Tacit Knowledge: Post Studio / Feminism - CalArts (1970-1977)

Key texts and documents from the golden years of the CalArts program

This volume provides an insight into the complex artistic and educational practices that characterized the first decade of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). There is a special focus on the conceptual and feminist strategies developed in and from John Baldessari’s post-studio class as well as Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro’s Feminist Art Program, which was initiated in 1970 and brought to the newly founded art school in 1971.

As post-studio and feminist practices at CalArts are often characterized by the specific entanglement of cognitive and (habitual) bodily forms of knowledge, the idea of tacit knowledge, and thus learning through social and performative contexts of action, functions as an overarching principle linking all the contributions in the book.

Including short introductions on artists such as Baldessari, Alison Knowles, Barbara Bloom, Matt Mullican, James Welling, Jack Goldstein and others, texts by Paulo Friere, Peter Plagens, Michael Polanyi and Daniel Buren, in-depth case studies on individual works and a broad range of documental and photographic material, Tacit Knowledge is designed in the style of a magazine, allowing a diverse and lively approach to the ideas shaping the early years of CalArts.