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e v i e w sEdited by James J. RawlsThe Modern MovesWest: CaliforniaArtists andDemocratic Culture inthe Twentieth CenturyBy Richard Cándida Smith(Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 2009, 264 pp.,$39.95 cloth)Reviewed by Paul J. Karlstrom, FormerWest Coast Regional Director, Archivesof American Art, Smithsonian Institution;editor of On the Edge of America:California Modernist Art, 1900–1950; andauthor of the forthcoming Peter Selz:Sketches of a Life in ArtRichard Cándida Smith’s mostrecent book is another tour de forceexample of the skillful employmentof art in the service of ideas. Here thehighly respected intellectual historianfurther develops ideas introduced inearlier works: Utopia and Dissent: Art,Poetry, and Politics in California (1995),a strikingly original look at mid-twentieth-centuryCalifornia avant-garde artthat diverged from the typical practiceof determining significance by progressionalong established formalist lines,and the brilliant Mallarmé’s Children:Symbolism and the Renewal of Experience(1999), in which the author findssignificance in California’s innovativebohemian subcultures and workingclasssociety.The Modern Moves West is in some wayseven more ambitious than the earliertwo books, but they really should beviewed as a series—a trilogy—sharingan intellectual/historical pointof view that seeks its evidence in artand specifically that of California. Theapproach is largely chronological, movingfrom ninteenth-century France toCalifornia, the early chapters laying theintellectual and philosophical groundwork.For this reader, the guidinghistorical perspective came togetheron page forty-five with the introductionof Simon Rodia and his splendidWatts Towers in South Central LosAngeles. Moving from the abstract tothe specific, the author could not havedone better than to start with Rodia,the working-class master who standslegitimately shoulder-to-shoulder withthe leading modernist elites—and notonly in California. Rodia’s direct influenceis emphasized by a long discussionof Noah Purifoy, first director ofthe Watts Towers Art Center, whosequestioning of the efficacy of workingas an individual artist to benefit hiscommunity, and his use of assemblageas a democratic means of expression,fits well with the author’s interests.Rather than focus on the most prominentCalifornia artists, Cándida Smithprefers to concentrate on a few figureswho best exemplify how artists create aplace for themselves in a more broadlydefined modernity. The analysis of JayDeFeo’s iconic The Rose (1958–66),with its obsessive layering of monochromaticpigment to approximatesculptural form, convincingly placesthe work within the realm of ideas aswell as the senses.In this extraordinary book, strikinglyoriginal and rich in synthetic thinking,Cándida Smith presents an alternativeway to look at and think about art, andits relationship to the larger social andcultural context. He patiently explainshow forces came together to producea creative culture in California that,on its own regional terms, played asignificant role in expanding how wethink about modernism as a historicalconcept. Along the way, he presents anonstandard but recognizable historicaloverview that significantly expandsour understanding of how art fits inand contributes to society. For thoseseriously interested in art, and in Californiahistory, The Modern Moves Westis indispensable reading.California History • volume 88 number 1 2010