One of the founding forces behind the 1970s feminist art movement, Judy Chicago became widely known for The Dinner Party, a massive installation turning women's traditional household-bound role on its head by setting a feast for thirty-nine remarkable women - from Hildegarde of Bingen to Emily Dickinson - to shine a spotlight on women's contributions to history. Concluded in 1979, it was presented in San Francisco to popular success and proceeded to be shown internationally to an audience of over one million viewers through an unprecedented grassroots effort. Art critics, however, responded differently, annihilating it for its celebration of vaginal imagery and embrace of 'feminine' craft. For decades Chicago operated on the margins of the art world, her work shunned by most critics and institutions and her evolution as an artist eclipsed by the notoriety of The Dinner Party. Judy Chicago: In the Making accompanies the first exhibition to offer a thorough overview of Chicago's career. It traces the artist's practice back to its roots, revealing her unique working process and the origins of the formal and conceptual strategies she has applied throughout her oeuvre. Bringing together a selection drawn from every major series of her work, it also reproduces sketchbooks, journals and preparatory drawings that document her extensive process of research and development. With 225 illustrations in colour

Kiki Kogelnik (1935-1997) worked in the United States for almost four decades, for many years on an equal level with pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. However her work was overlooked for a long time. Kogelnik, who lived and worked in Vienna and New York, investigated themes related to politics, social criticism, the space age and the human body through her often colourful paintings, sculptures, collages and installations. She also experimented with new materials of the time such as vinyl. Kunsthall Stavanger and the Kiki Kogelnik Foundation have worked together to organise Inner Life, a comprehensive overview focussing on her sculptural works. The exhibition, as well as the abundantly illustrated catalogue present several works that have not been shown since the 1960s, as well as performances and happenings by the influential artist.Exhibition: 30.3.-13.8.2017, Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway

An introduction to the rich and diverse art of California, this book highlights its distinctive role in the history of American art, from early-20th-century photography to Chicanx mural painting, the Fiber Art Movement and beyond. Shaped by a compelling network of geopolitical influences including waves of migration and exchange from the Pacific Rim and Mexico, the influx of African Americans immediately after World War II, and global immigration after quotas were lifted in the 1960s, California is a centre of artistic activity whose influence extends far beyond its physical boundaries. Furthermore, California was at the forefront of radical developments in artistic culture, most notably conceptual art and feminism, and its education system continues to nurture and encourage avant-garde creativity. Organized chronologically and thematically with illustrations throughout, this attractive study stands as an important reassessment of California's contribution to modern and contemporary art in the United States and globally. With 168 illustrations in colour

The Swiss artist Heidi Bucher was a major feminist figure on the international neoavantgarde art scene, whose work is characterized by a unique performative, yet material concept of sculpture. As early as the 1970s Bucher was experimenting with unusual materials such as latex, breathing life into them. She would pour liquid rubber onto surfaces and then pull it off again with great physical force, literally coming to grips with the world of things she experienced and pressing forward into psychological border zones. By transforming materials in ways that were as radical as they were sensual, she explored forms of human existence and how they are embedded in societal and private power structures. This monograph presents Bucher's oeuvre from her early days as a student in Zurich in the 1940s, to her experimental phase in New York and Los Angeles of the 1960s and 1970s, to her major works of "skinning" architecture and people, all the way to the pieces she created during her final years on Lanzarote.

Ceramics had a far-reaching impact in the second half of the twentieth century, as its artists worked through the same ideas regarding abstraction and form as those for other creative mediums. Live Form shines new light on the relation of ceramics to the artistic avant-garde by looking at the central role of women in the field: potters who popularized ceramics as they worked with or taught male counterparts like John Cage, Peter Voulkos, and Ken Price. Sorkin focuses on three Americans who promoted ceramics as an advanced artistic medium: Marguerite Wildenhain, a Bauhaus-trained potter and writer; Mary Caroline (M. C.) Richards, who renounced formalism at Black Mountain College to pursue new performative methods; and Susan Peterson, best known for her live throwing demonstrations on public television. Together, these women pioneered a hands-on teaching style and led educational and therapeutic activities for war veterans, students, the elderly, and many others. Far from being an isolated field, ceramics offered a sense of community and social engagement, which, Sorkin argues, crucially set the stage for later participatory forms of art and feminist collectivism.