Book Discussion of Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision

This book discussion was hosted by the Newark Museum of Art and the Clement Price Institute at Rutgers in conjunction with the exhibition.
Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision presents the first major museum retrospective dedicated to the work of a Filipino American artist, celebrating the groundbreaking career of Carlos Villa (1936-2013).
This expansive catalogue from co-curators Trisha Lagaso Goldberg and
Mark Dean Johnson illuminates the social and cultural roots-and global importance-of iconic Filipino American artist and educator Carlos Villa’s artwork and career.
Carlos Villa has been described as the preeminent Filipino American artist-a legend in artistic circles for his groundbreaking approaches and his influence on countless artists-but he remains little known to many fans and scholars of modern and contemporary art. Villa was trained at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1950s as an abstract expressionist, and over time he transformed his practice to address issues of ethnic and cultural diversity. He concurrently assumed a leadership role in “Third World” and “multicultural” international art movements, and his large-scale works reference non-Western traditions, including tattoo, scarification, ritual, and ceremony. He was also an important theorist, curator, and organizer of public forums that he called “actions.”
This book traces the arc of his career from 1969 until his death in 2013, with emphasis on his feathered works from the 1970s, as well as later works that address aspects of the history of Filipinos in the United States. It illuminates the social and cultural roots-and global importance-of Villa’s art and teaching career as he sought to forge a new kind of art-world inclusion that reflected his own experience, commitment to diversity, and boundary-bending imagination.
Learn more: www.ucpress.edu/book/97805203...