The Watts Towers from Eyesore to Icon: Race and the Spaces of Outsider Art By Emma R. Silverman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson, Chair Professor Margaretta M. Lovell Professor Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby Professor Charles L. Briggs Summer 2018 Abstract The Watts Towers from Eyesore to Icon: Race and the Spaces of Outsider Art by Emma R. Silverman Doctor of Philosophy in History of Art and the Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality University of California, Berkeley Professor Julia Bryan-Wilson, Chair Starting around 1921, Sabato (Sam) Rodia (1879–1965) began to build an unusual environment in his backyard in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Although he had no formal training in art or architecture, Rodia used concrete-covered steel embellished with intricate mosaics of tile, shell, and glass to create a series of elaborate sculptures, including three central towers that rise nearly one hundred feet in height. For over three decades Rodia’s creation received scant public recognition, and in 1954 Rodia left Los Angeles, never to return. The story of how a single individual worked alone to create such a monumental structure is awe-inspiring; however, the life the site took on after Rodia’s departure is equally remarkable. In the postwar period California’s perceived provinciality relegated it to the fringes of the New York-centered art world. For many artists, the challenges of geographic liminality were compounded by racial discrimination, which systematically excluded them from local cultural institutions. Starting in the 1950s, artists and other cultural workers claimed Rodia’s creation as a potent symbol of art in the margins, making and re-making its meaning as a public monument. In 1959, when the site was threatened by demolition, artists, architects, and writers in the local modernist scene rallied in its defense. They launched a successful preservation campaign, arguing for the value of the “Watts Towers” on the basis of its significance as a public artwork for modern Los Angeles. Then, in August of 1965 an episode of racially motivated police violence sparked an uprising in Watts, as residents took to the streets burning convenience stores and overturning parked cars. In the aftermath of the rebellion the Watts Towers was used as a symbol of an emerging black nationalist movement, and the community arts center at the base of the Towers became the staging ground for a black avant-garde working in assemblage. Meanwhile, in the late 1960s there was a growing revival of widespread interest in the art of untrained makers. In the mid-1970s curators who had been involved in the preservation campaign fifteen years earlier made the Watts Towers an exemplar of a new genre of making—the American folk or visionary art environment—and showcased it in museum exhibitions next to other large-scale backyard sites. 1 This dissertation examines how and why Rodia’s creation was claimed by multiple cultural movements as an icon of modernist art in California, a landmark of black cultural renaissance, and a paragon of folk and outsider art. I trace the history of the site from its construction starting in the 1920s to its multilayered reception from the 1950s through the 1970s. In doing so, I elucidate not only the remarkable cultural history of this idiosyncratic structure, but also how, in the postwar period, vanguard artists drew from practices they perceived to be “outside” of mainstream fine art in order to expand the limitations concerning who could be an artist, what could be an art object, and where art could take place. These new practices and frameworks spread beyond Southern California, blurring the boundaries that separated high art from popular culture, and modern from folk, contributing to the increasing pluralism of American contemporary art. Yet at the same time, I argue that the incorporation of the Watts Towers into the category of “Art” was intertwined with the structure’s location in the racialized urban landscape of Los Angeles, as well as the histories of colonialism that produced terms like primitive, folk, and outsider. Therefore, my study reveals not only how the recognition of the Watts Towers made the art world more inclusive, but also the racial politics of space that structure the creation and appeal of “outsider art.” 2 This dissertation is dedicated to my partner Sara Smith-Silverman And to the memory of my fiercest cheerleader, my grandmother Irene “Mimi” Silverman i Table of Contents Acknowledgements………..…………………………………………………………..…iii List of Figures………………………………………………………………………...…..vi Introduction………………………………..…………………………..………………..…1 Chapter 1: “Glass Towers and Demon Rum”: Rodia’s Ornaments, 1920 to 1950…………………………………………...……….….11 Chapter 2: “Something Big”: A Shrine to California Modernism in the 1950s..……………………….……….....……46 Chapter 3: “Nation Time”: The Watts Towers and Black Cultural Uprising After 1965…………………….……....80 Chapter 4: “Extraordinary Structures”: Environments, Museums, and the 1970s Folk Revival………………..………….....….105 Conclusion……………………………………………………………..……………….136 Bibliography………………………………………………………...…....…………….141 ii Acknowledgements My dissertation is indebted to the support of so many, and I am happy to have a forum to recognize the crucial role that others have played in my academic work. It has been an absolute pleasure to be part of the community of art historians at the University of California, Berkeley for the past six years. First and foremost, I want to thank my adviser, Julia Bryan-Wilson. It was scholarship like Art Workers that led me to apply to graduate school in Art History, and Julia’s brilliant yet accessible writing is a model for my own work. Julia also suggested the Watts Towers as a potential dissertation topic, setting me on the path to this dissertation. I am grateful for the way that she gave me space to develop my own approach to the project, while still offering incisive critical feedback. In addition to her scholarly acumen, I have valued Julia’s commitment to intersectional feminist and queer politics, her empathetic mentorship, and her advocacy for a good work-life balance. I am honored to be the first graduate student to complete the journey from admission to graduation under her guidance. I would also like to thank the remarkable members of my dissertation committee. In a formative independent study Margaretta M. Lovell became my guide into the field of self-taught, folk and outsider art. She continuously challenged me to attend to easily overlooked specificities, greatly improving the precision and quality of my writing. I am grateful to her as well for including me in the Berkeley Americanist Group (BAG), which has been a much-needed source of community during the solitude of dissertation writing. Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby’s expansive scholarship on monumental landmarks and race and representation was a key influence on my thinking about the Watts Towers. And perhaps just as importantly, she deeply impacted me in her affective approach to our discipline, which has taught me to describe my subject in such a way that my readers will be as moved by its aesthetics and significance as I am. Charles L. Briggs helped me to navigate my outside field of Folklore and think in nuanced ways about narrative and authenticity. It was in the final paper that I wrote for his “Theories of Traditionality and Modernity” that I formulated my methodological approach, and that paper became a touchstone that I returned to again and again throughout the process of writing the dissertation. In addition to my adviser and committee, faculty members such as Lauren Kroiz, Anneka Lenssen, and Todd Olson made time to lend their expertise to my study. Several working groups commented on selections from this dissertation—the members of BAG, the Dissertation Working Group in the History of Art Department, and the Gender, Women and Sexuality Designated Emphasis Research Seminar. Mathilde Andrews and Robyn Johnson lent their copy-editing skills at a key moment in the completion of this project. Jez Flores, Ellen Feiss, Kappy Mintie, and many other graduate colleagues provided companionship and thought-provoking conversations. In Elaine Yau, I found a generous mentor in the study of self-taught art. Megan Hoetger’s innovative scholarship inspired me to be more creative in the ways that I engaged my subject. And special mention must go to Sarah Louise Cowan, a frequent reader of my scholarship who always responds with immense care and the uncanny ability to tease core ideas out of even the most iii muddled writing. Thank you Sarah, for being such an excellent interlocutor and steadfast friend. I would like to acknowledge the institutions that provided financial support for my project, and the numerous other individuals whose help enhanced my research. This project has its origins in my Master’s program at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, where Jill Casid and Michael Jay McClure taught me to ask burning questions and examine unruly objects. Dialogues with Lex Morgan Lancaster and Melanie Saeck made early interventions into the formation of my ideas about Art History, and they have both been much-appreciated ongoing pep-talk-providers. In Wisconsin I also had the opportunity to work with the Kohler Foundation staff and conservators on the preservation of the Garden of Eden and Mary Nohl’s House, deepening my interest and expertise in concrete yard environments. During my tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, a summer research grant from the History of Art Department gave me the support to freely explore potential dissertation topics and select one that I am more than satisfied with. The James and Sylvia Thayer Short-Term Research Fellowship at the Special Collections of the University of California, Los Angeles jump-started my dissertation research.