POSTWAR AMERICAN ART - 2 Sandip K Luis

OP AND POP 2024

POSTWAR AMERICA 1945 (The End of WWII) – 1968 (Civil Rights Act of 1968)

KEY IDEAS:

• The “American Dream” or “The Nation of Immigrants”, and

White Nationalism
"अमेरिकी सपना“ या “प्रवासियों का दे श”, और श्वेत र राट्रवावाद
• Economic prosperity after the Great Depression in the
1930s
1930 के दशक में महामंदी के बाद आर्थिक समद् ृ र्ि
•Bipolar World and The “Cold War” (Between the First World
led by the US and the Second World led by the USSR)
द्ववध्रुवीय ववश्व और “शीत यद्ु ि” (अमेररका के नेत रत्ृ व में
प्रथम ववश्व और यूएिएिआर के नेत रत्ृ व में द्ववत रीय ववश्व के
बीच)
• McCarthyism / Anti-Communism (िाम्यवादववरोधी) in the US
• McDonaldization and Consumerism in the US
अमेररका में मैकडॉनल्डाइ-करण और उपभोक्तावाद A 1958 book illustration
POSTWAR AMERICAN ART 1945 (Abstract Expressionism) – 1968 (Postmodernism)

KEY MOVEMENTS:
• Abstract Expressionism (1940s-1950s, US)
• Post-painterly Abstraction (late-1950s – 60s, US)
• Op (early 1960s, UK, US)
• Pop (late 1950s-1960s, Italy, UK, US)
• Minimalism (1960s-1970s, US, UK)
•Conceptual Art (1960s-1970s)
The “Neo-Avant-Garde” /
• Postmodernism (After “the 60s”) “The Global Contemporary”
(Performance, New Media and Installation Art)
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OP ART 1960s

• Op (Optical Art) paralleled by Post-Painterly Abstraction, but profoundly differed from the
latter in the question of art as illusion (which Op endorsed).
• Major practitioners of Op: Joseph Albers (also a theorist, US) and Bridget Riley (UK)
• Major idea: To produce optical illusions on the spectator (comparable to Georges Seurat’s
19th-century Pointillism)
OP ART
Josef Albers, a Bauhaus
alumnus and ex-faculty.

Homage to the Square -

series (1950s-60s)

"I made true the first English

sentence [Albers came from
Germany] that I uttered
(better stuttered) on our
arrival at Black Mountain
College in November 1933.
When a student asked me
what I was going to teach I
said: 'to open eyes'. And this
has become the motto of all
my teaching.“ – J A.
OP ART
Josef Albers, a Bauhaus
alumnus and ex-faculty.

Homage to the Square -

series (1950s-60s)

“Art is not to be looked at.

Art is looking at us… To be
able to perceive it we need
to be receptive.” – J A.
OP ART
“For me nature is not a landscape, but the dynamism of visual
forces - an event rather than an appearance.” – Bridget Riley
Link 1
Link 2
POP “Neo-Dada”
POP ART

• Started in the UK (by the Independent Group, and to some extent in Italy) and spread to the
US in the late 1950s
• Initially known as “Neo-Dada” in the US
• Major feature: Undoing the difference between “high” and “low” art, or fine art and
mass/popular culture in cynicism, wry humour, and deliberate superficiality. "उच्च" और
"ननम्न" कला, या लसलत र कला और लोकवप्रय िंस्कृनत र के बीच के अंत रर को ननंदकवाद में
इनकार, व्यंग्यपणू ण हास्य और जानबझ ू कर ित रहीपन ।
• Major artists: The Independent Group (in the United Kingdom), Jasper Johns, Robert
Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Claes Oldenburg (in the US).
Richard Hamilton (The Independent
Group, UK) Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes
So Different, so Appealing?, 1956
Jasper Johns, Three Flags, 1958
American Pop artist Jasper Johns wanted to draw
attention to common objects people view frequently
but rarely scrutinise. He made many paintings of
targets, flags, numbers, and alphabets.
Jasper Johns, 0 through 9, 1961
American Pop artist Jasper Johns wanted to draw
attention to common objects people view frequently
but rarely scrutinise. He made many paintings of
targets, flags, numbers, and alphabets.
Robert Rauschenberg, Buffalo II (1964)
In the early 1960s, Rauschenberg adopted the commercial
medium of silk-screen printing and began filling entire
canvases with appropriated news images and anonymous
photographs of city scenes, street culture and consumer
advertisements.
 Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon, 1959
Rauschenberg, a gay artist, based Canyon on a Rembrandt
painting of Jupiter in the form of an eagle carrying the boy
Ganymede. The photo in the combine (as the artist called his
assemblage) references the Greek boy, and the hanging bag
is a visual pun on his buttocks.

Rembrandt, Abduction of Ganymede, 1635

Roy Lichtenstein, Brushstroke, 1965
“[Pop art] is an intensification, a stylistic
intensification of the excitement which the subject
matter has for me; but the style is […] cool. One of
the things a cartoon does is to express violent
emotion and passion in a completely mechanized
and removed style. To express this thing in a
painterly style would dilute it.” – R L.
Roy Lichtenstein, Hopeless, 1963
“[Pop art] is an intensification, a stylistic
intensification of the excitement which the subject
matter has for me; but the style is […] cool. One of
the things a cartoon does is to express violent
emotion and passion in a completely mechanized
and removed style. To express this thing in a
painterly style would dilute it.” – R L.
Whaam!" (1963)
Andy Warhol,
Marilyn Diptych,1962

“In the future, everyone

will be famous for 15
minutes.” - Warhol
Andy Warhol
Electric Chair, 1964
Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) 1963
Andy Warhol
Brillo Boxes, 1964
Claes Oldenburg Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, 1969

Designed as a speaker’s platform for antiwar

protesters, the sculpture humorously combines
phallic and militaristic imagery. Originally, the
lipstick tip was soft red vinyl and had to be
inflated.
Claes Oldenburg (with Coosje van Bruggen)
Dropped Cone (2001)
Link