Provides a counter history to conventional accounts of American art. Close historical examinations of particular events in Los Angeles and New York in the 1960s are interwoven with discussion of the location of these events, normally marginalized or overlooked, in the history of cultural politics in the United States during the postwar era. Contradictions both within dissident art practices and the mainstream "avant-garde" are explored. So, too, are the significance of cultural institutions in relation to the production of art, the function of cultural canons within national politics, the construction of collective memories, and the ways in which culture is embedded in ideology and politics. The book is based on detailed and new research from a range of sources including the alternative press, such as the Los Angeles Free Press; public and private archives; interviews and oral histories.