Art and architecture

Art

Art, beginning in the 1970s, entered a new, postmodern stage. There was no dominant style or movement; artists could “do their own thing.” While some, especially minority, artists used their art to make political statements, others felt that art was no longer a worthwhile means of expressing personal or political statements. Art became highly conceptual, referring to nothing but itself.

During the 1960s, three artistic movements had flourished and provided consistency in the art community—pop art, op art, and minimalism. While these movements lost much of their influence, they did not simply disappear. Pop art used images drawn from popular culture. Using common objects and images—soup cans, comic strips—pop artists transformed everyday objects and images into works of art. Pop art did not glorify the creative process; rather, it celebrated mechanical creation and the repetitiveness of mass media.

Leaders in pop art were Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and George Segal. Warhol, a former commercial illustrator, used images of common objects and reproduced them in altered colors. By displaying them as art, Warhol gave them shock value. Lichtenstein painted enlarged frames of comic strips based on war or romantic entanglements. This created a parody of a serious event. Segal was a sculptor who made plaster casts of people, either standing or engaged in everyday activities. The figures would then be placed with real objects to create a surreal effect. Op art meant to create pulsating optical effects through the repetition of shapes. There is no sense of depth in these works, further removing the painting from any illusion of reality. Like the other movements, there is little effort to instill deeper meanings. The best-known American op artist is Richard Anuszkiewicz. Minimalism is the use of geometric shapes or other simple units in sculpture or painting. Minimalists’ use of new media—metal, plastics, Plexiglas—was an exciting new development. A leader of this movement was Donald Judd.

This use of new media foreshadowed many developments in art in the 1970s and 1980s. Site sculpture, also known as earth art, the utilization of new media on a grand scale, appeared on the scene. These sculptures were tem-