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


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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