AP Art History Late 20th c. Identifiers and Terms

Woman I

Willem de Kooning
American
Abstract Expressionism
1950-1952
Oil on canvas

Seagram Building

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson
American
Modernism
1954-1958
Steel frame with glass curtain wall and bronze

Marilyn Diptych

Andy Warhol
American
Pop Art
1962
Oil, acrylic, silk-screen enamel on canvas

Narcissus Garden

Yayoi Kusama
Japanese
Pop Art
1966 (original installation and performance)
Mirror balls

The Bay

Helen Frankenthaler
American
1963
Acrylic on canvas

Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks

Claes Oldenburg
American
Pop Art
1969-1974
Cor-Ten steel, steel, aluminum, and cast resin; painted with polyeurethane enamel

Spiral Jetty

Robert Smithson
American
Site-specific art
1970
Earthwork: mud, precipitated salt crystals, rocks, and water coil

House in New Castle Country

Robert Venturi, John Rauch, and Denise Scott Brown
American
Reaction to Modernism
1978-1983
Wood frame and stucco

Action painting

artist pours, drips, dribbled or splattered pigment; applied in an unorthodox manner that involve the artist’s body

Curtain

wall architecture: an exterior wall in architecture that is non-structural and purely decorative

Entropy:

decline into disorder; the inevitable disintegration of all objects in nature

Happening

an act of performance art that is initially planned but involves spontaneity, improvisation and often audience participation

“Less is a bore”

coined by Robert Venturi in reaction to Miles van der Robe’s statement “less is more,” capture Venturi’s aesthetic - that architecture should be inspired by buildings of the past and pair elements together in new ways

“Less is more”

coined by Ludwig Miles van der Robe; captured his architectural aesthetic - that architecture should be simple, sleek, modern, minimalist

Modernism

a style of architecture that emerged in the early 20th century but became very popular after WWII; promotes architecture that is simple, sleek, minimal, proportional, geometric; this encapsulated modernity

Modular

composed of smaller standardized units or elements that are repeated without alteration

Performance art

works in which movements, gestures, and sounds replace physical objects

Silk screen

mesh cloth is stretched over a heavy wooden frame; the design (painted on the mesh or as a stencil) is transferred to the canvas by having a squeegee force color through the pores of the materialS

Soak-stain

artist pours paint onto canvas and avoids brushwork; manipulates the movement of paint using gravity or other means

Venice Biennale

a major show of contemporary art that takes place every other year in various venus throughout the city of Venice; begun in 1865