Tuesday 2 December 2008
In 1966 England beat West Germany 4-2
in the final of the World Cup to become World champions.
Geoff Hurst scored a hattrick with the third and last goal of the game
being echoed with the famous words of the commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme
"Theres people on the pitch,they think its all over....it is now"
The Cuban Missile Crisis took place in
1962 after the Bay of Pigs invasion
urged the USSR to increase its support of fellow communist Cuba.
The USSR's leader Nikita Khrushchev had placed
ballistic missiles on Cuba facing America
forcing President Kennedy to
declare all out war if they were to be used against the states.
Sunday 30 November 2008
Malcolm X (1925-1965)
I thought he would be a very interesting addition to the time line, because of his influence in the 60's and before. Heres some information:
Malcolm X (1925-1965) was one of the most influential black American leaders of the 1950's and 1960's. He transformed himself from a petty criminal into an important defender of the rights of blacks.
Malcolm X (1925-1965) was one of the most influential black American leaders of the 1950's and 1960's. He transformed himself from a petty criminal into an important defender of the rights of blacks. Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little in Omaha, Nebr. His father was a follower of Marcus Garvey, a black leader who worked to establish close political and economic ties to Africa. In 1931, Malcolm's father was found dead after being run over by a streetcar. Malcolm believed white racists were responsible for his father's death. When Malcolm was 12 years old, his mother was committed to a mental hospital. Malcolm spent the rest of his childhood in foster homes. He also became discouraged by racial prejudice around him.
In 1941, Malcolm moved to Boston. The youth became involved in criminal activities. In 1946, he was arrested for burglary and sent to prison. In prison, he joined the Nation of Islam, commonly called the Black Muslims. The Nation of Islam taught that white people were devils. After Malcolm was released from prison in 1952, he adopted "X" as his last name. The letter stood for the unknown African name of Malcolm's slave ancestors.
Malcolm X quickly became the Nation of Islam's most effective minister. He was a fiery orator, urging blacks to live separately from whites and to win their freedom "by any means necessary." But he became dissatisfied with the Nation of Islam, in part because the group avoided political activity.
In 1964, Malcolm X broke with the Nation of Islam. Soon afterward, he traveled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. He met Muslims of many ethnic backgrounds and rejected the view that all white people are devils. Malcolm X adopted the Muslim name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabbazz. After returning to the United States, he formed his own group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity.
Malcolm X rejected nonviolence as a principle, but he sought cooperation with Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists who favored militant (aggressive) nonviolent protests. But by this time, some Black Muslims had condemned Malcolm X as a hypocrite and traitor because of his criticisms of the group's leader, Elijah Muhammad. On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was fatally shot while giving a speech in New York City. Three members of the Nation of Islam were convicted of the crime. Malcolm's views reached many people after his death through his Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965).
Source: World Book
"http://afgen.com/malcolm_x.html"
The 1960s - World Events- bbc
The 1960s - World Events
One issue dominated world politics in the 1960s: the Cold War. The superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union faced off in a series of crises and proxy wars throughout the decade, all the while developing massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear campaigners decried the threat to world peace posed by these arsenals, but some say the concept of mutually assured destruction actually helped prevent an all-out war. It is also suggested that without the impetus of superpower rivalry, the space race would not have blasted off to the same degree - the decade opened with Yuri Gagarin's orbit of the earth and finished with Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon.
Nevertheless, there were some heart-stopping moments. The Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year; the closest the world ever came to nuclear warfare. The Soviet leader at that time, Nikita Kruschev, was famous for thumping his shoe on a desk at the United Nations when challenged on the USSR's occupation of eastern European nations. In 1968, Soviet and other allied troops invaded one of those satellites, Czechoslovakia, to crush a fledging liberal movement. While occupation remained harsh in the eastern bloc, by 1969 the first tentative steps toward détente were being taken, ushering in the uneasy balance that would characterise the Cold War of the '70s.
Protest
Civil Rights was one of the most important issues of the 1960s in America. The concept of Civil Rights had accelerated throughout the mid to late 1950s (with the Brown vs Board of Education decision and the integration of Little Rock Central High). Lunch sit-ins occurred in 1960; Freedom Rides in 1963, the same year as Dr Martin Luther King's immortal 'I Have a Dream' speech, the Bus Protest and the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama; the march on Selma in 1965... protests throughout the decade.
Medgar Evans, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were all killed in the 1960s, not to mention US President John F Kennedy. Kennedy's death indirectly led to the historic passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, because Lyndon B Johnson, who took the office, pushed for the bill, and one of the memories of JFK was his position for civil rights. All these men died for Civil Rights - as well as innumerable others lynched in the south.
In US domestic politics it was a time when protesters took to the streets. At the start of the decade the issue was civil rights; segregation was still in force in southern states and most people in the rest of the country did not see the issue as important. Civil rights leaders, lawyers and protesters campaigned for reforms in the south, while events like the Birmingham church bombing (where four girls were killed) gradually attracted national attention. Martin Luther King made his 'I have a dream' speech in Washington in the same year as Malcolm X led a Muslim demonstration in New York; both men would be assassinated by the decade's end. But it was not until after the assassination of president John F Kennedy that a law was passed giving the federal government the power to end segregation.
By the late 1960s, anti-war protests had also taken hold. The US had more than 500,000 troops in Vietnam by 1968 and was drawing heavy casualties. In 1969 the capital saw what is thought to be the largest demonstration in American history, with more than 20 million people taking part in the Peace Moratorium.
Taken all into account, I'm thinking that the Sixties may have been a decade to forget in the United States. Right from the beginning of the decade you had the Cuban Missile Crisis after the fruitless invasion of the Bay of Pigs; the terrible assassination of the youthful and ever-popular John F Kennedy in 1963; the division and rancour of the devastating Vietnam War (the first modern war to take place as much in the living rooms of American viewers as on the battlefields); the racial tension of the Civil Rights Movement, especially following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr (prompting the US Democrats to lose their grip on the Southern states of the 'old' Confederacy that they'd held since the Civil War). If that weren't enough, 'Tricky Dicky' Nixon arrived to take the Presidency to the end of decade in 1969...
Certainly, despite much to be optimistic about, for some the spirit of the Sixties ended for with an incident in Altamont. As a certain Rolling Stone summarised:
A young black man murdered in the midst of a white crowd by white thugs as white men played their version of black music — it was too much to kiss off as unpleasantness.
Meanwhile, in Canada...
In 1960 the First Nations people of Canada won the right to vote in federal elections under the premiership of John Diefenbaker. But another group's fight for self-determination turned violent. A Marxist group called the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) came to prominence in the early part of the decade calling for the overthrow of the Quebec government and its secession from Canada. The FLQ conducted a series of bombings, hold-ups and kidnappings throughout the decade, before dissipating somewhat from 1970 as support rose for non-violent, political secessionist processes.
Also near the decade's end, Pierre Trudeau brought the issues of abortion, homosexuality and divorce law to the fore, having declared there was no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. As prime minister he introduced bills liberalising laws in these areas. He also ensured both English and French were recognized as official languages in Canada. One researcher lists two more milestones of the time:
Canada got a new flag, the Maple Leaf, inaugurated on February 5, 1965. On 4 March, 1966, a sex-espionage scandal rocked Canada. Gerda Munsignor was caught spying for the Soviet embassy and it was ultimately revealed she'd had an affair with Pierre Sevigny, a former defence minister, in 1961.
Sex
The 'Sexual Revolution' of the decade can be attributed to one tiny thing - the arrival of The Pill. Introduced in the USA in 1960, and in 1961 in the UK, it was initially available only to married women. Though it undoubtedly brought a great deal of freedom to women, it also had a number of downsides - not least the expectation from prospective boyfriends to have sex on the first date...
Meanwhile, on 27 June, 1967, the Sexual Offences Act decriminalised sex between two consenting males of 21 years or more in private, something that had been a criminal offence (with prison as a likely sentence) since 1885 (prior to 1861s, the sentence was death). While this was greeted enthusiastically by gay men (there has never, at any point, been legislation in the UK specific to lesbiansim), it was not a complete decriminalisation of homosexuality; sex between consenting men of 16 or 17 years of age remained a criminal offence until 2000, despite the age of consent for heterosexual couples having been 16 since 1956.
Scandal!
Despite the traditional image of the British male, it wasn't just Canadian politicians getting caught with their trousers down. Indeed, the British obsession with political sexual shenanigans began in the 1960s with the scandal surrounding John Profumo, the secretary of state for war, who was discovered to have been embroiled in controversy amid rumours of an affair with a showgirl named Christine Keeler. He told Parliament there was 'no impropriety' in their relationship, but 10 weeks later was forced to admit he had lied and would resign. Adding fuel to the fire, it was revealed Keeler had also been sleeping with a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy. An official report criticised the government for its handling of the scandal, but found there had been no breach of national security. Nevertheless, within a month, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had quit (citing ill health) and the following year Harold Wilson's Labour party was in power.
Macmillan is best known for his claim that 'most of our people have never had it so good'. But his reign in the '60s, compared to his time in office in the late '50s, did not quite live up to his own diagnosis. Having earned the nickname 'Supermac' during his first term for his policy successes, he became known as Mac the Knife in the '60s a drop in government popularity led him to sack and replace one-third of the Cabinet in a single night. He also had an attempt to join the European Common Market rebuffed by France. Wilson suffered a similar setback later in the decade.
A Wall...
One of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War took shape in 1961 when Berliners awoke to find a six-foot fence dividing the city. The fence soon evolves into a concrete wall with gun positions and towers and comes to represent the division of Europe itself between NATO and Warsaw pact nations. The year 1968, often dubbed the 'year of the barricades', saw student protests break out in Paris, Rome and Warsaw, with buildings occupied and universities closed. Workers joined the action in France, resulting in a two-week strike that paralysed the country and saw tanks sent to Paris' outskirts in fear of revolution. The government of General Charles de Gaulle called an election and was returned with a huge majority. The government of General Franco remained in power in Spain but had pledged to liberalise the economy. The pace of reform remained slow and it was not until the 1970s that the country began to resemble a modern industrial economy.
Around the World in 3653 Days
In Asia, another country was attempting to reorder its economy, although not along market capitalist lines. China was two years into its 'great leap forward' by 1960, but widespread flooding and the withdrawal of Soviet advisers led to the plan's failure and the retirement of Chairman Mao. He returned to power four years later at the helm of the 'cultural revolution', an ideological purge of Chinese society to remove 'bourgeois' influences. Tens of thousands were executed and millions were forced into manual labour. Meanwhile south-east Asia became an increasingly heated theatre of the Cold War. The domino theory, which held that if one nation in a region 'fell' to Communism the rest would follow like dominoes, brought the US into conflict by proxy with the Soviet Union in Vietnam. The conflict spread to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos before the eventual American withdrawal.
Withdrawals were taking place on a larger scale in Africa. Independence movements were taking hold across the continent and colonial masters were being forced out. Belgian Congo gained independence in 1960, renaming itself Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), with Algeria following suit in 1962 after a vicious civil war. By the middle of the decade most African nations were self-governing, but the sudden transition and lack of assistance led to continuing turmoil on the continent. South Africa had declared independence in the late 1950s, but only for whites. In 1964, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned after his trial for sabotage. He would not be released for 25 years.
In South America, the 1960s saw a domino effect of dictatorships storm to power. This was another region to become a staging ground for Cold War politics, with generals seizing control to prevent Communist influence pervading the countries; at least that was the pretext. There were military coups in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru, while in Argentina a series of dictators and civilian presidents came and went in between the reigns of Juan Peron in the 50s and 70s. Leftist rebels started their separatist movement in Colombia, but Venezuela proved the exception to the region's rule. Having shrugged off its dictatorships in 1958, democracy returned to the country early in the decade.
It was just as turbulent a time in Middle East, with coups, repressions and border skirmishes punctuating the decade. In Egypt in 1964, a charter was established for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation which declared Israel an illegal state and vowed its destruction. Israel raided Egyptian targets three years later fearing an Arab attack was imminent, starting what became known as the Six-day War. A ceasefire was brokered after Israel had captured the Golan Heights from Syria, Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt and Old Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. The United Nations passed a resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from those areas, at the same time implying its enemies should recognise its right to exist. The precise meaning of the resolution has fuelled debate ever since, although some territorial disputes have since been resolved to varying degrees.
... and Down Under
I know this beach like the back of my hand.
Quote attributed to Australian Prime Minister, Harold Holt.
Australia saw one of the more bizarre successions of world politics at the time, when prime minister Harold Holt disappeared after going for a swim off a Victorian beach. A three-week search failed to find a body, prompting theories to emerge that the PM had been kidnapped by Communist agents, or that he had in fact been an agent himself. Some, less optimistic, commentators have noted darkly that with so many sharks in those waters, anyone who gets into difficulty out there wouldn't have long to wait before they became part of the food chain...
Holt had famously pledged to go 'all the way with LBJ'. Australia had introduced the draft to service its troop commitment in Vietnam to fulfil that promise. There is one other quote used to epitomise Australian politics at the time. Lyndon Johnson was visiting the country in 1966 and was travelling in a car with then New South Wales premier Robin Askin when the path was blocked with protesters. Askin is said to have remarked to the driver: 'Run over the bastards'.
"http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3768537"
One issue dominated world politics in the 1960s: the Cold War. The superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union faced off in a series of crises and proxy wars throughout the decade, all the while developing massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Anti-nuclear campaigners decried the threat to world peace posed by these arsenals, but some say the concept of mutually assured destruction actually helped prevent an all-out war. It is also suggested that without the impetus of superpower rivalry, the space race would not have blasted off to the same degree - the decade opened with Yuri Gagarin's orbit of the earth and finished with Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon.
Nevertheless, there were some heart-stopping moments. The Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 precipitated the Cuban Missile Crisis of the following year; the closest the world ever came to nuclear warfare. The Soviet leader at that time, Nikita Kruschev, was famous for thumping his shoe on a desk at the United Nations when challenged on the USSR's occupation of eastern European nations. In 1968, Soviet and other allied troops invaded one of those satellites, Czechoslovakia, to crush a fledging liberal movement. While occupation remained harsh in the eastern bloc, by 1969 the first tentative steps toward détente were being taken, ushering in the uneasy balance that would characterise the Cold War of the '70s.
Protest
Civil Rights was one of the most important issues of the 1960s in America. The concept of Civil Rights had accelerated throughout the mid to late 1950s (with the Brown vs Board of Education decision and the integration of Little Rock Central High). Lunch sit-ins occurred in 1960; Freedom Rides in 1963, the same year as Dr Martin Luther King's immortal 'I Have a Dream' speech, the Bus Protest and the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama; the march on Selma in 1965... protests throughout the decade.
Medgar Evans, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were all killed in the 1960s, not to mention US President John F Kennedy. Kennedy's death indirectly led to the historic passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, because Lyndon B Johnson, who took the office, pushed for the bill, and one of the memories of JFK was his position for civil rights. All these men died for Civil Rights - as well as innumerable others lynched in the south.
In US domestic politics it was a time when protesters took to the streets. At the start of the decade the issue was civil rights; segregation was still in force in southern states and most people in the rest of the country did not see the issue as important. Civil rights leaders, lawyers and protesters campaigned for reforms in the south, while events like the Birmingham church bombing (where four girls were killed) gradually attracted national attention. Martin Luther King made his 'I have a dream' speech in Washington in the same year as Malcolm X led a Muslim demonstration in New York; both men would be assassinated by the decade's end. But it was not until after the assassination of president John F Kennedy that a law was passed giving the federal government the power to end segregation.
By the late 1960s, anti-war protests had also taken hold. The US had more than 500,000 troops in Vietnam by 1968 and was drawing heavy casualties. In 1969 the capital saw what is thought to be the largest demonstration in American history, with more than 20 million people taking part in the Peace Moratorium.
Taken all into account, I'm thinking that the Sixties may have been a decade to forget in the United States. Right from the beginning of the decade you had the Cuban Missile Crisis after the fruitless invasion of the Bay of Pigs; the terrible assassination of the youthful and ever-popular John F Kennedy in 1963; the division and rancour of the devastating Vietnam War (the first modern war to take place as much in the living rooms of American viewers as on the battlefields); the racial tension of the Civil Rights Movement, especially following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr (prompting the US Democrats to lose their grip on the Southern states of the 'old' Confederacy that they'd held since the Civil War). If that weren't enough, 'Tricky Dicky' Nixon arrived to take the Presidency to the end of decade in 1969...
Certainly, despite much to be optimistic about, for some the spirit of the Sixties ended for with an incident in Altamont. As a certain Rolling Stone summarised:
A young black man murdered in the midst of a white crowd by white thugs as white men played their version of black music — it was too much to kiss off as unpleasantness.
Meanwhile, in Canada...
In 1960 the First Nations people of Canada won the right to vote in federal elections under the premiership of John Diefenbaker. But another group's fight for self-determination turned violent. A Marxist group called the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) came to prominence in the early part of the decade calling for the overthrow of the Quebec government and its secession from Canada. The FLQ conducted a series of bombings, hold-ups and kidnappings throughout the decade, before dissipating somewhat from 1970 as support rose for non-violent, political secessionist processes.
Also near the decade's end, Pierre Trudeau brought the issues of abortion, homosexuality and divorce law to the fore, having declared there was no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. As prime minister he introduced bills liberalising laws in these areas. He also ensured both English and French were recognized as official languages in Canada. One researcher lists two more milestones of the time:
Canada got a new flag, the Maple Leaf, inaugurated on February 5, 1965. On 4 March, 1966, a sex-espionage scandal rocked Canada. Gerda Munsignor was caught spying for the Soviet embassy and it was ultimately revealed she'd had an affair with Pierre Sevigny, a former defence minister, in 1961.
Sex
The 'Sexual Revolution' of the decade can be attributed to one tiny thing - the arrival of The Pill. Introduced in the USA in 1960, and in 1961 in the UK, it was initially available only to married women. Though it undoubtedly brought a great deal of freedom to women, it also had a number of downsides - not least the expectation from prospective boyfriends to have sex on the first date...
Meanwhile, on 27 June, 1967, the Sexual Offences Act decriminalised sex between two consenting males of 21 years or more in private, something that had been a criminal offence (with prison as a likely sentence) since 1885 (prior to 1861s, the sentence was death). While this was greeted enthusiastically by gay men (there has never, at any point, been legislation in the UK specific to lesbiansim), it was not a complete decriminalisation of homosexuality; sex between consenting men of 16 or 17 years of age remained a criminal offence until 2000, despite the age of consent for heterosexual couples having been 16 since 1956.
Scandal!
Despite the traditional image of the British male, it wasn't just Canadian politicians getting caught with their trousers down. Indeed, the British obsession with political sexual shenanigans began in the 1960s with the scandal surrounding John Profumo, the secretary of state for war, who was discovered to have been embroiled in controversy amid rumours of an affair with a showgirl named Christine Keeler. He told Parliament there was 'no impropriety' in their relationship, but 10 weeks later was forced to admit he had lied and would resign. Adding fuel to the fire, it was revealed Keeler had also been sleeping with a naval attaché at the Soviet embassy. An official report criticised the government for its handling of the scandal, but found there had been no breach of national security. Nevertheless, within a month, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had quit (citing ill health) and the following year Harold Wilson's Labour party was in power.
Macmillan is best known for his claim that 'most of our people have never had it so good'. But his reign in the '60s, compared to his time in office in the late '50s, did not quite live up to his own diagnosis. Having earned the nickname 'Supermac' during his first term for his policy successes, he became known as Mac the Knife in the '60s a drop in government popularity led him to sack and replace one-third of the Cabinet in a single night. He also had an attempt to join the European Common Market rebuffed by France. Wilson suffered a similar setback later in the decade.
A Wall...
One of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War took shape in 1961 when Berliners awoke to find a six-foot fence dividing the city. The fence soon evolves into a concrete wall with gun positions and towers and comes to represent the division of Europe itself between NATO and Warsaw pact nations. The year 1968, often dubbed the 'year of the barricades', saw student protests break out in Paris, Rome and Warsaw, with buildings occupied and universities closed. Workers joined the action in France, resulting in a two-week strike that paralysed the country and saw tanks sent to Paris' outskirts in fear of revolution. The government of General Charles de Gaulle called an election and was returned with a huge majority. The government of General Franco remained in power in Spain but had pledged to liberalise the economy. The pace of reform remained slow and it was not until the 1970s that the country began to resemble a modern industrial economy.
Around the World in 3653 Days
In Asia, another country was attempting to reorder its economy, although not along market capitalist lines. China was two years into its 'great leap forward' by 1960, but widespread flooding and the withdrawal of Soviet advisers led to the plan's failure and the retirement of Chairman Mao. He returned to power four years later at the helm of the 'cultural revolution', an ideological purge of Chinese society to remove 'bourgeois' influences. Tens of thousands were executed and millions were forced into manual labour. Meanwhile south-east Asia became an increasingly heated theatre of the Cold War. The domino theory, which held that if one nation in a region 'fell' to Communism the rest would follow like dominoes, brought the US into conflict by proxy with the Soviet Union in Vietnam. The conflict spread to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos before the eventual American withdrawal.
Withdrawals were taking place on a larger scale in Africa. Independence movements were taking hold across the continent and colonial masters were being forced out. Belgian Congo gained independence in 1960, renaming itself Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), with Algeria following suit in 1962 after a vicious civil war. By the middle of the decade most African nations were self-governing, but the sudden transition and lack of assistance led to continuing turmoil on the continent. South Africa had declared independence in the late 1950s, but only for whites. In 1964, Nelson Mandela was imprisoned after his trial for sabotage. He would not be released for 25 years.
In South America, the 1960s saw a domino effect of dictatorships storm to power. This was another region to become a staging ground for Cold War politics, with generals seizing control to prevent Communist influence pervading the countries; at least that was the pretext. There were military coups in Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru, while in Argentina a series of dictators and civilian presidents came and went in between the reigns of Juan Peron in the 50s and 70s. Leftist rebels started their separatist movement in Colombia, but Venezuela proved the exception to the region's rule. Having shrugged off its dictatorships in 1958, democracy returned to the country early in the decade.
It was just as turbulent a time in Middle East, with coups, repressions and border skirmishes punctuating the decade. In Egypt in 1964, a charter was established for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation which declared Israel an illegal state and vowed its destruction. Israel raided Egyptian targets three years later fearing an Arab attack was imminent, starting what became known as the Six-day War. A ceasefire was brokered after Israel had captured the Golan Heights from Syria, Gaza and the Sinai from Egypt and Old Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan. The United Nations passed a resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from those areas, at the same time implying its enemies should recognise its right to exist. The precise meaning of the resolution has fuelled debate ever since, although some territorial disputes have since been resolved to varying degrees.
... and Down Under
I know this beach like the back of my hand.
Quote attributed to Australian Prime Minister, Harold Holt.
Australia saw one of the more bizarre successions of world politics at the time, when prime minister Harold Holt disappeared after going for a swim off a Victorian beach. A three-week search failed to find a body, prompting theories to emerge that the PM had been kidnapped by Communist agents, or that he had in fact been an agent himself. Some, less optimistic, commentators have noted darkly that with so many sharks in those waters, anyone who gets into difficulty out there wouldn't have long to wait before they became part of the food chain...
Holt had famously pledged to go 'all the way with LBJ'. Australia had introduced the draft to service its troop commitment in Vietnam to fulfil that promise. There is one other quote used to epitomise Australian politics at the time. Lyndon Johnson was visiting the country in 1966 and was travelling in a car with then New South Wales premier Robin Askin when the path was blocked with protesters. Askin is said to have remarked to the driver: 'Run over the bastards'.
"http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3768537"
ART MOVEMENTS
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
KEY DATES: 1940-1960s
Emerging in the 1940s in New York City and flourishing in the Fifties, Abstract Expressionism is regarded by many as the golden age of American art. The movement is marked by its use of brushstrokes and texture, the embracing of chance and the frequently massive canvases, all employed to convey powerful emotions through the glorification of the act of painting itself.
Some of the key figures of the movement were Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Although their works vary greatly in style, for example the sprawling pieces of Pollock at one end of the spectrum and the brooding works of Rothko at the other, yet they all share the same outlook which is one of freedom of individual expression.
The term was originally used to describe the work of Kandinsky but was adopted by writers in the Fifties as a way of defining the American movement, although the practitioners, disliking being pigeonholed, preferred the term New York School.
The movement was enormously successful both critically and commercially. The result was such that New York came to replace Paris as the centre for contemporary art and the repercussions of this extraordinarily influential movement can still be felt thirty years after its heyday.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS:
Jackson Pollock
Willem de Kooning
Franz Kline
Robert Motherwell
Arshile Gorky
Josef Hoffmann
Mark Rothko
Clyfford Still
William Baziotes
Adolph Gottlieb
Barnett Newman
OP ART
1960s
By Shelley Esaak, About.com
Filed In:
1. Art History 101
2. > Art History 101
Fooling Around in Adobe Illustrator after Bridget Riley
Shelley Esaak
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Flashback to 1964. In the United States, we were still reeling from the assassination of our President, escalating the Civil Rights movement, being "invaded" by British pop/rock music and, in general, pretty much done with notions of achieving idyllic lifestyles (despite that which was touted in the 1950s). Given the circumstances, it was a perfect time for a new artistic movement to burst on the scene.
In October of 1964, in an article describing this new style of art, Time Magazine coined the phrase "Optical Art" (or "Op Art", as it's more commonly known). The term referenced the fact that Op Art is comprised of illusion, and often appears - to the human eye - to be moving or breathing due to its precise, mathematically-based composition.
After (and because of) a major 1965 exhibition of Op Art entitled The Responsive Eye, the public became enraptured with the movement. As a result, one began to see Op Art showing up everywhere: in print and television advertising, as LP album art and as a fashion motif in clothing and interior decoration.
Although the term was coined and the exhibition held in the mid-1960s, most people who've studied these things agree that Victor Vasarely pioneered the movement with his 1938 painting Zebra. M. C. Escher - whose style has sometimes caused him to be listed as an Op artist - created works with amazing perspectives and use of tessellations that certainly helped point the way for others. And it can be argued that none of Op Art would've been possible - let alone embraced by the public - without the prior Abstract and Expressionist movements that de-emphasized (or, in many cases, eliminated) representational subject matter.
As an "official" movement, Op Art has been given a life-span of around three years. This doesn't mean, though, that every artist ceased employing Op Art as their style by 1969. Bridget Riley is one noteworthy artist who has moved from achromatic to chromatic pieces, but has steadfastly created Op Art from its beginning to the present day. Additionally, anyone who has gone through a post-secondary fine arts program probably has a tale or two of Op-ish projects created during color theory studies.
It's also worth mentioning that, in the digital age, Op Art is sometimes viewed with bemusement. Perhaps you, too, have heard the (rather snide, in my opinion) comment: "A child with the proper graphic design software could produce this stuff." Quite true, of a gifted child, with a computer and the proper software at his or her disposal, in the 21st century. This certainly wasn't the case in the early 1960s, and the 1938 date of Zebra speaks for itself in this regard. Op Art represents a great deal of math, planning and technical skill, as none of it came freshly-inked out of a computer peripheral. Original, hand-created Op Art deserves respect, at the very least.
What are the key characteristics of Op Art?
• First and foremost, Op Art exists to fool the eye. Op compositions create a sort of visual tension, in the viewer's mind, that gives works the illusion of movement. For example, concentrate on Bridget Riley's Dominance Portfolio, Blue (1977) - for even a few seconds - and it begins to dance and wave in front of one's eyes. Realistically, you know any Op Art piece is flat, static and two-dimensional. Your eye, however, begins sending your brain the message that what it's seeing has begun to oscillate, flicker, throb and any other verb one can employ to mean: "Yikes! This painting is moving!".
• Because of its geometrically-based nature, Op Art is, almost without exception, non-representational.
• The elements employed (color, line and shape) are carefully chosen to achieve maximum effect.
• The critical techniques used in Op Art are perspective and careful juxtaposition of color (whether chromatic [identifiable hues] or achromatic [black, white or gray]).
• In Op Art, as in perhaps no other artistic school, positive and negative spaces in a composition are of equal importance. Op Art could not be created without both.
THE FLUXUS MOVEMENT
KEY DATES:1960-1965
The Fluxus movement emerged in New York in the 60's, moving to Europe, and eventually to Japan. The movement encompassed a new aesthetic that had already appeared on three continents. That aesthetic encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen, and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for combination and fusion. Fluxus presaged avant-garde developments over the last 40 years.
Fluxus objects and performances are characterized by minimalist but often expansive gestures based in scientific, philosophical, sociological, or other extra-artistic ideas and leavened with burlesque.
Yoko Ono is the best-known individual associated with Fluxus, but many artists have associated themselves with Fluxus since its emergence. In the '60s, when the Fluxus movement was most active, artists all over the globe worked in concert with a spontaneously generated but carefully maintained Fluxus network. Since then, Fluxus has endured not so much as a movement but as a sensibility--a way of fusing certain radical social attitudes with ever--evolving aesthetic practices. Initially received as little more than an international network of pranksters, the admittedly playful artists of Fluxus were, and remain, a network of radical visionaries who have sought to change political and social, as well as aesthetic, perception.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS:
Joseph Beuys
Robert Filliou
Dick Higgins
Yoko Ono
THE PSYCHEDELIC MOVEMENT 60’s
The term "psychedelic" was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, in a now-famous exchange with writer Aldous Huxley, who both recognized the potential of these "new" kind of psychoactive substances for self-awareness and to expand consciousness, in an age of nuclear proliferation and Cold War confrontations.
But it was American exponents, like Harvard scholars Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, novelist Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, with their legendary Acid Tests, acid rock bands like The Grateful Dead, and underground LSD chemists exemplified by Owsley who, with other countercultural activists and artists, enabled a Psychedelic Revolution in the U.S. The youth movement, culminating at the "Summer of Love" in 1967, and perhaps best expressed by the slogans All You Need is Love and Make Love Not War, quickly spread to Western Europe and all over the world.
This discussion is kicked off by Dale Pendell who talks about the successes and failures of the 1960s psychedelic movement, its exposure by the media and eventual co-option, the main contributors to the movement, and his own experiences.
Cynthia Palmer talks about the conservative, repressed 1950s, her experiences as a teenager during this period, her introduction to drugs and move to New York, growing cannabis and getting busted.
Ralph Metzner talks about his forthcoming book with Ram Dass, the consciousness-expanding experience of being born, and various other metaphors for consciousness expansion, Paul stamet's new book 'mycelium running', the mutual understanding between psychedelic people, the illegalization of psychedelic drugs and different approaches to psychedelic expression.
Michael Horowitz talks about the high doses of LSD routinely used in the 1960s, the release of the Beatles' 'Sergeant Pepper's lonely hearts club' album in 1967, the abundance of love in the 1960s and his first trip alone. Finally, Carolyn Garcia talks about the concept of a chemically enhanced human being, the miraculous size of an LSD dose, the rapid changes and uncontrollability of the 1960s psychedelic movement, the political backdrop of the period, the music scene of the 1960s, and the protection it provided, Grateful Dead concerts as a conduit of the psychedelic movement, the end of the 1960s and its loss of freedom,
FEMINIST
ART MOVEMENT
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Carolee Schneemann performing her piece Interior Scroll
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. Corresponding with general developments within feminism, the movement began in the late 1960s and flourished throughout the 1970s as an outgrowth of the so-called third wave of feminism; its effects continue to the present. The strength of the feminist movement allowed for the emergence and visibility of many new types of work by women, but also including a whole range of new practices by men.
A small number of mostly American women, among the many thousands associated with feminist art, are artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, founders of the first known Feminist Art Program (in California), Suzanne Lacy, Faith Wilding, Martha Rosler, Mary Kelly, Kate Millett, Nancy Spero, Faith Ringgold, June Wayne, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Dara Birnbaum, art-world agitators The Guerrilla Girls and critics, historians, and curators Lucy Lippard, Griselda Pollock, Arlene Raven, Catherine de Zegher, and Eleanor Tufts.
information taken by:
www.wikipedia.com
www.artmovements.co.uk
www.arthistory.about.com
erocx1.blogspot.com
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
KEY DATES: 1940-1960s
Emerging in the 1940s in New York City and flourishing in the Fifties, Abstract Expressionism is regarded by many as the golden age of American art. The movement is marked by its use of brushstrokes and texture, the embracing of chance and the frequently massive canvases, all employed to convey powerful emotions through the glorification of the act of painting itself.
Some of the key figures of the movement were Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline. Although their works vary greatly in style, for example the sprawling pieces of Pollock at one end of the spectrum and the brooding works of Rothko at the other, yet they all share the same outlook which is one of freedom of individual expression.
The term was originally used to describe the work of Kandinsky but was adopted by writers in the Fifties as a way of defining the American movement, although the practitioners, disliking being pigeonholed, preferred the term New York School.
The movement was enormously successful both critically and commercially. The result was such that New York came to replace Paris as the centre for contemporary art and the repercussions of this extraordinarily influential movement can still be felt thirty years after its heyday.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS:
Jackson Pollock
Willem de Kooning
Franz Kline
Robert Motherwell
Arshile Gorky
Josef Hoffmann
Mark Rothko
Clyfford Still
William Baziotes
Adolph Gottlieb
Barnett Newman
OP ART
1960s
By Shelley Esaak, About.com
Filed In:1. Art History 101
2. > Art History 101
Fooling Around in Adobe Illustrator after Bridget Riley
Shelley Esaak
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Flashback to 1964. In the United States, we were still reeling from the assassination of our President, escalating the Civil Rights movement, being "invaded" by British pop/rock music and, in general, pretty much done with notions of achieving idyllic lifestyles (despite that which was touted in the 1950s). Given the circumstances, it was a perfect time for a new artistic movement to burst on the scene.
In October of 1964, in an article describing this new style of art, Time Magazine coined the phrase "Optical Art" (or "Op Art", as it's more commonly known). The term referenced the fact that Op Art is comprised of illusion, and often appears - to the human eye - to be moving or breathing due to its precise, mathematically-based composition.
After (and because of) a major 1965 exhibition of Op Art entitled The Responsive Eye, the public became enraptured with the movement. As a result, one began to see Op Art showing up everywhere: in print and television advertising, as LP album art and as a fashion motif in clothing and interior decoration.
Although the term was coined and the exhibition held in the mid-1960s, most people who've studied these things agree that Victor Vasarely pioneered the movement with his 1938 painting Zebra. M. C. Escher - whose style has sometimes caused him to be listed as an Op artist - created works with amazing perspectives and use of tessellations that certainly helped point the way for others. And it can be argued that none of Op Art would've been possible - let alone embraced by the public - without the prior Abstract and Expressionist movements that de-emphasized (or, in many cases, eliminated) representational subject matter.
As an "official" movement, Op Art has been given a life-span of around three years. This doesn't mean, though, that every artist ceased employing Op Art as their style by 1969. Bridget Riley is one noteworthy artist who has moved from achromatic to chromatic pieces, but has steadfastly created Op Art from its beginning to the present day. Additionally, anyone who has gone through a post-secondary fine arts program probably has a tale or two of Op-ish projects created during color theory studies.
It's also worth mentioning that, in the digital age, Op Art is sometimes viewed with bemusement. Perhaps you, too, have heard the (rather snide, in my opinion) comment: "A child with the proper graphic design software could produce this stuff." Quite true, of a gifted child, with a computer and the proper software at his or her disposal, in the 21st century. This certainly wasn't the case in the early 1960s, and the 1938 date of Zebra speaks for itself in this regard. Op Art represents a great deal of math, planning and technical skill, as none of it came freshly-inked out of a computer peripheral. Original, hand-created Op Art deserves respect, at the very least.
What are the key characteristics of Op Art?
• First and foremost, Op Art exists to fool the eye. Op compositions create a sort of visual tension, in the viewer's mind, that gives works the illusion of movement. For example, concentrate on Bridget Riley's Dominance Portfolio, Blue (1977) - for even a few seconds - and it begins to dance and wave in front of one's eyes. Realistically, you know any Op Art piece is flat, static and two-dimensional. Your eye, however, begins sending your brain the message that what it's seeing has begun to oscillate, flicker, throb and any other verb one can employ to mean: "Yikes! This painting is moving!".
• Because of its geometrically-based nature, Op Art is, almost without exception, non-representational.
• The elements employed (color, line and shape) are carefully chosen to achieve maximum effect.
• The critical techniques used in Op Art are perspective and careful juxtaposition of color (whether chromatic [identifiable hues] or achromatic [black, white or gray]).
• In Op Art, as in perhaps no other artistic school, positive and negative spaces in a composition are of equal importance. Op Art could not be created without both.
THE FLUXUS MOVEMENT
KEY DATES:1960-1965
The Fluxus movement emerged in New York in the 60's, moving to Europe, and eventually to Japan. The movement encompassed a new aesthetic that had already appeared on three continents. That aesthetic encompasses a reductive gesturality, part Dada, part Bauhaus and part Zen, and presumes that all media and all artistic disciplines are fair game for combination and fusion. Fluxus presaged avant-garde developments over the last 40 years.
Fluxus objects and performances are characterized by minimalist but often expansive gestures based in scientific, philosophical, sociological, or other extra-artistic ideas and leavened with burlesque.
Yoko Ono is the best-known individual associated with Fluxus, but many artists have associated themselves with Fluxus since its emergence. In the '60s, when the Fluxus movement was most active, artists all over the globe worked in concert with a spontaneously generated but carefully maintained Fluxus network. Since then, Fluxus has endured not so much as a movement but as a sensibility--a way of fusing certain radical social attitudes with ever--evolving aesthetic practices. Initially received as little more than an international network of pranksters, the admittedly playful artists of Fluxus were, and remain, a network of radical visionaries who have sought to change political and social, as well as aesthetic, perception.
REPRESENTATIVE ARTISTS:
Joseph Beuys
Robert Filliou
Dick Higgins
Yoko Ono
THE PSYCHEDELIC MOVEMENT 60’s
The term "psychedelic" was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond, in a now-famous exchange with writer Aldous Huxley, who both recognized the potential of these "new" kind of psychoactive substances for self-awareness and to expand consciousness, in an age of nuclear proliferation and Cold War confrontations.
But it was American exponents, like Harvard scholars Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert and Ralph Metzner, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, novelist Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters, with their legendary Acid Tests, acid rock bands like The Grateful Dead, and underground LSD chemists exemplified by Owsley who, with other countercultural activists and artists, enabled a Psychedelic Revolution in the U.S. The youth movement, culminating at the "Summer of Love" in 1967, and perhaps best expressed by the slogans All You Need is Love and Make Love Not War, quickly spread to Western Europe and all over the world.
This discussion is kicked off by Dale Pendell who talks about the successes and failures of the 1960s psychedelic movement, its exposure by the media and eventual co-option, the main contributors to the movement, and his own experiences.
Cynthia Palmer talks about the conservative, repressed 1950s, her experiences as a teenager during this period, her introduction to drugs and move to New York, growing cannabis and getting busted.
Ralph Metzner talks about his forthcoming book with Ram Dass, the consciousness-expanding experience of being born, and various other metaphors for consciousness expansion, Paul stamet's new book 'mycelium running', the mutual understanding between psychedelic people, the illegalization of psychedelic drugs and different approaches to psychedelic expression.
Michael Horowitz talks about the high doses of LSD routinely used in the 1960s, the release of the Beatles' 'Sergeant Pepper's lonely hearts club' album in 1967, the abundance of love in the 1960s and his first trip alone. Finally, Carolyn Garcia talks about the concept of a chemically enhanced human being, the miraculous size of an LSD dose, the rapid changes and uncontrollability of the 1960s psychedelic movement, the political backdrop of the period, the music scene of the 1960s, and the protection it provided, Grateful Dead concerts as a conduit of the psychedelic movement, the end of the 1960s and its loss of freedom,
FEMINIST
ART MOVEMENTFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Carolee Schneemann performing her piece Interior Scroll
The feminist art movement refers to the efforts and accomplishments of feminists internationally to make art that reflects women's lives and experiences, as well as to change the foundation for the production and reception of contemporary art. It also sought to bring more visibility to women within art history and art practice. Corresponding with general developments within feminism, the movement began in the late 1960s and flourished throughout the 1970s as an outgrowth of the so-called third wave of feminism; its effects continue to the present. The strength of the feminist movement allowed for the emergence and visibility of many new types of work by women, but also including a whole range of new practices by men.
A small number of mostly American women, among the many thousands associated with feminist art, are artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, founders of the first known Feminist Art Program (in California), Suzanne Lacy, Faith Wilding, Martha Rosler, Mary Kelly, Kate Millett, Nancy Spero, Faith Ringgold, June Wayne, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Dara Birnbaum, art-world agitators The Guerrilla Girls and critics, historians, and curators Lucy Lippard, Griselda Pollock, Arlene Raven, Catherine de Zegher, and Eleanor Tufts.
information taken by:
www.wikipedia.com
www.artmovements.co.uk
www.arthistory.about.com
erocx1.blogspot.com
Monday 24 November 2008
Example time line
hey this is an example of a time line some students produced and it covers some of the points we have to look at. I thought it would be a good starting point for out time line.
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