy of conquest and racial inequity. This notion of civic culture excluded many Angelenos. In response, artists from diverse ethnic communities and political backgrounds sought alternative forums for cultural expression and civic participation, painting themselves back onto the urban landscape through public protest and unofficial forms of artistic expression.; This assertion is illustrated by an examination of urban sites where divergent communities struggled over public art. These include 1920s elite art clubs, 1930s murals, 1950s outdoor art festivals, bohemian art scenes and the Watts Towers, a contested civic symbol after the riots of 1965. Struggles between liberal politicians, artists, conservative city councilmen, and business interests undermined a democratic art program imagined by the Municipal Art Department and contributed to the emergence of an exclusive corporate civic culture. Yet, the same struggles gave rise to a visual culture of urban protest still present today. Renegade murals, cooperative art galleries, beatnik coffeehouses, and outsider art, while not civic culture in the traditional sense of publicly funded institutions, represented an imagined urban landscape for divergent communities who shared a city's name but not access to its spaces, wealth, or political resources.