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Author to present his book about Arneson
The Nelson Gallery will host art historian and professor Jonathan Fineberg in a celebration of his new book on the late Robert Arneson, renowned artist, sculptor and ceramicist who taught art at UC Davis for four decades.
Fineberg will give a lecture and sign books at 4 p.m. Thursday.
Fineberg’s new book, “A Troublesome Subject,” is the first major book to consider the life and work of Arneson. Through his careful research and thoughtful analysis, Fineberg explores how Arneson’s work articulated the crisis of narcissism that has defined American culture since 1970.
“I have always felt that Arneson’s work had a deep insight into the circumstances in which we all found ourselves in those decades after 1970,” Fineberg said. “But it took me nearly 25 years to figure out how to explain that to myself, let alone others.”
“A Troublesome Subject” tells the story of how a high school art teacher transformed himself into an artist of international stature and ambition. Representing the full scope of Arneson’s career in a rich survey of color reproductions, this book is at once a study of the trajectory of contemporary culture, the work of Arneson and the relationship between the two.
Celebrated most prominently for his jocular self-portraits and his role in the California Funk Art movement, Arneson also created works that are deeply politically charged and psychologically gripping.
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