American Art since 1945 to 1990

Résumé du document

The post-war American citizen is obviously linked to postwar anxiety. The trauma of war experiences, and the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki made it obvious that peace had been won at the cost of innocence and insecurity. The bomb's potential for total world destruction brought the basic fragility and contingency of human life, as well as the impotence of reason to provide the meaning of existence. However, the terror and anxiety did not end with the declaration of peace. The Soviet Union became the new enemy, which thrust the democratic countries of the West into a Cold war. Moreover, the discovery that the Soviet Union possessed an atomic bomb intensified America's sense of anxiety and apprehension. It was in the face of these realities, that American postwar anxiety emerged. We must also to keep in mind the additional psychological factor.

Extraits

[...] Pollock Pollock arrived at his compositions spontaneously, through the process of painting itself. He extended Surrealist automatism to its logical conclusion by making his unconscious the primary source of his art: “when I am IN my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing [ . ] have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through”. Pollock's spontaneity and freedom allowed him to synthesize metaphysical oppositions, order and chaos, reason and passion, heaven and hell. [...]

[...] Even the prosperity seems suspect. In this context, a new tendency called “Abstract Expressionism” tends to appear, launched by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. De Kooning wrote: “every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it, Picasso did it with cubism. The Pollock did it. [ . ] Then there could be new paintings again”. Art Post-war The style of post-war artists paintings was interpreted as a manifestation of existentialism, the French philosophy described by Jean- Paul Sartre, shed light on matters of individual responsibility, involving a self-conscious : must create his own essence”, Sartre wrote, is in throwing himself into the world, in suffering in it, in struggling with it that he defines himself”. [...]

[...] Monopoly” and “Kidnapping Kissinger” make his art appear highly relevant. In an interview from the mid'60s, he reflected on what it was to be a truly committed artist: "The artist is like an agent, like a spy, or a member of a clandestine organization. Previously I thought that I could paint at certain times, and entertain myself at others. But lately I have realized that you are never off-duty as an artist, the eternal fishing and hunting goes on continuously, and like a member of the resistance you can never relax, since you know that it can knock on your door at any time during the night." For instance, he proposed underlying theme reflecting the human condition, or his observation of real events (“Exercice Nixon”, 1971: Nixon is showed under various faces which tend to underline the various “Nixon's Americas” during the Vietnam War which culminated in the Christmas 72 terror bombings, and Watergate for instance). [...]

[...] The media called him the Prince of Pop. Warhol made his way from a Pittsburgh working class family to an American legend. Warhol's symbols are the concrete images of daily life: a cross, a gun, a can of soup, Marilyn Monroe. Campbell Soup Can Series In the sixties Warhol started painting daily objects of mass production like Campbell Soup cans and Coke bottles, and later in repetitions of newspaper photograph of grisly events such as car crashes (cf. “Saturday disaster”, 1964) and electrocution (cf. [...]

[...] Black consciousness before the historic signing of the Civil Rights Act by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 is explored through the work of artists such as Edna Manley, Charles White and Aubrey Williams. Whereas Romare Beardeu, Dawoud Bey and Vanley Burke reveal a fascination with the inner city ‘ghetto' from Kingston, Jamaica to communities in London and the U.S. The work of Barkley L. Hendricks and Faith Ringgold show how the fashions and hairstyles of the time were used as vehicles for social masquerading and self-invention. [...]