AH III Final Exam Vocab

The Independent Group (at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London)

The roots of British pop art lie in the establishment of the Independent Group in 1952. They were meeting for discussions in the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. They concentrated on aspects of contemporary mass culture, its impact
on art, and particularly its current manifestations in the United States

Combine painting

A term used by Robert Rauschenberg
to describe his works that combined painting and sculpture. Later on, it is called assemblages (more known as assemblage)

Assemblage

An artwork (usually in 3D) that includes in its composition everyday
objects. These non-art objects acquire symbolic-aesthetic significance while partially retaining their original identity

Happening

An event that may combine elements of visual arts, theater, dance, and music. Happenings are limited in time, and are usually staged and directed by the artist, but they often involve audience participation as well. Many different goals for happenings

"Fine art/popular culture continuum"

Stain painting (or staining)

Seriality

De-skilling

A tendency to eliminate manual skill as a key characteristic of art making. Instead, analysis of art context and perceptual habits, critical questioning of art conditions and the role
of the artist and art institutions become the focus of new art practices

“Dematerialization of the art object” Lucy Lippard

Self-reflexivity

Entropy

The increase in disorder. This term originally comes from physics (the second law of thermodynamics), where it
describes the inevitability of the dissipation of more complex organizational forms into simple and basic ones

Site-specificity

Anarchitecture

A term used by Gordon Matta-Clark to describe the work he was
making. Combines the of both "architecture" and "anti-architecture," order and destruction, making and undoing. Matta-Clark was well familiar with Smithson's practice and the idea of entropy but he thought Smithson did not go far
enough, leaving dissipation and undoing to the forces of nature and time. In contrast, anarchitecture is an active engagement with the processes of building and destruction

"Social Sculpture" – Joseph Beuys

Concept of expanded art that Joseph Beuys developed in the
1970s. It refers to Beuys’s idea that everything is art. The whole life is art and everyone has potential to be an artist. A social sculpture includes human actions and seeks to transform society and the environment. It is a collective intent,
thought, feeling, and action

“Relational Aesthetics”

The type of art whose goal is to create human relations,
communities, collaborations, or a sense of togetherness

Feminism

Advocacy for women’s rights and equality within the social, economic and political spheres. The feminist movement in the United States began in the 1960s

Decolonialism (postcolonialism)

Analysis of the effects of colonialism and imperial oppression.
Most frequently postcolonialism focuses on the impact on the cultures that were colonized, and examines the experiences of colonizer-colonized encounters, shared histories, emergence of new identities, and persistence of certain stereotypes

Hybridity

The "Decisive Moment" aesthetics

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction
of a second, of the significance of an
event as well as the precise organization
of forms which give that event
its proper expression

Exhibition "Pictures," Artists Space, New York, 1977; curated by Douglas Crimp

Postmodernism