| Victor Arnautoff and the Politics of Art Contributor(s): Cherny, Robert W. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0252082303 ISBN-13: 9780252082306 Publisher: University of Illinois Press OUR PRICE: $33.20 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2017 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Artists, Architects, Photographers - History | United States - State & Local - West (ak, Ca, Co, Hi, Id, Mt, Nv, Ut, Wy) - Political Science | Political Ideologies - Communism, Post-communism & Socialism |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 2016037404 |
| Series: Working Class in American History |
| Physical Information: 1.2" H x 6.1" W x 9.2" (1.30 lbs) 360 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Western U.S. |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Victor Arnautoff reigned as San Francisco's leading mural painter during the New Deal era. Yet that was only part of an astonishing life journey from Tsarist officer to leftist painter. Robert W. Cherny's masterful biography of Arnautoff braids the artist's work with his increasingly leftist politics and the tenor of his times. Delving into sources on Russian migr s and San Francisco's arts communities, Cherny traces Arnautoff's life from refugee art student and assistant to Diego Rivera to prominence in the New Deal's art projects and a faculty position at Stanford University. As Arnautoff's politics moved left, he often incorporated working people and people of color into his treatment of the American past and present. In the 1950s, however, his participation in leftist organizations and a highly critical cartoon of Richard Nixon landed him before the House Un-American Activities Committee and led to calls for his dismissal from Stanford. Arnautoff eventually departed America, a refugee of another kind, now fleeing personal loss and the disintegration of the left-labor culture that had nurtured him, before resuming his artistic career in the Soviet Union that he had fought in his youth to destroy. |