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University of California Press

About the Book

This expansive catalogue 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. Carlos Villa: Worlds in Collision is the first museum retrospective of his work, presented at the San Francisco Art Institute and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
 
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. 
 
Published in association with the San Francisco Art Institute.

Exhibition dates:
Newark Museum of Art: February 8, 2022–May 8, 2022
San Francisco Art Institute & Asian Art Museum: June 17, 2022–Fall 2022

About the Author

Mark Dean Johnson is Professor of Art at San Francisco State University and a curator. He has written about Viila’s work previously for multiple publications.
 
Trisha Lagaso Goldberg is an artist, arts administrator, and curator who previously co-curated a project with Villa entitled Sino Ka? Ano Ka?: San Francisco Babaylan for San Francisco State University and the Museo Ng Maynila in 1998.
 

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
Jennifer Rissler

PREFACE Tracing Carlos Villa’s Path 
Jay Xu

FOREWORD Making the World Smaller: Carlos Villa’s Polyculturalism 
Lucy R. Lippard

INTRODUCTION Roots, Rituals, Actions : Worlds in Collision
Mark Dean Johnson and Trisha Lagaso Goldberg

Carlos Villa: Ascent against the Odds 
Paul J. Karlstrom
 
PORTFOLIO Ethnographic Inspirations: Works from the 1970s
Mark Dean Johnson, Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, and Sherwin Rio

Transcultural Sampling: The Reimagined Worlds of Carlos Villa
Margo Machida

PORTFOLIO A Smaller World: Carlos Villa and the Global Collections at the Newark Museum 
Tricia Laughlin Bloom

Villa’s Fake Book 
Theodore S. Gonzalves
America Is In His Art: Carlos Villa’s Poetics of Multiculturalism 
Luis H. Francia

PORTFOLIO Words in Space: Carlos Villa’s 1990s Notepad Drawings
Mark Dean Johnson, Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, and Sherwin Rio

Worlds in Collision, Exploding Galaxy, Voyage into the Absolute
Patrick D. Flores

CATALOGUE Mark 
Dean Johnson and Sherwin Rio

CHRONOLOGY 
Sherwin Rio

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX