Introduction
After the end of World War II in 1945, the art world encountered a crucial transformation. Given the rise of immigration flow in the United States, the world capital of art has been relocated from Europe to New York City, facing a trans-Atlantic shift. Several cultural and political movements also accompanied such a transition of art since 1945, including The New York School, Assemblage and Happenings, Pop Art, Minimal Art and Earthworks, Conceptual Art, and Feminist Art (Getlein 517). Altogether, they have shaped the profound Postmodern society and art industry around us.
Describing the Culture and Cultural Events
To understand the culture of the postwar world, it is essential to note that the United States became a dominating world power in political, economic, and cultural terms. Artistic life was reviving itself in “the new international climate,” and the artistic energy shifted from Paris to New York (Getlein 500). It was also the beginning of the Cold War in 1947: some art served ideological targets, while some artworks uncovered the limits and dangers of the Cold War. Such an atmosphere has promoted a more bold, aggressive, youthful, and materialistic culture and mass media development. The main cultural events imply opening new museums in the city, including the Museum of Modern Art (1929) and Art of This Century gallery (Getlein 502). It was the first Western museum explicitly dedicated to modern art. The postwar art movement has gathered artists into the New York School that signified the development of Abstract Expressionism.
The Summary of Art and Techniques
The chapter discloses the immense amount of art techniques and styles; it was indeed an in-depth transformation of arts. Artists pursued the freedom of creative expression, experimental approaches and shaped moral and universal art. The artists were driven by the desire to rearrange ideas of modernism by treating the act of painting as an independent expressive exercise. The general movement was based on Jungian philosophy; artists were showcasing primal in human nature; flinging paint on large canvases, and filling in the visual environment (Getlein 503). The artistic oeuvre was genuinely abundant: bricolage, using text as an element of art, collage, simplification, appropriation, performance, redefining past styles, and eliminating the barriers in art. The most prominent figures and techniques include:
- action painting and drip technique (Pollock),
- aggressive layering of paints (de Kooning),
- color fields and peripheral vision (Rothko),
- abstract wall sculptures (Nevelson),
- mass media and commercial art (Warhol, Lichtenstein),
- performance art (Abramovic and Ulay),
- and graffiti (Basquiat), to name a few.
Analyzing the Artwork
One artwork, namely a type of art, caught my attention while reading this chapter. I have always been fascinated by performance art and its most recognized artist Marina Abramovic, mother of performance. It is impressive how the human body can be used as the new medium in arts to visually represent the relationships between the artist and spectator. Her famous nude performance with her life and art partner Ulay, Imponderabilia, was a truly shocking artistic experience. They were standing naked in a doorway and let the visitors pass between them. The artists aimed to challenge the socially defined identities of femininity and masculinity and test their boundaries. Both Abramovic and Ulay were put into a vulnerable position; they were present with the audience. I believe it is a life-changing experience of vising an open art space and feel the performance together with the artists.
Conclusion
As a result of the enhanced consciousness and globalization process, the modern art scene is rich with many different and complex styles that help artists perceive their multicultural heritage, identity, spirituality, race, and the environment. The postmodern art was complex yet expressive. It represented skepticism, irony, and philosophical criticism of the universal truths and objective reality. Postmodernism shaped radically new Western philosophy that went beyond the art itself and was a powerful tool in asserting and maintaining political and economic influence. It has blurred the boundaries between art and ordinary everyday life and was a crucial step towards defining how society has made progress beyond modernity.
Work Cited
Getlein, Mark. Living with Art. 11th ed., McGraw-Hill Education, 2016.