Sarah Schrank
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257966
- eISBN:
- 9780823268924
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257966.003.0014
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The structures best known as the Watts Towers were known to Sabatino Rodia as “Nuestro Pueblo,” a provocative take on Los Angeles' original name, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Se ñora la Reina de los Angeles ...
More
The structures best known as the Watts Towers were known to Sabatino Rodia as “Nuestro Pueblo,” a provocative take on Los Angeles' original name, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Se ñora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula.” By inscribing his Towers in Spanish, Rodia honored his Mexican neighbors, the pre-American history of Los Angeles, and claimed the Towers and the city for others than he alone. This chapter shows how Nuestro Pueblo acted as a galvanizing force for a politics grounded in cultural identity and loud claims to social equity. Nuestro Pueblo's towers have been both generative of community and symbols of community in political fights over funding and territory. Nuestro Pueblo also represents the penultimate modern city as it embodies premodern labor while holding the multitudinous meanings, multilingual names, and commercial promises of the postmodern world city.Less
The structures best known as the Watts Towers were known to Sabatino Rodia as “Nuestro Pueblo,” a provocative take on Los Angeles' original name, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Se ñora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula.” By inscribing his Towers in Spanish, Rodia honored his Mexican neighbors, the pre-American history of Los Angeles, and claimed the Towers and the city for others than he alone. This chapter shows how Nuestro Pueblo acted as a galvanizing force for a politics grounded in cultural identity and loud claims to social equity. Nuestro Pueblo's towers have been both generative of community and symbols of community in political fights over funding and territory. Nuestro Pueblo also represents the penultimate modern city as it embodies premodern labor while holding the multitudinous meanings, multilingual names, and commercial promises of the postmodern world city.
Luisa Del Giudice (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780823257966
- eISBN:
- 9780823268924
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257966.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Cultural Studies
The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia. Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally renowned ...
More
The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia. Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally renowned destination, the Watts Towers in Los Angeles are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo—Our Town/Our People. Featuring fresh and innovative examinations, this book is a much-anticipated revisitation of the man and his towers. In 1919, Sabato Rodia purchased a triangular plot of land in a multiethnic, working-class, semi-rural district. He set to work on an unusual building project in his own yard. By night, Rodia dreamed and excogitated, and by day he built. He experimented with form, color, texture, cement mixtures, and construction techniques. He built, tore down, and re-built. As an artist completely possessed by his work, he was often derided as an incomprehensible crazy man. Providing a multifaceted, holistic understanding of Rodia, the towers, and the cultural/social/physical environment within which the towers and their maker can be understood, this book compiles essays from twenty authors, offering perspectives from the arts, the communities involved in the preservation and interpretation of the towers, and the academy. The Watts Towers are wondrous objects of art and architecture as well as the expression and embodiment of the resolve of a singular artistic genius to do something great. But they also recount the heroic civic efforts (art and social action) to save them, both of which continue to this day to evoke awe and inspiration.Less
The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia. Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally renowned destination, the Watts Towers in Los Angeles are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo—Our Town/Our People. Featuring fresh and innovative examinations, this book is a much-anticipated revisitation of the man and his towers. In 1919, Sabato Rodia purchased a triangular plot of land in a multiethnic, working-class, semi-rural district. He set to work on an unusual building project in his own yard. By night, Rodia dreamed and excogitated, and by day he built. He experimented with form, color, texture, cement mixtures, and construction techniques. He built, tore down, and re-built. As an artist completely possessed by his work, he was often derided as an incomprehensible crazy man. Providing a multifaceted, holistic understanding of Rodia, the towers, and the cultural/social/physical environment within which the towers and their maker can be understood, this book compiles essays from twenty authors, offering perspectives from the arts, the communities involved in the preservation and interpretation of the towers, and the academy. The Watts Towers are wondrous objects of art and architecture as well as the expression and embodiment of the resolve of a singular artistic genius to do something great. But they also recount the heroic civic efforts (art and social action) to save them, both of which continue to this day to evoke awe and inspiration.
