± The 1960s were a time of political unrest and cultural revolution.
± To understand the ’60s we have to begin with important developments in the 1950s, which artists in the ’60s sought to challenge or expand upon.
± The atrocities of World War II created a crisis among many artists who wondered what role art should have in society—whether it ought to attempt to change society for the better, or whether it should operate autonomously, unfettered by social concerns.
± The center of the Western art world shifted from Paris to New York after World War II.
± The rise of New York as the center of the art world was aided by the development of what became known as Abstract Expression or the New York School, a stylistically diverse movement of painters who all lived and worked in New York.
± Abstract Expressionist painters all rejected representation in favor of abstraction, and understood their work to be an expression of their inner selves or psyches, which were conduits for universal human themes. Important Terms
± Action painting − Term to describe Jackson Pollock’s painting (and Abstract Expressionism painting in general) coined by critic Harold Rosenberg. It emphasized Pollock’s movement around his floor-bound canvas and the aggressive action required to complete the painting. Kaprow was inspired by the term (and Pollock’s painting) to create action-collages, Environments, and eventually Happenings.
± Combine – A term Robert Rauschenberg invented to describe his own works of art that combined painting and sculpture into new forms. It is a close cousin of the term “assemblage” (see Section IV) and is used art-historically only to describe Rauschenberg’s work.
± Fluxus – An international avant-garde network of artists founded in the 1960s by George Maciunas. Important artists involved in Fluxus include Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Yoko Ono, George Brecht, Benjamin Patterson, and Robert Watts. Often rooted in experimental music, Fluxus performances were based on scores written and executed by the artists, while many Fluxus objects were instruction- based, allowing the purchaser to fulfill the work.
± Happenings − An art form developed by Kaprow in the late 1950s consisting of scored, scripted, durational events, typically involving a number of nonprofessional participants and an unspecified number of spectators, who are often required to perform tasks as well. Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, and many other artists were key to the success and proliferation of Happenings in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Happenings were an important precursor to Fluxus and performance art.
± Pop art – An art movement that began in the 1950s in Britain and subsequently gained popularity in America, based on a shared rejection of dominant approaches to art and an embrace of everyday imagery and objects as the basis for representational painting and sculpture. Important artists associated with the movement include Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and James Rosenquist.
± Readymades − First developed by Marcel Duchamp around 1915, readymades were works of art created from existing manufactured objects, including bottle racks, urinals, and shovels. Artistic intervention was very limited, and these works generated questions about the very meaning of art and the role of the artist in its creation. Jasper Johns invoked the readymade in choosing recognizable, symbolic images for his paintings.
± Screenprinting – A type of stencil-printing popularized in fine art contexts by artists such as Andy Warhol, who used the technique to create paintings as well as editioned prints. To produce a screenprint, also called silkscreen, fabric mesh (made from silk or other materials) is stretched tightly over a frame, the artist blocks out areas that will become negative space in the resulting print, and paint is pushed through the open areas of the mesh onto a substrate. Prior to Warhol, screenprinting was typically only used for commercial purposes.
± Surrealism − An artistic, literary, and intellectual movement led by poet André Breton, beginning in 1924 and lasting until World War II. Important artists associated with the movement include Salvador Dali, René Magritte, Man Ray, and Joan Miró. Surrealists were interested in automatism, experimental language, and found objects. Magritte’s interest in language, combined with Duchamp’s innovation of the readymade, greatly influenced Johns’s philosophical approach to painting.